Film Independent

10 stories

Film IndependentCinemaThe Perfect Pickpocket Coat with ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’ Costume Designer Cailey Breneman New York acts differently than anywhere else; it has its own look, its own vernacular. Whether it’s the Wall Street power suit, the jeans-and-heels fashion crowd, or the Uptown Tims and Polo, New…

11.04

Film IndependentCinemaDon’t Miss Indies: What to Watch in November Time to cozy up with a good flick and a robust conversation. This month’s indie offerings leave us with plenty to chew on and mull over, with several wartime dramas and interpersonal conflict up the…

11.02

Film IndependentCinemaRoman Coppola Joins the 2027 Spirit Awards as Creative Consultant Big news for the 2027 Film Independent Spirit Awards: filmmaker Roman Coppola is joining the team in a brand-new role as Creative Consultant, helping shape a unique creative vision for both the…

10.29

Film IndependentCinemaICYMI: How YouTube Helped Indie Filmmakers Make Horror Hits ‘Backrooms’ & ‘Obsession’ Ed. Note: Just in time for spooky season, we’re resharing this piece from May about two of this year’s biggest horror hits.

10.28

Film IndependentCinemaTop Industry Members Want Half of Studio Budgets to Go To Indies On the heels of the Federal Film Incentive comes more promising news for independent creators and the industry at large.

10.27

Film IndependentCinemaCase Study: How ‘Thelma’ Made a Universal Film Focused on Seniors The Film Independent x Humana Foundation Shorts Initiative is supporting five Director and Producer teams to produce original shorts that authentically celebrate the vital roles and contributions of…

10.26

Film IndependentCinema‘You Have the Juice’: Vertical and YouTube Creators Offline at the Film Independent Forum “You have the juice,” I wrote in big letters and underlined twice in my Film Independent Forum notebook. Your girl loves merch.

10.19

Film IndependentCinemaMember Lens: Daniela Taplin Lundberg on Producing, Podcasting & ‘Club Kid’ In our Member Lens series, we’re spotlighting a cross-section of current Film Independent Members to see how they got where they are now, what they’re up to now and what being a part of Film…

10.13

Film IndependentCinemaIndustry Shifts: Insights on AI and Filming International from the Film Independent Forum Two sessions at the forum spoke directly to brewing concerns in the heart of our moviemaking town: one, is AI taking over and two, can anyone in Los Angeles afford to live here, let alone make a…

10.08

Film IndependentCinemaEverything You Need to Know About the New Federal Film Incentive Bill It’s a sign of the times: The iconic Warner Bros. water tower has already been repainted to include ‘A Skydance Corporation’, signaling the close of the PSKY/WBD merger.

10.07

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo