If you're going to compare DIY filmmaking to indie, punk rock music making, then let's just say that film festivals are about as important to filmmakers, as performing live and playing their actual music onstage is to musicians. For the most part, these days this is common knowledge, in all of this self-distro mumbo-jumbo. Festivals are nothing now but the new theatrical release, or one to be incorporated into your overall release strategy. That said, Time Magazine has a great piece on how this is how fast, things are changing:
"Director Joe Swanberg went to bed in Austin, Texas, last Friday evening excited about the world premiere of his new movie, Alexander the Last, the following night at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival. But by the time he woke up — still more than 12 hours ahead of the debut — his inbox was already flooded with e-mails from colleagues in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, congratulating him on the movie they had just finished watching and the reviews they had read in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and the New Yorker. Within a single day, Swanberg had experienced a process that usually takes even the luckiest independent filmmaker a year — or longer — to go through. Reached via phone on Sunday evening, he was clearly overcome by it all. ' feel like I can say this is a watershed moment,'he said. 'The promise of the digital revolution, this democratization of movies, is now really happening.'
Swanberg's breakthrough with Alexander the Last was largely a result of a nationwide video-on-demand venture undertaken by distributor IFC Films. For several years now, the studio has programmed two separate on-demand initiatives that can be accessed by home viewers across the U.S. via their cable system's movies-on-demand platform. One venture, IFC in Theaters, reaches 55 million U.S. households, offering viewers the chance to buy and stream movies currently in limited theatrical release. Festival Direct, meanwhile, offers 37 million households six films a month that the studio has picked up from film festivals around the world."
Full Piece HERE:
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