Simple Machine
-
Simple Machine to Award Micro-Festival Grants
Simple Machine, the online distribution platform connecting filmmakers to non-theatrical venues, is offering quarterly $1,000 grants to new small, innovative film festivals. “How can we more fully explore the possibilities of hyper-local events designed to create an effective context for contemporary cinema?” asks Simple Machine’s creator, Nandan Rao, in a statement. “How can we push the film-festival concept into smaller, more intimate nooks and crannies in our societal fabric? What new terms are needed to describe the formats of communal movie watching that resonate with us today? These are the questions we’re hoping our grant-winners will help to answer.” The […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 3, 2014 -
Start Showing Movies: A Call to Arms
Filmmaker and cinematographer Nandan Rao co-founded Simple Machine, an online distribution platform that connects filmmakers with non-theatrical exhibition venues. In this guest editorial, he advocates that we stop looking to others for our exhibition opportunities and invent them ourselves. — SM We Don’t Fit Into Their Business Model “The arthouse theater” is a business like any other and right now it obviously can’t afford to promote new and challenging independent cinema, not in the face of made-up fees and conversion expenses implemented by bigger, sneakier businesses. Their primary concern is getting bodies into seats and keeping the silver-haired donors happy […]
by Nandan Rao and Zach Weintraub on May 29, 2013 -
How to Choose a Crowdsourced Theatrical Platform
Since I co-founded the distribution platform OpenIndie in 2009, the direct-to-fan model has matured into an attractive alternative to traditional distribution deals. Theatrical options in particular have increased dramatically, and success stories have grown from the few to the many. Having moved on from OpenIndie earlier this year, I will be writing a series of articles for Filmmaker on the new ways in which technology can enable distribution for independent filmmakers. In this first post, I’ll reflect on the theatrical space, highlight a range of the available crowdsourced theatrical platforms, and discuss their differences and the opportunities they present for filmmakers. The […]
by Kieran Masterton on Apr 24, 2013 -
What’s In My Instapaper: Jason Molina, Google Reader, Female Road Narratives and More
I discover the links for these weekly columns through one source: Google Reader. Well, last week, Google sent the beloved Google Reader to its graveyard. I didn’t initially understand how difficult it will be to replace Google Reader until listening to last week’s Accidental Tech Podcast, even as the show’s Marco Arment believes that Google’s departure from the RSS space will be a good thing in the long run. Still, the shutdown has prompted a lot of press, and not all in the tech field, questioning our dependence on Google given their penchant for launching and shuttering services. For Google […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2013
