The ITVS Indies Roundup

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

‘Tis the season for film festivals: Both the Tribeca Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival kicked off this week. Read an enlightening interview of three Tribeca staffers to get a sense of how they winnowed down their film festival choices. “We don’t respect the idea of, ‘I like this, I don’t like this,’” Genna Terranova, director of programming, told The New York Times. “You have to explain why, almost as if you’re looking at it as an academic evaluation. But at the same time, you have to add that human observation: Were you moved? Were you scared?” Frédéric Boyer, artistic director at Tribeca, was also interviewed by The Awl. The man watches movies like no other: “It was impossible to have children or any love affair because my priority was to watch films,” Boyer said about his early career. “It was a wonderful period because it was a crazy period. I was watching five, six, seven films each day and reading books about cinema. Fortunately, I escaped from this beautiful prison because of music, women, wine, food, life.” Are you wondering how the JOBS Act might affect you as a filmmaker? This handy guide from Filmmaker Magazine explains how the act will transform indie film funding.

In case you missed it, filmmaker Sharon Shattuck published a lovely Op-Doc in The New York Times about her transgender father changing his name to Trisha in a Northern Michigan small town. This Twitter chat, hosted by our friends at POV, could prove very helpful: Producer Yance Ford will discuss how to get your film on public television Wednesday April 25 at 7 p.m. eastern time. Film title sequences require artistry and a great deal of effort from producers, animators, and typographers, as shown in this fascinating PBS Off Book video. When Philip K. Dick saw a TV segment about Blade Runner, the upcoming film adaptation of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, he knew it would shape history: “The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people — and, I believe, on science fiction as a field.” (via The Rumpus)