I turned in this column way late this quarter. My excuse? Admissions. Like film faculty across the country, my colleagues and I in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California are reading dozens of applications for a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate filmmaking, screenwriting and media arts programs, and sorting through personal statements, work samples, grades, letters of recommendation and more, trying to sense who might be best for our program and how our program might best suit potential applicants. There are more applications than ever, even though recent analyses suggest that students consider the […]

The Sundance Film Festival is a time for movie watching, deal making, talent scouting and, often, much soul searching about the state and future of the independent film industry. This year in particular there was no shortage of media coverage and conversations about distribution and the sustainability of the independent business. As Sundance CEO Joana Vicente told The Ringer’s “The Town” podcast, “Everyone is thinking about solutions… How can we help and figure out how all these films find a home, and what’s our role in the distribution exhibition piece?” For Sundance’s more commercial films—of which there were several this […]

From the late aughts until pre-pandemic times, Apple’s presence in my life seemed concise and easy to recognize. It manufactured the phone in my pocket and the laptop I worked on. I picked an iPhone and a MacBook over the alternatives for the usual reasons: because Apple products were reliable and well-designed with intuitive user interfaces. The company, as a product manufacturer, appeared to have a vastly different purpose than the neighboring Silicon Valley empires extracting and monetizing data like Google and Facebook.  Something changed in recent years. Now, when I think of Apple, I think of the AirTags I […]

A crowd of people, animals and AI-generated beings sleeps in a movie theater. Faces are lit by the explosions of an atom bomb on screen. All we hear is the loud snoring of hundreds of people and the sounds of their bodies moving; a nondescript rodent crawls on the floor. We cut to the 70mm IMAX projection room, where the projectionist is also sleeping. The camera moves very slowly, but each shot morphs within itself at a faster pace. These two visual rhythms are layered on top of each other. The explosions on screen intensify; a panic sets in. We […]

I recently found myself sitting between three tech bros on my right and three cinephiles on my left. The film festival panel was meant to be a discussion about AI in the film industry; instead, it was an exasperating—if entertaining—demonstration of the radical gap in knowledge separating people who have some technical understanding of AI and those who don’t. There were tone-deaf proclamations about “generating content” and “optimizing workflows” on one side. And there was shouting, swearing, table-pounding, finger-pointing and (almost) tears on the other side, culminating in the announcement, “We’re very afraid!”  I get it. AI has been foisted on […]

After nearly flatlining during the pandemic years, American independent film saw some signs of life in 2023. While optimists might call it a year of transition as the industry looks for new audiences and a new equilibrium, cynics see an unsustainable and contracting arthouse marketplace, with most producers and distributors increasingly unable to recoup. But, if you look at the fates of last year’s Sundance titles, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  For all the doom and gloom about the acquisitions market (“No one is buying films!”), 10 out of 12 films in this year’s Dramatic Competition […]