Here are ten films that remind us of life in Los Angeles during a very particular and only recently bygone era: the '90s and early 2000s. These films are honest portrayals of what livin’ la vida loca LA-style is all about, whether they’re a glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the realities of showbiz or struggles within SoCal’s toughest ‘hoods.
The Film Independent Forum is designed to inspire and empower filmmakers by providing them the tools and connections needed to get their projects made and seen.
Just a reminder that tomorrow, September 18, is the Regular Deadline to submit your 2023 features and episodic projects to the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards. The extended Member Deadline is Tuesday, October 3. It bears repeating: you can submit your film or groundbreaking series, get nominated for a Spirit Award and win.
Film Independent's Kate Mason moderates a post-screening Q&A with producers Shane Boris and Diane Becker about their work on Elaine Sheldon's lyrical new Appalachia documentary KING COAL.
Hailing from the mostly white suburban-exurban neighborhoods of central California, first-generation Filipino-American documentarian PJ Raval’s eclectic career has taken him places to places up (a 100-foot tall army barrack tower), down (post-Katrina New Orleans) and all around (Texas, New York, Colorado). With three features under his belt and more on the way, the current University of Texas at Austin film professor and proud Film Independent Member’s 2023-24 dance card certainly isn’t growing any less full.
Film Independent President Josh Welsh swings by the FOX 11 studios in Los Angeles to chat about our ongoing Friends & Supporters Matching Campaign, which concludes Friday, September 15.
For the first time since the 2017 (hello fidget spinners!) Film Independent’s autumnal industry gathering—the Film Independent Forum—will be taking entirely live in person at its traditional home, the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. Alternate venues, hybrid virtual sessions and a friggin’ global pandemic may have made things difficult to pin down in recent years, but this year all your #FiForum23 filmmaker panels, keynotes, industry networking events and more will be exactly where you expect. And they’ll be there for two days only,…
As always, these films are being supported by Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program, enabling filmmakers to solicit tax-deductible donations and organizational grants in partnership with Film Independent. Here’s how...
Film Independent Senior Programmer Jenn Wilson talks to filmmaker Emma Seligman about her new queer sex-and-violence comedy BOTTOMS following a Members-only screening at the FI screening room.
From Olivia Colman’s fraught sojourn to the Greek Isles in The Lost Daughter to Jessie Buckley’s terrifying trip up the M5 to the English countryside in Men and M. Night’s bummer beaches in Old, taking a little “me time” away from home is often the single biggest mistake any movie character could possibly make. Horror, psychological drama, comedy, mystery, rom-com. The genre hardly matters. In film, the simple act of taking a vacation is rarely the relaxing, restorative interlude one hopes that it might be, placing uneasy…
Since the early 2000s, there’s been a disappointing trend in movies away from full-fledged opening title sequences. Whether because of the desire to jump straight into the action or the impulse to keep the audience focused on a film’s story (rather than its creators), elaborate, artful opening title sequences, once commonplace, have become increasingly rare—which is too bad.
It’s the question all indie filmmakers want to know: What do Sundance Film Festival programmers look for? Or more to the point: How do I get into Sundance? Funny you should ask! On August 15 Film Independent Education hosted an online session of its Filmmaker Tuesdays series featuring two of the storied fest’s curators: feature programmers Ash Hoyle and Sudeep Sharma.
Moderator Claudia Puig (President, Los Angeles Film Critics Association) speaks to Academy Award nominated filmmaker Maite Alberdi (The Mole Agent) about her new film, along one of the documentary's subjects, Paulina Urrutia.
So here you sit. You’ve spent the past few years (decades?) chasing down your dreams, encountering challenge after challenge, enduring the extreme vagaries of film financing, media mergers and daily COVID testing, and through it all you remained true to your creative vision.
A Q&A with Film Independent Fellows following the #AD30 short film showcase, held at the Directors Guild of America on July 26, 2023. Moderated by Imani Davis.
The non-Member deadline for the 2023 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab is coming up fast: August 28, just ten short days from today! Of course, Members of Film Independent still have until September 11. So maybe you might wanna consider joining? Just a thought.
Do you remember the very first moment when you realized a movie could be far more than just a brief, amiable diversion from the temporal slog of life as an extant human? That first moment you realized film could be art capable of providing a fully nourishing spiritual experience? That perhaps even made you want to become a filmmaker in order to provide that experience to someone else?
It is no secret that technology now advances rapidly and dramatically, constantly changing the pace at which we’re able to process our surroundings, perspective, and experiences—as well as the way we reflect those experiences back at others.
Of course, 30 years of Artist Development also means the accumulated wisdom and collective experiences of three decades’ worth of Film Independent Fellows, which is why we’ve been canvassing our stellar roster of cohorts–past and present–to ask some of the most important questions related to their lives and careers, part of a new series we’re calling (until Steve Harvey sues us) Survey Says. We received so many replies that we’re going to follow-up with Part Two later on, but here’s what some of…
