by Stephen Eyer
For the past five years, my wife and producing partner, Daneen Akers, and I have been working full-time on a social documentary film called Seventh-Gay Adventists (http://www.sgamovie.com) about three gay and lesbian members of a conservative church and their challenge to reconcile their faith and sexuality. We spent the last year on the road traveling with the film in the U.S., Canada, and Australia at film festivals, churches, and community centers. Our last major festival screening will be on Dec. 5th as part of Frameline’s Encore series (http://www.frameline.org/now-showing/events/frameline-encore-seventh-gay-adventists) in San Francisco. Although we’ve been asked at filmmaker gatherings before if we’re selling marijuana on the side to make rent, we’ve actually been making enough to both pay for our expenses and fund the film primarily through cultivating an engaged and motivated grassroots community that believe in this film.
The following are 10 things we learned about how to sustain yourself as a filmmaker while making films that can have a positive impact on the world.
Cinema is dead, no one goes to the movies, film is dead, who actually goes to the movies, they don’t make ‘em like they used to, there’s nothing new under the sun—my gosh, don’t you just WRETCH at the thought of these phrases, either in a hundred and forty characters or time-wasting think pieces or overheard on BART or anywhere else under the sun. Here’s the secret—and I’m preaching to the choir here—American independent cinema is going through an amazing renaissance at the moment. Really! It’s just ACCESS to these movies that’s the problem, but I’m getting ahead of myself.