In the first week of January, I received an email from a programming manager at MUBI—arguably, the leading global streaming platform for arthouse and independent cinema—telling me that the company was working on a new project that would allow it to present stereoscopic (3D) films on its service in the immediate future and asking about the availability of my films’ materials and SVOD rights. Intrigued and perplexed, I verified that I had the rights to all of my solo projects and told MUBI it could include whatever it wanted. A week later, MUBI licensed non-exclusive U.S. and Canadian streaming rights […]

Like many film school instructors, Kent Hayward, an associate professor of narrative production at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), has also freelanced in the industry. While working on a variety of productions over the years, from Lifetime shows to The Dark Knight, he’s noticed an unfortunate fact. “At the end of the production, when wrap time comes, there is always a mad dash to the dumpster to get rid of everything,” he says, speaking from this year’s University Film and Video Association annual conference, which met at Cleveland State University in early August. “It’s tremendously wasteful to see all […]

There are no silver bullets for solving the crisis in independent film distribution, but there are a lot of industry professionals looking to Letterboxd—and its opinionated and rapidly growing 15 million–strong community of cinephiles—as an important new tool for their survival. Most crucially, as one distributor put it, “They’ve opened up a new channel of communication between filmmakers and their audiences, both actual and potential.” And, unlike other major industry disrupters, from Netflix to Rotten Tomatoes before it, Letterboxd appears to be embracing independent films as a distinct part of its identity. Matthew Buchanan, Letterboxd’s New Zealand–based co-founder, told Filmmaker, […]

In Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book, there’s a story about a mannequin maker and his underground workshop. The craftsman believes that after the introduction of cinema, people began to lose their natural gestures and now simply imitate the movements and behaviors of actors they see on the big screen. To preserve natural and native mannerisms, he undertakes an immense archival project: He makes mannequins of people performing small gestures in great detail. I’m curious what the craftsman would do faced with generative AI. AI film festivals and competitions are growing in popularity. Last May, the second annual Runway AI […]

The mega-talented Canadian multi-hyphenate Grace Glowicki gives an incredible performance in Mary Dauterman’s debut feature Booger. On this episode, she reveals why she was interested in the project before even opening the script, and how she could just tell Dauterman was going to be the kind of director that would give her the support she needs. She talks about her current focus on examining issues dealing with authority, her love of bodily fluids in film, her struggle with emotional scenes, how directing herself as an actor actually helped her acting career, differences between the Canadian and American indie film scene, […]

In the opening scene of Dìdi, the titular 13-year-old and his friends film themselves blowing up a mailbox and making a run for it while laughing hysterically. It perfectly encapsulates director Sean Wang’s view of adolescence as “the worst version of yourself, having the best time of your life.” Set in 2008 in Wang’s hometown of Fremont, California, the coming-of-age story follows a Taiwanese American teen during his final summer before high school. Though not strictly autobiographical, the film was inspired by Wang’s own adolescence and the making of it was awash in familiarity. The main character’s bedroom scenes were […]