Life is busy – you’re keeping up on world-changing events while simultaneously healing the whiplash you’ve gotten from following the release date shifts of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and studying the unions’ suggested Safe Way Forward. It can be tough to stay up-to-date on the latest 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.

 

This Month’s Good Reads (June 2020)

Now Streaming: Over 100 Years of Black Defiance at the Movies and Black Defiance: A Movie Critic’s Tribute (via K. Austin Collins for Vanity Fair)
Take a deep dive into the rich history of the Black experience on screen in this two-part survey.

How Indie Theaters Are Reimagining The Moviegoing Experience (via Ricky Camilleri for HuffPost)
How will your art house theater cope in these uncertain times?

The Next Big Indie Filmmaker Might Be a TikToker (via Joshua Eferighe for OZY)
The children are making movies.

Black And Brown Indie Producers Press Hollywood For Commitments To End Systemic Racism: Open Letter (via Mike Fleming Jr. for Deadline)
A call for the industry to step up its representation game.

Extras Fear Extinction Amid COVID-19 Safety Guidelines: “Nobody Wants What I’m Selling” (via Seth Abramovitch for The Hollywood Reporter)
How aversions to crowds are likewise happening on film sets.

Disclosure and Pursuing the Trans Film Image (via Caden Mark Gardner for Reverse Shot)
Revisiting films omitted from a new documentary about the history of transgender characters in cinema.

Rethinking the Film Canon (via Rich Juzwiak for Jezebel)
From Gone With the Wind to Do the Right Thing, who gets to decide what films are “the classics?”

Cult Classic But I’m A Cheerleader Championed Femme Lesbianism (via Tori Truscheit for BuzzFeed News)
The personal impact of Jamie Babbit’s indie satire.

The Indie Film Distribution Playbook That Got Our No-Budget Film in Theaters (via Zander Weaver for No Film School)
From negotiating tactics to poster design, learn how the DIY indie COSMOS landed its distribution deal.

Sundance 2021 Will Be Held in at Least 20 Cities (via Brooks Barnes for The New York Times)
Changes afoot for Sundance.

 

In case you were ignoring us (aka blatant self-promotion)

AAFCA’s Financial Fluency for Entertainment Professionals
The AAFCA and SAGindie present a panel from money gurus and film industry pros.

Filmmaker Interview: Channing Godfrey Peoples, writer/director of Miss Juneteenth
Learn how the actor-turned-director made her debut feature, starring Nicole Beharie and Kendrick Sampson.

Working Through Part 2: Indie Filmmaking in the Age of COVID-19
Our second virtual panel on how to move forward with production in the current climate.

 

A video worth watching

SAGindie’s Darrien Michele Gipson moderates “Filmmaking in the Time of Corona” (via Film Fatales)

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.

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