From Slamdance to Watergate with Dan Mirvish
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02/27/23 • 55 min
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Today I bring you my conversation with Dan Mirvish. Many of you may know Dan as one of the co-founders of the Slamdance Film Festival, founded in 1995, as an alternative to Sundance for first-time filmmakers. Dan’s first feature was entirely self-distributed, but since then Dan has made several more films, including his most recent 18 1/2, a thriller/comedy about a White House transcriber who stumbles upon the missing 18 1/2 minutes of tape from the Nixon/Watergate affair, which she tries to leak to a reporter. While Dan has found distribution for most of his films, as he points out in the interview, the line between self-distribution and traditional distribution isn’t always so clear cut. Dan brings a wealth of experience to the table, and has some great things to say about how things work in and out of the industry, and also about his own personal experiences promoting his films in both theatrical and ancillary markets.
Links:
Today I bring you my conversation with Dan Mirvish. Many of you may know Dan as one of the co-founders of the Slamdance Film Festival, founded in 1995, as an alternative to Sundance for first-time filmmakers. Dan’s first feature was entirely self-distributed, but since then Dan has made several more films, including his most recent 18 1/2, a thriller/comedy about a White House transcriber who stumbles upon the missing 18 1/2 minutes of tape from the Nixon/Watergate affair, which she tries to leak to a reporter. While Dan has found distribution for most of his films, as he points out in the interview, the line between self-distribution and traditional distribution isn’t always so clear cut. Dan brings a wealth of experience to the table, and has some great things to say about how things work in and out of the industry, and also about his own personal experiences promoting his films in both theatrical and ancillary markets.
Links:
Previous Episode
Talking Marketing, Distribution, and the Film Biz with J Horton
On this episode I interview J Horton, known among other things for his very informative YouTube channel. On his channel J speaks prolifically about film distribution and marketing. He is very open and transparent and he really tells it like it is from his point-of-view.
J has built for himself a remarkable career, starting out with the high hopes of his first feature, then the reality of struggling to make a living in the filmmaking biz in Hollywood, and finally emerging with a successful business model built mostly around self-distributed and marketed documentaries. I’m sure it’s going to come up again and again on this podcast how hard it is to make a living making movies but J has somehow managed to do it. He has a pretty cool story and a lot of wise, honest words to say about his experiences and the state of the independent film distribution landscape today.
Links:
Next Episode
Sujewa Ekanayake on Screening Indie Films Theatrically
Today I bring you my conversation with Sujewa Ekanayake. Sujewa is a New York based, very independent filmmaker. As we discuss in the interview, he makes his own micro-budget movies, completely on his own terms, and brings them directly to audiences through mostly self-arranged theatrical screenings. We also talk about his perspective that filmmaking should not be looked at primarily as a business, but as an art form. We also discuss an exciting program that he is spearheading to screen independent films theatrically in partnership with arthouse theaters in L.A. and beyond. Above all, Sujewa’s love of filmmaking and the joy he finds in simply being an independent filmmaker in New York rings loud and clear.
Links:
NYC Fantastic - Films by Sujewa Ekanayake
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