FREE CINEMA NOW

Beyoncé knocked the wind out of the Internet when she dropped her nearly hour-long visual album Lemonade on HBO this past Saturday night, April 23rd. The inspired film is a remarkable piece to be sure--even for the Queen Bee herself. And while everything from the sound design to the collective creative direction from the team of filmmakers, editors and art department is exceptional, much of the receptive chatter online has instead circled around the implied infidelity that spurs the narrative of Lemonade ; the idea that hubby Jay Z did Beyoncé wrong with a certain "Becky with the good hair." Which is too bad; that's the kind of fodder for tabloids and it marginalizes how much great film art is packed into this thing. So, as a reactionary cinephile, I thought I'd redirect the public's attention to the striking images that Lemonade presents, the ideas behind them and, more pointedly, where these vignettes drew inspiration from. In contrast to the possi...

It's never easy. We all know that. Fiscally speaking, the life of the independent digital filmmaker is about as rewarding as playing the lottery. Week in and week out we take chances, quietly hoping that this gig or project or music video could be the winning ticket to a staggering amount of dollar signs. In reality, most of us will never reach the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And that's okay. We're artists after all. What's not okay is not learning to cope with all the in-between stages, which makes up about 90% of our life. It's the the day-to-day, the hustle, the grind. I usually try to avoid the cliche "tough skin" speech but it's getting harder and harder to soften it up for peers today. To succeed--and by succeed I mean, to stay (somewhat) gainfully employed AND creatively challenged--in this niche business of passions, you need to have a killer instinct. Yes, some days are better than others but everyday that you wake up you're ...

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw the analogy between Canelo and today's DIY filmmaker. If you haven't already seen Luis Bunuel's Viridiana , then watch the clip below and discover some profound truth. You always know how to cut to the core of me Bunuel.

"I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick." - Maya Deren There is a negative sentiment shared by some in the industry these days toward the term "DIY": For those individuals, going DIY can be a precursor to failure . Of course, that kind of connotation doesn't benefit anyone of us who are plugging away at our own DIY endeavors. As DIY filmmakers, we're prone to suffering. We can take it. This was never going to be easy. Besides, whoever said that the DIY mindset/route was the ticket to becoming a conglomerate movie-producing titan? Or that anyone of us could become blockbuster filmmakers? The line in the sand needs to be drawn. DIY, at its core, is the lifestyle of the true independent artist. It's about risking life and limb (and that's not an exaggeration) to attain a truly fulfilling work-flow of creating engaging and valid content, without compromise. And if we can somehow leverage today's new media tools ...

Our current era of independent filmmaking/exhibition/distribution has introduced alternate methods of delivery for the new media content creator. That is to say, the new indie filmmaker has to tell a story with much more frequency, sometimes over longer periods of time. Before, a filmmaker would just make the film and then hope the finished product connects with some sort of audience for fiscal gain (ticket sales, studio deals, yada, yada, yada). But Web 2.0 and the social media revolution have (thankfully) lifted Oz's curtain. Therefore, a revived need for (daily) content has really put filmmakers on the spot. The good news is, is that filmmakers have more power in actually choosing their audience than ever before. The bad news is that this daily content (an active Twitter feed, updated YouTube channels, blogs, etc.) is often free content and therefore returns no immediate revenue for the artist. But don't fret. A post in Filmmaker Magazine -- "The Microbudget Co...

A common oversight in our creative field is the curation of GOOD or STIMULATING content. Social media platforms like Vimeo give us all megaphones that can sometimes create more white noise in our arena; this can hinder the validity of an emerging new wave of indie filmmaking because there is such a high flux of content coming and going. The bottom line is that most online content (video, film) is quite bad. And not bad in an intentionally volatile or spiteful way. It's just that everyone is putting everything online. So where do you go? How do you compete with the dancing cat videos when your content is a 7-minute silent film? The key is going to be in the "micro"-curation among the independents . It's going to involve some meticulous cross-promotion of engaging or interesting works by our peers. This is harder than it sounds. The reason is that much of our time is already dedicated to actually creating content and then promoting ourselves as branded entities o...

In the wake of a tepid  Oscar  telecast and the mass media channels becoming flooded with fashion and gossip centered content, I thought I'd point my fellow indie filmmakers to some powerful words. They come in  Steven Soderbergh 's concise and stirring acceptance speech from winning the  Best Director  Oscar for  Traffic . To this day, it remains one of the more memorable speeches and  reaffirms the validity of our artistic drive .