Shantrelle P. Lewis’ feature documentary debut, In Our Mothers’ Gardens, calls forth and preserves the family histories of several Black women from Lewis’ life, traces each of their past joys and traumas to the present and lets them out into the world to heal. She creates a welcome space for her interviewees to open up on camera, many of whom are dear old friends, and she listens intently and asks thoughtful questions like, “What does your grandmother’s love look like?”, which encourage equally thoughtful responses. All of the women she interviews can call the names and stories of their ancestors […]

The following article was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Winter, 2021 edition. Digital technologies, incessantly lurching forward, are the ground we filmmakers stand on. No wonder we’re often unsteady on our feet. The pandemic has only become an accelerant. Although FaceTime and Skype were around awhile before both became verbs, it took the exigencies of the pandemic to flood our lives with Zoom calling, a digital convenience that has reshaped our relationship to proximity, travel and geography. Just ask Joe Biden. Doesn’t every production meeting now take place on Zoom? Production practices with renewed COVID relevance include use of zooms instead […]

NoBudge, the website devoted to ultra-low-budget and truly independent short films, recently launched a major new expansion of the organization’s mission and business: a subscription-based streaming platform that combines films from its collection with new shorts, features and music videos uploaded daily, many of which are exclusive to NoBudge. With Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, iOS and Android apps, NoBudge costs $5.99 a month, and 60% of revenues flow back to filmmakers. One of the most remarkable elements of the NoBudge story is that over its history founder Kentucker Audley — selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces series in […]

“One September day,” begins the title card at the head of the New Directors/New Films-premiering Aleph, “I met Rodrigo near 23rd Street for lunch. He talked about microcosms, labyrinths, connectness and Borges…” And with those deceptively casual opening lines, filmmaker Iva Radivojevic takes us on a globetrotting (10 countries on five continents!) journey through the porous borderlands of documentary and fiction that’s as much philosophical as it is observational. Traversing both map and territory, Aleph draws its inspiration from the Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name, a brief tale that literalizes the Hamlet quote (“O God! I […]

I’ve written here before about my fondness for director Michael Ritchie, particularly his streak in the 1970s when he made one great movie after another about the dark side of the American competitive spirit. Most of his best films – Downhill Racer (1969), The Candidate (1972), The Bad News Bears (1976) – are wry meditations on what it really means to win (and lose) in a culture where winning is valued above all else; one of the most memorable moments in all of his work comes at the conclusion of The Candidate, when Robert Redford’s senatorial candidate wins his election […]

Last week, we chronicled the winding but rewarding grassroots impact campaign for our feature documentary on early childhood education, No Small Matter. But we left off at a critical juncture we know many friends and colleagues faced this year — to release or not to release an indie film during a pandemic? Last winter, our team brought on distribution strategist (and this article’s co-author) Jon Reiss to help determine the best way to create a final launch for the film with a theatrical and VOD release to reach beyond our grassroots outreach. With Jon we began working with Abramorama and […]

ActionVFX.com has released 650+ clips of their new Sports and Concert Crowd VFX. As productions all around the world were canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the landscape of what we considered “normal” completely shift. Now, we have to be more careful than ever when being in large groups, which can hinder industry productions. ActionVFX saw a chance to propel the industry forward in unprecedented times. Following their governing authorities’ guidelines, they got to work. ActionVFX hired real actors and actresses to safely visit their studio to film crowd plates that can be easily replicated in […]

New Directors/New Films, the venerable Spring festival presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, returns with a 50th anniversary edition that celebrates not only the fest’s longevity but a return to live moviegoing. The festival begins today and runs in its virtual cinema through May 8, while in-person screenings extend until May 14. The Lincoln Center screenings are limited capacity, and while there are sell-outs, tickets remain for many films, particularly the second screenings towards the end of the festival. Below are 12 recommendations from Vadim Rizov, Nelson Kim and myself (with assists from Natalia Keogan, Abby […]

The past year has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at filmmakers, disrupting distribution timelines, cutting the legs out from under theaters, and depriving our community of opportunities for networking, sales, and press. But there have also been bright spots. While contending with major disappointments this year, many filmmakers have successfully pivoted to unique and impactful releases — models that are worth learning from and iterating on in the years ahead. It’s tempting to reminisce upon the “before COVID” times with rose-colored glasses, but independent filmmakers were struggling to get by long before 2020. Following its completion in 2018, our […]

When film buffs talk about early sound horror films, they tend to associate the period with Universal and its justly famous monster movies. Yet at around the same time, Michael Curtiz directed three important horror pictures at Warner Brothers, the first two of which are far more transgressive, disturbing, and graphic than anything to come out of Universal City. Doctor X (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), and The Walking Dead (1936) aren’t as iconic as later Curtiz classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), and White Christmas (1954), but they’re every bit as atmospheric and […]