Life is busy, years are leaping. Even with an extra day in the month, it can be tough to stay up-to-date on all the film industry news, profiles, analysis, and advice. That’s why we’ve curated some essential reads you may have missed over the past month. So take some time to catch up with this month’s good reads! (Also, RIP Vice!)
This Month’s Good Reads (February 2024)
How Can Independent Filmmakers Give Their Movies a Fighting Chance in a Perilous Market? ‘If You’re Not Advocating for Yourself, You’re Already Losing’ (via Rafa Sales Ross for Variety)
Sales agents and distributors offer their advice for selling a film in the current climate.
Can Hollywood Be Trusted To Put People First In Its AI Expansion? (via Ineye Komonibo for Refinery29)
Discussing the communities most likely to be left behind by AI.
Doc (and Art-Film) Blocking: How Algorithmic Content Moderation is Hurting Indie Films (via Anthony Kaufman for Filmmaker Magazine)
Is your indie being censored by social media algorithms?
Hollywood’s Influential Crew Whisperer Opens Up (via Katie Kilkenny for The Hollywood Reporter)
The voice behind IATSE Stories on amplifying on-set issues and their decision to walk away.
Good Cop, Bad Cop (via Monique El-Faizy for Air Mail)
The old guard of the French film industry’s battle against intimacy coordinators.
Conversations with the 2024 Oscar Best Original Song and Score Nominees (via Katie Atkinson, Keith Caulfield, Paul Grein, Lyndsey Havens, and Melinda Newman for Billboard)
Talking with the best movie-music-makers of the past year.
The 38 All-Time Best Food Movies (via Eater)
You eat with your eyes first, after all.
Still Raw: Love in David Cronenberg’s Crash (via Hattie Lindert for Los Angeles Review of Books)
An argument for the perfect car-crash-kink Valentine’s Day date movie.
The Crying Game (via Rachel Handler for Vulture)
Actors’ secrets to crying on command.
Los Angeles Desperately Needs a New Film Festival. They’re About to Give It One (via Mark Olsen for Los Angeles Times)
The launch of Mezzanine and Mubi’s Los Angeles Festival of Movies.
Meet the Producers Who Took Killers of the Flower Moon From Book to Oscar Nominee (via Natalie Jarvey for Vanity Fair)
How the billionaire-backed Imperative Entertainment beat out Netflix, Sony, and Paramount for the rights to Scorsese’s newest opus. (The whole “billionaire” part didn’t hurt.)
“We Hope We Can Be a Part of Something Greater”: An Interview with the Nitehawk Workers Union (via Stephanie Monohan for Screen Slate)
Movie theater workers speak out on their organizing efforts.
How Black Actors Broke Through in Old Hollywood — Day to Day, Role to Role (via Carole V. Bell for IndieWire)
Rediscovering the groundbreaking Black artists of early cinema.
Clerks and the ’90s Indie Film Big Bang, Through the Eyes of The Village Voice (via Tricia Romano for The Ringer)
The Miramax ’90s from the alt-weekly journalists who lived/reviewed it.
In case you were ignoring us (aka blatant self-promotion)
Filmmaker Interview: Esther Povitsky, writer/producer/star of Drugstore June
We talked to the standup/actor/podcaster/writer about her feature debut as EP, screenwriter, and leading lady.
2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards Winners
Congrats to this year’s filmmakers and actors who took home the prize!
Videos worth watching
How to build a sci-fi skyline in a living room (via @notzachs)
How ’bout you? Read anything good this month?
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If you’re an independent filmmaker or know of an independent film-related topic we should write about, email blogadmin@sagindie.org for consideration.