The ITVS Indies Roundup

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Filmmaking is physically exhausting. But buck up! Plenty of artists have pushed through their pain: This rare footage shows painter Pierre Auguste-Renoir working despite severe rheumatoid arthritis. Missed the Tribeca Film Festival this year? Watch an official selection, Baseball in the Time of Cholera, a 28-minute elegant doc about Joseph, a young baseballer, and a lawyer fighting for justice as the cholera epidemic rages through Haiti. Out of the top 10 highest grossing films last year, all 10 were either sequels or adaptations. What will happen to mid-range and indie films in the Hangover Part II marketplace?

The father of public access TV, George C. Stoney, passed away this week. The filmmaker was an advocate for the social change power of film, and he was responsible for giving all Americans access to TV.  Here is one of his seminal films, the 1952 “All My Babies: A Midwife’s Own Story.” What would you take if your house was on fire? This photo project, part crowdsourced reporting, part psychological study, asks people on Tumblr and around the country to show exactly what they would nab if their abode was aflame. The results are endearing. Quiet images of everyday life have the power to be radical. Gordon Parks published the “Segregation Series” in Life magazine in September 1956, a rare look into the lives of southern African Americans under Jim Crow segregation. His seminal civil rights project didn’t show protests, but home and sidewalk scenes.