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Audiences Are Our Biggest Stakeholders, And We Can’t Leave Them Behind
The daunting prospect of capturing the attention and engagement of new audiences is not a recent development. For years, the Film Festival Alliance has held panel sessions like “What Millennials Want” and “Cultivating A Love of Cinema Culture in Young People,” but the pandemic, which has people affixed to their devices 24/7, has certainly heightened the urgency for film festivals, while also blowing the lid off an old model, exposing all of its cracks and forcing us to do the essential hard work of thinking differently. In a post-COVID-19 world, assuming a vaccine does become readily available late next year, […]
by Lela Meadow-Conner on Oct 28, 2020 -
New Authority: The Film Set Job of the COVID-19 Compliance Supervisor
The following article on film-set COVID-19 safety departments was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2020 print issue. When Heather Drake-Bianchi landed her first job as a COVID-19 compliance supervisor, the New York–based set medic didn’t realize the gravity of the responsibility she’d been given. “At first, I thought I was just going to be like a ’set medic plus,’ Drake-Bianchi said. “Then, on day one of the shoot, when we did the first morning safety briefing, one of the producers said, ’Just so everybody knows, whatever Heather says goes. She has the capacity to shut this entire shoot down.’” Drake-Bianchi’s […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 28, 2020 -
Viewing Disability
“Do disability differently,” disability activist and media critic Lawrence Carter-Long begs in his irreverent survey of the state of disability on film for the recent manifesto issue of Film Quarterly. Defending genre curios such as the 1970s exploitation thriller Mr. No Legs, about a drug ring enforcer with shotguns built into his wheelchair, as more interesting than treacle like the Andrew Garfield–starring biopic Breathe, about British independent-living activist Robin Cavendish, Carter-Long points to a common complaint within disability circles about the narrow frames of reference through which disabled people tend to be seen. Disability movies, the thinking goes, too often […]
by Angelo Muredda on Oct 28, 2020 -
The Clock is Ticking: Filmmakers on Surviving Through the Pandemic
Time may be running out for independent filmmakers. Sure, even as the pandemic has completely disrupted their entire workflows and business models, they’re a scrappy and resourceful bunch. Like restaurants pivoting to drive-thru, delivery and take-out to outlast our current infectious plague, filmmakers are moving forward in myriad ways, whether in post-production on already completed films, developing new scripts or trying to produce new films self-insured by funders with scaled-down crews and robust coronavirus prevention measures in place. But survival is tricky right now and dogged perseverance may only work for so long. To stay afloat, for example, one New […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Oct 28, 2020 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to Filmmaker’s 28th anniversary edition. If you are reading this editor’s letter, there’s a good chance you are reading it in a print issue that has been delivered to your mailbox or that you purchased at a newsstand or bookstore. After a summer issue break, when Filmmaker went PDF due to bookstores closing and all the uncertainty around the pandemic, we’re grateful to be back with a physical edition—grateful to our advertisers, our publisher, IFP and to you for your continuing readership and support. There’s a reason we pushed hard to return to print with this issue, and it’s partly sentimental: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2020 -
The Fear Returns: Fangoria Enters a New Era with New Ownership
“I grew up a genre fan,” Tara Ansley, independent film producer and the new co-owner of the 40-year-old preeminent horror brand Fangoria, said a few weeks after news of the acquisition was made public. “[When I was young,] Fangoria was the closest I could get to being on a set and going behind the scenes. When I saw the company was for sale, I knew it was time for there to be more female leadership and diversity within the genre world.” For more than four tumultuous decades, Fangoria has served as America’s most prolific brand covering all aspects of the […]
by Erik Luers on Oct 28, 2020 -
Embracing Hybridity
It goes without saying that film festivals will have to be hybrid going forward—this is no longer optional but rather a requirement of the times. But the actual way the film festival circuit works also needs a revamp. The life cycle of an independent film on the festival circuit starts with, hopefully, a splashy premiere. The film is then taken to several festivals, building buzz over the course of anywhere from six to 18 months, during which time the film vies for limited distribution deals or the filmmaker has to figure out a distribution strategy of their own. While film […]
by Faridah Gbadamosi on Oct 28, 2020 -
Travel Companions: Steven Soderbergh on Cruise-Ship Shooting, Working with Deborah Eisenberg and Meryl Streep, and Let Them All Talk
In August 2019, when Steven Soderbergh shot Let Them All Talk, COVID-19 was not on his mind, except to the degree that his research on Contagion (2011) had convinced him that a pandemic similar to the one depicted in the film was inevitable. And yet, one of the most compelling aspects of the workaholic director’s latest feature (streaming this Fall on HBO Max) is that the eight-day Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, during which most of the movie is set, now can be read as a metaphor for the necessarily transformational journey from before to after COVID. In […]
by Amy Taubin on Oct 28, 2020 -
Ballard in the Rear View
In his autobiography, Miracles of Life, J. G. Ballard reminisces about a derelict casino he came across in his youth. The abandoned building gave him the sense that “reality itself was a stage set that could be dismantled at any moment, and that no matter how magnificent anything appeared, it could be swept aside into the debris of the past.” It is a canny summation of the familiar visuals in his fiction. Ballard was obsessed with facilities like hospitals and airports, places with sterile obstructive architectures and machine-like routines for individuals to perform, and theaters of reality that break down […]
by Joanne McNeil on Oct 28, 2020 -
Reconsidering Vacancy
A few years ago, I posed the following question to myself: Am I using my producing and fundraising skills to benefit too few people? What if the people or the corporations I deliver this beloved film investment to are treating people badly? Profiting at the expense of the people that made it? What does it mean that the amount of labor and the amount of pay often don’t add up? Is there another path? Because I’m decent at raising money for film, a sum between $500,000 to $1.5 million doesn’t seem daunting. I decided to explore different ways money could […]
by Esther B. Robinson on Oct 28, 2020
