Kickstarter
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Cracking Eggs: Looking for Financial Stability Outside of Independent Film
Though Elijah Wood beat us in the Moon Pie eating contest (five pies in two minutes), we took home the prize for best feature. We’d just premiered our second film, Tex Montana Will Survive!, at the Chattanooga Film Festival, where we stood in the hallway — too nervous to sit within the crowd — waiting to hear if anyone would actually laugh. The first joke lands with an uproar they could probably hear over the bombast of Furious 7 in the theater adjacent. Our fears were thankfully unfounded. Tex Montana was as funny as we thought it was… and we […]
by Christian Stella on Feb 17, 2016 -
Kickstarter Announces Sundance-Bound Projects
The countdown to Sundance 2016 has begun with a slew of recent announcements of film selections for the festival, which runs from January 21-31. Earlier this week, the crowdfunding platform unveiled the list of Kickstarter-funded works which made the cut for this year’s festival, including new documentary features from Dawn Porter (Trapped), Penny Lane (NUTS!) and Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker (Unlocking the Cage). Read the full blog post here and check out highlights below: This year at Sundance, we’ll be crossing our fingers for a great roster of docs and dramatic features in competition for major awards: NUTS!, Spa Night, Trapped, and When Two Worlds […]
by Paula Bernstein on Dec 15, 2015 -
BRITDOC Launches the World’s First Documentary Cookbook on Kickstarter
With awards like the Cinema Eye Honors’ Unforgettables Award, documentary organizations are beginning to draw attention not just to the filmmakers behind documentary cameras but the subjects in front. Still, BRITDOC’s latest is utterly original: the world’s first documentary cookbook. Currently fundraising on Kickstarter, the project is a digital download illustrated by Ben Lamb containing savory recipes from documentary subjects all over the world, from Chicago’s Ameena Matthews (from Steve James’ The Interrupters) to Burma’s Joshua Min Htut (Burma VJ) to an as-yet-unrevealed “certain American living somewhere in Russia.” Six of the doc chefs have already been announced, with all […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 29, 2015 -
Kickstarting Paper Chase with the Top Five Black Characters in Mainstream Teen Movies
We love teen movies. We’ve seen everything from Say Anything to Whatever It Takes, Pretty In Pink to Drive Me Crazy. Name a teen movie that was in theaters and chances are we’ve seen it twice. But while we love these films we were always taken aback by the lack of diversity. Though Kid and Play and films like House Party and Class Act shook things up by adding some brown faces to the teen movie mix, it is still bleak out there. This void inspired us to make our own teen movie Paper Chase. Paper Chase is a comedy […]
by Lauren Domino and Angela Tucker on Nov 27, 2015 -
Kentucker Audley Wants You to Support the Movies on Kickstarter
Kentucker Audley might have been reading Mike Ryan’s “TV is Not the New Film,” in which the producer concedes that TV is dominating our cultural conversation right now. And he’s decided to do something about it. Audley has taken to Kickstarter to sell a simple item of apparel that will tell the world that, yes, you’re a movie fan.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 16, 2015 -
Why the Kickstarter Film Festival is Expanding to 32 Screens for its Fifth Edition
Previously, the Kickstarter Film Festival showcased everything from feature film excerpts to apps funded on the site over the course of one evening in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and London. For the 5th edition, Kickstarter has pared down the lineup to include two features and three shorts, while expanding their geographical reach, as the program will now be presented in 32 screens across the country on October 15, for free with RSVP. Filmmaker spoke to Kickstarter’s Film Partnerships Lead Dan Schoenbrun about this new iteration, which seeks to bring the platform’s films to their widest audience yet. Filmmaker: What was the decision behind the move from three cities […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 26, 2015 -
Streaming for Dollars
Since the advent of YouTube and Vimeo, filmmakers have rolled the dice, releasing their shorts online for free in the hopes that their work will court the right set of eyeballs. Nowadays, even at banner institutions like The New York Times and The New Yorker, more and more curated short-form distribution opportunities are cropping up online that hint toward visibility and prestige for the films, along with, sometimes, financial returns for the filmmakers. Last December, The New Yorker introduced “The Screening Room,” a streaming platform where they rolled out three shorts acquired at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival: Person to […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 23, 2015 -
“Kickstarter is Based on Such an Optimistic View of Humanity — That People will Give to an Idea”: Liz Cook on Crowdfunding
I’m sitting in a small cinema in Berlin watching Mad Max: Fury Road, thrilled by the action and by the fight for freedom. Less thrilling is the guilty reminder of today’s massacres in Syria or human trafficking epidemic. I feel a similar pang of conscience while re-reading passages from Medea during real-life Greek tragedy, while the potential Grexit compromises the entire economic stability of the Eurozone. I’m torn between bearing the responsibility of world strife personally, as a passive consumer, and indirectly, as a helpless Samaritan. I can sometimes evade my guilty conscience by damning society. But even then, I’m […]
by Taylor Hess on Jul 22, 2015 -
Jerzy Rose and Samy Burch on Casting Neighborhood Food Drive
Chicago filmmakers Jerzy Rose and Halle Butler are currently fundraising for their feature length satire Neighborhood Food Drive, about two egomaniacal restauranteurs and their unpaid intern as they throw a series of lavish and disastrous fundraisers. Below, Rose interviews his casting director Samy Burch about the process of pulling together both professional actors and otherwise for a cast headed up by Bruce Bundy and Lyra Hill.–SS Jerzy Rose: I have a vague memory of you telling me, after you’d seen Crimes Against Humanity, that you’d love to help me cast my next movie. I followed up one year later. I think I simply asked “How […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 24, 2015 -
Kickstart Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights
The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman has turned to Kickstarter to complete his latest sweeping portrait, this time of the titular Queens neighborhood, In Jackson Heights. Wiseman is currently whittling down 120 hours worth of rushes to complete the finished product, which is set for a fall festival debut and a 2016 PBS broadcast. Check out a teaser of the film above, and read a bit about Wiseman’s editing process below. My job as editor is to make the film as best I can from the rushes. What I think about the subject matter is what you see in the final film. At least […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 18, 2015
