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Truly Free Film

Escape from Africa – African Indy Films Unleashed on the World

Africa in film is on the rise.  There is an explosion of filmmakers and storytellers emerging from the continent with a global vision that reflects the realities of contemporary life – rapid urbanization, internet-enabled mobile phones and satellite TV in middle-class African homes. These filmmakers have burning and powerful stories they wish to tell and share with the world and these stories are as compelling and diverse as the continent, its inhabitants and its history. Therefore audiences, eager for distinct content, are turning to Africa.Pix

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Truly Free Film

Beer Buzz: Strong Bones Discovered in “Fragile” Cinematic Ecosystem

By Steven C. Beer

The state of the independent film business is a hot topic this week following the January 12 Manohla Dargis New York Times piece. The article cautions that an abundance of “lackluster, forgettable and just plain bad” films flooding New York City theaters distracts the entertainment media, overwhelms audiences and threatens to destroy the health of our “already fragile cinematic ecosystem”.  As we head to Park City to attend the Sundance and Slamdance film festivals, Dargis urgently requests that distributors stop buying so many movies. She proposes that we focus on curation, not consumption.

While the article makes some good points, it also raises some critical questions about the condition of the American Independent Cinema. How many films should be produced and released in theaters and on other platforms (cable, internet, broadcast, DVD) each year? Is it possible to have too many films?

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Let's Make Better Films Truly Free Film

Does The World Need Another Decent Movie?

By Julien Favre

With the world economy on the brink, the current environment has rarely been so tough for independent filmmakers. To get our films made and, even more so, to see them sold and/or distributed, is getting incredibly challenging. Foreign sales estimates for low budget independent films are a tenth of what they used to be pre-2008, and let’s not be fooled by the numbers. We will be happy if we sell at all, even for symbolic numbers. From a filmmaker’s perspective, we have entered a dichotomous world: a shrinking pool of independent films do well; most don’t make any significant business. It is now as if there is only room for one indie hit per year. If you are not that film that everybody wants, you barely exist and your business footprint will be close to zero.

Now, you can look at this situation in two different ways. One way is to

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These Are Those Things

Without Them, Cinema Would Still Be A Boring Place

Roger Corman and John Waters may well be the two people most responsible for cinema a gloriously odd and twisted place. It becomes more challenging than ever to create work that is outside of my mind — we all regurgitate the work that comes before us, but these two have developed far more than their share of wonderfully WTF moments. I wish I could have been there to hear them speak with each other about LSD, Jack Nicholson, Fellini,and all things movie. But hey, YouTube delivers us there without the hassle of travel.

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Truly Free Film

Get Ready For The Indie Film Investment Deluge!

Let’s celebrate!  The prospects look good for a lot of smart money to be available again for appropriately budgeted indie films.  The key now being the “appropriately” part of the equation.

The days of Machiavellian moves to maximize an limited audience art film’s budget seem thankfully over — and as sad as I will be to seem some friends’ films become obsolete, I smell another golden age brewing.  Filmmakers and investors seem to have both embraced the “less is more’ ethos.  Expect may more films to be made in the lower than $5M bracket, and far fewer indie works in Mark Gill’s former sweet spot.  The large indie finance companies of 5 years ago, had to make films at higher budget levels in order to justify their overheads and salaries.  Those companies have crashed and so did the silly models of $20M art films.

The Film Biz is coming off two consecutive extremely robust film markets.  Toronto 2010 saw almost 30 deals close during the festival.  Sundance 2011 exceeded that mark.  Surely there were quite a few deals done post market too (I have not seen any reports to track this; let me know if you know any).  Coming off of two years where the prudent would not expect anything for US rights, this an exceeding positive change.  With a well produced and well positioned films, investors can reasonably hope to recoup — and then some.  Now the challenge for producers will be to be disciplined enough not to allow the budget creep to return.

There are other factors, beyond the sales market itself,  that heighten my optimism.  The

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Truly Free Film

Cage Match: Are the Kids Alright? Youth Audiences in the Art House – Independent Film Conference 2010

Are independent and art-house film doing enough to draw young audiences away from the multiplex and the computer screen, or is the theatrical experience for a older demographic? On September 19th I was invited to participate in a “cage match” with Jeff Lipsky as part of Independent Filmmaker Conference’s panelist speaker event last month. We were able to agree on one thing: independent filmmakers need to draw a younger audience.

Moderator:
Liz Ogilvie, Crowdstarter

Panelists:
Ted Hope, This is that
Jeff Lipsky, Filmmaker, TWELVE THIRTY

Watch it here:

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IndieWire also covered the debate in an article here.