Category: Creative Distribution Initiative

This weekend I attended the sixth Sundance #ArtistServices workshop in Austin, Texas, presented by the Austin Film Society. As a filmmaker who just spent this past year screening my feature documentary Before You Know It at festivals worldwide (SXSW world premiere in 2013) while also trying to navigate the ever-changing distribution landscape (my last film Trinidad was distributed in 2009) there was one panel in particular I was most anxious to attend: “Licensing and Distribution in the Modern Age” with John Sloss. Full disclosure, my film is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program alum, and I’ve been working very closely under the guidance of  #ArtistServices.

Eric M. Levy is a writer and director living in Los Angeles. He co-directed the indie feature, Congratulations, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2012.

On Saturday, May 10th, Sundance Institute and Austin Film Society presented the first ever #ArtistServices Austin Workshop. We took over Stage 4 at the legendary Soundcheck Austin and filled every seat in the house.  We have a tradition of finishing every Workshop with the day’s most memorable takeaways.

Yael Melamede is the director of (Dis)Honesty – The Truth About Lies and a co-founder of SALTY Features, an independent production company based in NYC whose goal is to create media that is entertaining and enhances the world.I rode a NYC Citibike to a screening yesterday of Greg Barker’s We Are The Giant, a documentary that I had been looking forward to. When I got to the docking station to get rid of my bike, a guy was walking around, unable to take out a bike because his key wasn’t working.

Oliver Ike is the founder of First Pond Entertainment. After working in independent film distribution for three years, Oliver founded First Pond Entertainment in 2012. The idea behind First Pond was to provide flexible release options for socially driven documentaries, American indies and underrepresented communities in film.

Some of the best documentary and feature films often focus on a marginalized, isolated, or troubled community. Throughout the process you get to know the central characters in your story, and learn about the forces affecting their real, or fictional, lives. These people’s circumstances have moved you, mystified you, or pissed you off so profoundly that you feel compelled to explain them to a wider audience and do what you can to help along the way.

As San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Ted Hope—a man who keeps a discerning finger on the pulse of the indie film world—delivered his opening salvo at last April’s #ArtistServices Workshop, he addressed a curious dichotomy facing independent filmmakers.
“The irony of the times is that despite the abundance of content today, people seem to discover less movies, find less things that they care about, and get stuck in echo chambers. How do we solve it?”
There emerged a palpable frustration in his tenor that vacillated between anger and hope.

Annie Roney is managing director and founder of ro*co films. After nine years working with a top industry distributor, Annie founded ro*co films in 2000 with two complimentary ideas: the belief that a well-told, well-researched and emotionally driven documentary can challenge the way people think about issues in every corner of the globe; and, to be entrusted with the distribution of these stories, ro*co needed to be in service to the filmmaker first and foremost.Your company launched an educational division in 2009.

Julia Bacha is the director, producer, and writer of Budrus, which received a Sundance Documentary Film Grant in 2009.The past few years have brought tremendous achievements to documentary films focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From Academy Award nominations (5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers) to top prizes at Sundance (The Law in These Parts) to a Peabody Award (My Neighbourhood, which I co-directed with Rebekah Wingert-Jabi), films on this issue are clearly in the midst of an exciting period of recognition and success.

Sundance.org is dispatching its writers to daily screenings and events to capture the 10 days of festivities during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Check back each morning for round-ups from the previous day’s events.

Today’s Google+ Hangout featured Topspin Media Senior Vice President of Marketing Bob Moczydlowsky, filmmaker and founder of The Webby Awards Tiffany Shlain, and Sundance’s Chris Horton and Joseph Beyer. It was educational and entertaining discussion on the evolution and explosion of Direct-to-Fan Distribution (D2F). The D2F model allows artists to create interest in their work directly with fans, develop relationships with their fans, and sell directly to them through various platforms.

Sundance.org is dispatching its writers to daily screenings and events to capture the 10 days of festivities during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Check back each morning for round-ups from the previous day’s events.