I just realized this video got posted awhile ago.
Tag: FERA
This is my recent FERA Keynote speech (London, UK BFI South Bank,September 27, 2013 145PM):
Children love playing “The Opposite Game” where “yes” means “no”, and “no” means “yes”. Politicians seem to love to play that game too…
This backwards world has infected many of our cultural fields,taking hold as an everyday concept reflected in our every action. In comics, it is known as the “Bizarro” World, a common plot scenario where our strength becomes our weakness. That is of course a fictional conceit, but in the world of cinema, we all now too truly inhabit a similar land of opposites, where what we say we love to do is not what we do at all.
Today marks the fifth year anniversary of the talk I did for Film Independent that got me blogging and spreading the Truly Free Film gospel.
Do you know where we are headed? The following speech is not so much the road map I had five years ago, but my plea to build the team that can then build the highways. It remains a public works project. Thanks to all those who are part of the road gang; you know who you are.
Today (09.27.13) I am delivering a keynote in London for FERA, the EU Directors’ Federation. It has a similar tone and mission as this one did five years ago. I look forward to sharing it with you soon. We have made progress, but there still is a long way to go. We have to understand the past though if we want to see the future.
I can’t talk about the “crisis” of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren’t in crisis.
The business is changing, but for us –us who are called Indie Filmmakers — that’s good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an incredible privilege and we need to accept it as such – and accept the full responsibility that comes with that privilege.
The proclamations of Indie Film’s demise are grossly exaggerated. How can there be a “Death Of Indie” when Indie — real Indie, True Indie — has yet to even live?
Yes, there’s a profound paradigm shift, and that shift is the coming of true independence. The hope of this new independence is
