From the SM inbox, a video about the history and modern landscape of creative materials piracy as told by Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism. The question the video raised in our minds was whether or not there's validity to the claim that the state of capitalism is in fact enhanced by piracy, though surely there's no question that creative development is actually spurred on by manipulation of material. It's not a new topic for artists, but it's certainly always a relevant one. Thoughts?
Project of indie filmmakers Arin Crumley, Susan Buice, Lance Weiler & M dot Strange, From Here to Awesome proposes to present and support a new wave of film distribution. For more information visit http://www.fromheretoawesome.com.
Like most of the trades and film online outlets, SM expected the SXSW 2008 lineup to arrive sometime this afternoon. Last night an early, unauthorized release by The Hollywood Reporter broke the news. Following is the list of selections and highlighted a handful of the ones we're pumped to see.
At Saturday night's closing ceremony presenter William H. Macy honored Sundance 2008 award winners. Follow to read the list and our thoughts on the selections.
In a press statement released today, HollyShorts announced its official deadline for entry as May 16. Submission forms are available at both www.hollyshorts.com and on Withoutabox. Read for more detail.
Mid last week the Sundance Film Festival revealed its line of shorts, a programming mix of 83 films
produced from 17 countries. With 5,107 submissions, both domestic and international, the entries topped more than 15% from the previous year.
After careful consideration, SM has determined that our application pool for the Top 24 Film Students list is skewed and lacks the ability to represent the student film movement countrywide. Due to the fact, we feel it would be a disservice to our applicants to publish what may be perceived as a slanted list. Instead what we will do over the course of the following months is run profiles of each of our applicants, who generously shared their time and thoughts with us. SM thanks all its student applicants, and we look forward to speaking with them in future.
In honor of Frank V. Ross' Hohokam Thursday, August 30 premiere in New York, SM offers a brief recap of the feature story we ran on the film this past April.
A community founded in 1998 as an online support structure for filmmakers, Shooting People establishes itself daily as a leading resource for connections and news to the independent film world, and their initiatives are all the more credible as their financing derives from an entirely independent source, the minimal membership fees of Shooters themselves. In a recent expansion of content, Shooters has added podcasts to their list of outreach.
In the first three installments, screenwriter-director Dito Montiel talks about the process of writing The Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Christine Vachon speaks about her recent book release A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond and Rolf De Heer shares stories about his film Ten Canoes. The quiet intelligence of screenwriters’ editor Andy Conway’s questions in the Montiel interview allow for long, in-depth, intimate and often suprising responses. The fact that Montiel didn’t what EXT. and INT. stood for in screenplay format while trying to write his first feature serves as a point of hope that ultimately it’s the story, the honesty of the story, that really matters. Likewise, Vachon speaks fludily about the production process, the funding process in the modern independent landscape and gay cinema.
Long-winded, informative and highly-recommended, the podcasts may be visited here.
