Essential reading for the week
#Filmstack pieces you shouldn't miss
There’s so much good idea sharing and writing happening here on Filmstack every day that it almost seems hard to keep up with. I miss things and am grateful to others who share on notes and I get to catch up. Last week I was either more engaged on Substack or it just happened to be a week with a dense group of essential posts dropping. Maybe you caught them but maybe I’m doing you a favor to point them out. Let’s Go.
**btw do you have this handy list of Filmstack Substacks? And this is a handy link to the “hidden” Filmstack category on Substack.
An essential post (of many) from
last Saturday. He has been leading the charge on this along with many others signaling to filmmakers we need to be in charge of our own future by establishing our own audience. On friday at a breakfast meeting I was saying riffing on this idea with a filmmaker and the first reflection that came back was the lack of desire to be a distributor or to be active in the distribution of their work, their desire is to focus on the making part. Totally makes sense but as we continued chatting there was clearly an understanding that there are benefits to audience building and a most importantly a desire to investigate.There are two major changes I believe that are going to affect us all deeply in the next 3-5 years. We are entering the Era of The DisIntermediation of All Cultural Industries. That is the service providers in the middle are being recognized as unnecessary and they are be removed. Specialist for each component are entering the field. We’ve seen this in music. We’ve seen this in publishing. And we will see this across the cinema industries. This is the resulting Era Of Distribution As A Service (DaaS). I expect most of us will need to supplement their work conjuring culture and a direct and authentic relationship with those that care for your film will be one of the key ways that is done. This is what building your audience is all about.
In Ted’s post he also dives into HOW we can all approach audience building. Go go go.
The death of cinema & how to bring it back to life (part 3) from
As the title suggests it’s the third post in a set. I confess to having just gone to part 3 first and am now making my way through the first two.
So here's my grand idea, as radical as it is necessary: what if we reimagined cinema spaces as cultural gyms? Not just venues that show movies, but institutions expressly designed to strengthen our meaning-making muscles—as deliberately as Equinox sculpts abs or therapists rebuild neural pathways?
I am so a YES for this. Sophie makes great reasoning getting to her grand idea, how our world grew to want physical fitness and thus gyms & spaces to service that before moving to spaces to improve our mental health. Now comes the time to grow our cultural health. I’d written about how I want to retool cinemas as cultural spaces, well Sophie went much further. And what’s great is that her three part pieces is expanding as she tackles her Cultural Gym idea in additional writing that will come out soon, go subscribe, read and participate. It’s another call to action that we can all participate in. So let’s GO. Get fit.
This piece gets going as a review of the recently wrapped Doc 10 film festival in Chicago put on by the Chicago Media Project team that is a great celebration of non-fiction (Disclose I had a short doc, On Healing Land, Birds Perch, screen at the festival this year). The piece centers around the idea that people want to see the political films that distributors and streamers have been staying away from. So there needs to be a pipeline for that, which is totally in line with Ted’s writings about building audience connection.
If the Christian Right once believed the only way to get their stories made and seen was through a grassroots-supported funding model, why can’t leftwing groups who are now apparently outside of the mainstream create their own equity crowdfunding platform to support projects that neither government grants or private streamers will apparently back? Too bad the names Radical Media and Revolution Studios are already taken, but I’d happily be a “guild” member for something like it.
100%. Let’s Go. Build it. Demand it.
language for the (cinematic) revolution by Lutz Films
I want you to think of this post as your first “packet” to the cinematic revolution we’re orchestrating here on substack. and if that seems too intense for you — fear not — it’s gonna be fun!! think of it more like joining a club rather than throwing a metaphorical molotov cocktail to the “current state of things.”
Ok ok ok so this post links out to one of my pieces but no that isn’t the reason I’m recommending it to you! It doesn’t hurt of course! Like Taylor says this post is like a packet, a toolkit to getting immersed in the revolution that you’re already a part of. I love the part about Open Looped Cinema from
. What is it? Well go read about it. The Revolution is being Filmstacked. Let’s Go.
So there you go four pieces to check out. What you don’t know until I tel you now is that these different posts also resonate with me because in the venn diagram where these pieces connect is the space in which I have been thinking about what an innovation might look like in our NonDē Ecosystem. More incubation happening and looking forward to sharing what I cook up.
For a little musical balance to your week go have a listen to my selection for the week on Mixcloud via my alter ego, playjazzloud.
Tracklist:
Andy Bey - River Man
Damsel Elysium - Shoreline (Maeve Moayedi rework)
Andy Hay - Sunday Dreaming
Collettivo Immaginario - Alberoni
Nostalgia 77 Octet - Chorale
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes - Marvis
Gilles Torrent - Naima
Mu Quintet - Enos
Idris Ackamoor, Rhodessa Jones, Danny Glover - Now!
Ibex Band - Turumbule
Badbadnotgood x VCR - Found a light
Marshall Allen - New Dawn
Thanks for reading & sharing Julian. Together, we are going to build something better!
I appreciate you shoutout, Julian. Thank you so much!!