Benh Zeitlin’s fantastic allegory “Beasts of the Southern Wild” started as a play, was grounded in a short film, cast with non-actors, filmed on the bayou, and was produced by a bunch of friends from college and before. It premiered at Sundance, won the Grand Jury Prize and got picked …
I have had the good fortune to be involved in IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs for the past several years now and I have seen innumerable benefits to the films and filmmakers who participate. The Labs provide an opportunity for first-time filmmakers to not only …
This year, my feature script INCOGNITO was an IFP partnership project at the Film Bazaar in Goa, India. INCOGNITO is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who teams up with her father to help the Pakistani Prime Minister—on a secret pilgrimage to India—dodge an assassination attempt.
DCTV Co-Founders Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno discuss their beginnings in filmmaking during the early days of video and what drove them to start DCTV in 1972.
Keiko: I came to this country to study fine arts and my main interest was video, so I bought Sony’s first black and white …
Not to toot my own horn (I can’t anyway, since it was stolen by those circus freaks), but I recently shot my first commercial, through IFP’s Emerging Visions competition. It was my first shoot with any sort of budget, unless you count the time I bought a pack of gum …
Summit of independent creative producers hosted by MoMA, Indiewire, and Zipline Entertainment in December 2009.
I’m very fortunate to be friends with many accomplished independent film producers–people whose films have screened at the best festivals, won significant awards, gotten picked up by major distributors, earned healthy gross receipts, and …
Not every director is suited for low-budget indie filmmaking, and that’s OK if you’re Terrence Malick or David Fincher. But chances are, you’re not…or not yet, anyway. I get a fair number of calls from biggish directors and producers who are having trouble raising money for their …