Tag: GlobalShift

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Truly Free Film

Younger Audience & Creators Tell Old Fogies To Wake The F Up!

Guest post by Audrey Ewell

Ted Hope invited me to do a guest column about attracting a younger audience to indie film, after I commented on a column by Robert McLellan at Globalshift.org.  That column was a recap of the debate between Hope and Jeff Lipsky during a Cagematch at IFP Week.  You can read it here: http://www.globalshift.org/2010/09/19/indie-film-can-art-house-theaters-attract-a-young-audience/.)

The column’s final statement, attributed to Hope was this: “It all comes back to having a relevant and compelling story and telling it well.”  That is an oft-repeated statement, and I noted in the comments that what mattered more to this crowd was plot, subject and genre.   So who am I, and why should my opinion matter?

I’m the director and producer (along with my partner, Aaron Aites) of the documentary film, Until The Light Takes Us.  I am 34 years old, white, female, I love Antonioni, Fellini, Marker, and science fiction.  I have Gizmodo, The Huffington Post and The Economist on my Twitter stream.  I own three video games consoles and I’m currently on level 7 of Halo: Reach.  I listen to indie rock, stoner/doom, experimental, dubstep; and I am often on my boyfriend’s and friends’ guest lists when their bands play shows.  I am the audience you’re (they’re, we’re) trying to reach, + four years. But I’m immature enough to let those four years slide.

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Truly Free Film

How Can Indie Film Appeal To Alternative Youth Culture?

Sunday September 19th, as part of Independent Film Week, the IFP invited me to a “Cage Match” with Jeff Lipsky on Indie Film’s relationship with youth culture.  The discussion was spurred on by a post of mine “Can Truly Free Film Appeal To Youth Culture “, and the robust discussion everyone had in our comments section to that post, and then still further by discussions on Filmmaker Mag Blog and Anthony Kaufman’s column.  It was a good discussion before IFP even proposed the CageMatch, but I appreciated the opportunity to give it more thought.

You might have missed it but it’s been summed up pretty well by Robert McLellan on GlobalShift.org (thanks to Shari Candler for tipping me to that), Ingrid Koop on the FilmmakerMag Blog, and Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire (although I don’t agree, or believe I said, that Indie Film is aimed at white women over the age of 45 — although they are the dominant audience — but that we have to prevent Indie Film from being the province of the privileged, old, and white (i.e. me!)). Jeff and I could have blabbed for hours. I have plenty more to say on the issue.

As both a community and an industry, it is critical we look at both the creative, infrastructure, and societal factors for answers of why we have so failed to develop the alternative and youth sectors.  Every other cultural form has a robust young adult sector that is defined both by it’s innovation and opposition — yet in film that is the exception and not the rule.

To me the issue comes down to the fact that unless Indie Film appeals to the under 30’s, Indie Film will continue to marginalize itself into the realm of elitist culture like Chamber Orchestras and Ballet.

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