Life is busy — you’re getting ready for summer, watching the sky turn purple, and keeping up with the latest rap beef and/or presidential criminal trials. 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!
This Month’s Good Reads (May 2024)
A New King of Horror Is Coming to Haunt You (via Jada Yuan for The Washington Post)
How David Dastmalchian became our newest Scream King.
Mission Critical (via Brian Newman for Sub-Genre Media)
Why festivals and film nonprofits would benefit from looking back to their original “core mission”.
Tubi is Launching a New ‘Fan-Fueled’ Studio to Cultivate the Next Generation of Filmmakers (via Charles Pulliam-Moore for The Verge)
Your kids’ favorite free streamer is expanding.
Participation Is Never As Easy As It Seems (via Ted Hope for Hope For Film)
Set some goals on leaning in to your industry and community.
At the AI Film Festival, Humanity Triumphed Over Tech (via Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch)
Reporting from an AI fest.
“When We First Started It Was a Variation of the Salon des Refusés…”: Slamdance President Peter Baxter on Accessibility, Community and Moving to L.A. (via Scott Macaulay for Filmmaker Magazine)
Slamdance comes down from the mountain.
Going It Alone: The Indie Filmmakers Getting Their Movies in Theaters Without a Distributor (via Jeremy Fuster for The Wrap)
How The Occult, Hundreds of Beavers, and Anchorage made it to theaters on their own terms.
Decades Ago, He Invented the Midnight Movie. It’s Still Long Past His Bedtime (via Carlos Aguilar for Los Angeles Times)
Catching up with 95-year-old trippy movie master Alejandro Jodorowsky.
How I Saw the TV Glow Made a ‘Teen Angst Classic’ Soundtrack For the Ages (via Reanna Cruz for NPR Music)
The making of an indie film soundtrack.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Late Era Trilogy Reveals an Artist Reclaiming His Passion (via Rory Doherty for The A.V. Club)
Revisiting Coppola’s mid-2000s indie trio of Youth Without Youth, Tetro, and Twixt.
Conflict, Cuts and Identity Crises: How Film Festivals Are Navigating Choppy Waters (via Andreas Wiseman and Matthew Carey for Deadline)
Recapping this year’s festival woes, both abroad and at home.
Jury Duty (via Hanif Kureishi for The Kureishi Chronicles)
Diary of a film festival juror.
New Online Tool Helps Workers in Hollywood Report Harassment, Workplace Misconduct (via Payton Seda for LAist)
Anita Hill’s Hollywood Commission unveils its newest resource.
Master of Make-Believe (via Evan Osnos for The New Yorker)
How a struggling actor created Hollywood’s biggest Ponzi scheme.
In case you were ignoring us (aka blatant self-promotion)
Filmmaker Interview: Francis Galluppi, writer/director/producer of The Last Stop in Yuma County
Our chat with the helmer of the desert-set, ’70s style thriller.
Remembering Roger Corman, the Godfather of Indie Film
We memorialize the (in the words of Jonathan Demme), “greatest independent filmmaker the American film industry has ever seen and will probably ever see.”
2024 Cannes Film Festival Recap
SAGindie’s French dispatches.
Videos worth watching
The story behind a career-launching YouTube video, featuring Darren Aronofsky (via Colin and Samir)
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.