FREE CINEMA NOW

At a recent film industry event I attended, I found myself picking up my jaw from the ground a lot. I ran into a number of individuals--all indie producers and content creators--who were hellbent on landing that "theatrical run" for their micro or modest projects. The relentless DIY-digital filmmaker inside me kept erupting with "Are you fucking nuts?" expletives. You see, I have a deep concern for my peers not seeing the big picture. Like any other independent artist, I would love to have all of my work tour the nation on big multiplex screens but we know that the current exhibition infrastructure is not built to program all of our work (whether their current programmed content is any good is an entirely different discussion), so why bother with waiting around and hoping to be "discovered"? We know the major film festival route is becoming a slimmer opportunity every year; since when do films that star Tinseltown marquee names earn the label of being...

The beautiful and elusive aspect to the golden Hollywood exhibition model is that the work you create could actually be projected on thousands of screens across the country. How about that? But if you're not at the helm of Just Go With It or The Green Hornet or any studio-backed production, chances are you are also amidst the undefined the landscape that is new media independent moviemaking. So where do you go? How do you begin to stake your claim in this market ? For a while now, many of the articles I have published on Cinefile.com have marched to the same beat: Today the notion of DIY is less novel and more necessary. The Do-It-Yourself mentality has (luckily) grown into more of a business mindset and less of a "renegade" or "guerilla" mentality . It was inevitable. When an industry like ours sees less opportunity for independent film to flourish--albeit through domestic sales or production capital--on a mainstream scale, doesn't it seem n...