Category: Creative Distribution Initiative

I ‘ve had the privilege of serving as a Creative Advisor at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab since 2000, working with filmmakers as they get ready to make their next films. In one-on-one meetings, we talk about their scripts, and their ambitions for their films.
In these conversations, I hear myself asking the same questions again and again: “What would happen if.

Ron Najor produced “I Am Not A Hipster” with a group of friends in his hometown of San Diego. The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and Ron and his team worked with #ArtistServices to fund and distribute its independent release – which is when we first were impressed by his rockstar producing passion. Ron then went on to his second collaboration with writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton and produced the SXSW Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winning film “Short Term 12” in 2013.

This blog originally appeared as part of VHX’s Success Stories series. Based on his bestselling memoir of the same name, Life Itself explores the legacy of film critic Roger Ebert’s life. Directed by Steve James, the film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and simultaneously screened online exclusively for the film’s Indiegogo supporters.

After bringing his short Dol (First Birthday) to the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Andrew Ahn returns with Spa Night, in which he sheds light on the recondite world of the Korean-American gay community. Ahn’s protagonist, a closeted Korean American teen, takes a job at a Korean spa, where he discovers a simultaneously terrifying and titillating world of underground sex. From there, he’s forced to starkly confront what it means to be gay and Korean American.

In 2014, most every filmmaker knows that it’s important to build a website for your project. But how many of us know enough about programming or design to create a site that serves as a fitting representation of the project, let alone one that functions as a tool for both marketing and audience building? “As you add networks and outlets to your film’s identity, and as that footprint grows and grows, one of the first things that slips, because most of us can’t afford a full-time graphic designer, is the look and feel of your film,” said Joseph Beyer, director of digital initiatives for Sundance Institute. At IFP week in New York, the #ArtistServices panel entitled “Designing Your Look and Feel—What We Love Right Now” strove to address that very slippage.

A world bereft of compassion is an unnecessarily cruel one. For sufferers of Alzheimer’s, their families, and their caregivers, such a world is far too often the reality. When Banker White’s mother Pam began experiencing the initial symptoms of Alzheimer’s, rather than withdrawing, he committed to opening the doors to the merciless disease by documenting her struggle in what would become The Genius of Marian, an elegiac documentary that depicted Pam and her family’s new existence (and an extension of Pam’s unfinished book about her own mother Marian Wlliams Steele, who passed from Alzheimer’s years prior).

Each August, the professionals on the front lines of producing, distributing, and marketing independent films gather in the mountains of Utah to share their knowledge and experience with the Sundance Institute Producing Fellows at the Creative Producing Summit. The weekend was kicked off by Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper who posed a central question to Summit participants – “Are you more or less optimistic today about the health of independent film than you were five years ago?”
Keri Putnam, Sundance Institute’s Executive Director, shared her own response with the Summit community in remarks that helped to define the tone of the weekend and offered up a call to independent producers at large.
5 years ago.

David Charles is a filmmaker, writer, and graphic novelist who has written and directed interactive and non-traditional storytelling experiences for bands, brands, and properties worldwide, including James Cameron’s Avatar. In 2011, Charles became the creative partner of renowned contemporary artist Gary Baseman. The pair are currently in development on their first live action feature film Mythical Creatures, which was supported at the 2013 Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab, and recently released a short animation commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Particle Fever participated in IFP’s 2008 Spotlight on Documentaries at Independent Film Week and is released in-part through IFP’s collaboration and partnership with the  Sundance Institute #ArtistServices Initiative.
It’s hard to imagine a more imposing logline than the one depicting Particle Fever. While the film itself doesn’t endeavor to solve the mysteries of the universe, its subjects –a coterie of leading scientists – absolutely do.

The goal is to “democratize documentary culture,” say Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, the artists behind Ambulante (whom you may recall from Y Tu Mama Tambien or Motorcycle Diaries), a traveling documentary film festival that embarks on a new journey for two weeks this fall. The idea is fairly simple, and one adapted from a tried and true formula that has engendered nine consecutive years of sucessful tours across Mexico presenting international documentary cinema to areas with limited access to film. For two weeks beginning September 21, Ambulante will occupy the greater Los Angeles region to create unique exhibition spaces and program free documentary cinema.

Straith Schreder is the Director of Content Strategy, BitTorrent, Inc., which has worked with Drafthouse Films on its BitTorrent Bundle, which Chief Content Officer Matt Mason spoke on at #ArtistServices San Francisco Workshop. Below, Schreder outlines the ways in which Drafthouse Films is an indicator of where independent distribution is headed and highlights five ways that Drafthouse Films gets the new distribution model right.

Camille Scioli Chambers is an independent producer, production coordinator and all around creative resources maven from Austin, Texas, who probably sat too close to the TV as a child. She has “multiple projects in various stages of development” but her favorites are as co-producer with Peter Atherton of The Iron Orchard, to be directed by Ty Roberts and working with the team of The Big Spoon, to be directed by Carlyn Hudson. She is active on the Development Committee of the Austin Film Society and is a past board member of the Texas Motion Picture Alliance and Women in Film, Dallas.