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I can’t deny that I was somewhat distracted by recent American political news when putting this newsletter together. Alas, despite much newspaper reading and x.com scrolling, little was achieved—I have concluded that no one knows what will happen next! I will try to limit my doomscrolling going forward.
After all, I can’t use any of it productively—we are relatively non-partisan in this publication so our “10 Things…” section will remain at 10 rather than say, 34 things…(that’s just too many things!)
Ah well, the day is already getting late, so let’s hop to it with S/W Picks, Shortverse Collections, Festival Updates, and fresh things we’re paying attention to.
🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To
Hitting US theaters today is the feature debut from thrice-featured Norwegian filmmaker Thea Hvistendahl. We adore her work which, in various forms, stylishly interrogates the terror inherent in being a teenage girl. This debut feature is a Norwegian all-star production and was acquired by Neon in advance of its Sundance premiere. Look for me at the Saturday screening at NYC’s IFC Center.
Indie success stories like Thea’s are getting tougher and one of the best explainers of why is Brian Newman via his newsletter, Subgenre. A post of Newman’s was recently reprinted in Indiewire as the catchy “Getting Your Film Seen: 10 Rules Every Filmmaker Must Know Right Now”. This week Newman followed it up with a quick 101 on Service Deals.
If you're still figuring out how to get your film made before worrying about how to sell it (you really should be doing both at the same time) take your opportunity to apply to Gotham’s Project Market. I’ve participated many times and it’s one of the gold standards of indie film matchmaking. Take advantage of a freshly extended deadline.
Sundance shorts are coming to a theater near you. Click for a list of cities and dates.
The inimitable Duncan Cowles has his debut feature, Silent Men, premiering at Sheffield Doc/Fest soon so The Skinny takes a look at 3 of his recent shorts.
Scavengers Reign, the animated short-to-series adaptation from Charles Huettner and Joseph Bennett, lands on Netflix today. Even if you watched it on MAX earlier this year make sure to watch it again! MAX canceled a 2nd season, so we need to impress the Netflix algorithm!
No pussyfooting for Sony Picture Prez Tony Vinciquerra when it comes to AI: “We will be looking at ways to…produce both films for theaters and television in a more efficient way, using AI primarily.”
While I enjoyed this piece from Kyle Chayka of the New Yorker on The New Generation of Online Culture Curators it was kinda bizarre to see it treated as a new phenomenon!?
As mentioned recently, Anne Thorens’ short is now at the top of our YouTube channel, with 63M views and climbing. She talks about this and more on the First Go Pod.
One more alum viewing recommendation for the week - Lance Oppenheim is back with what is sure to be HBO’s latest documentary hit. Ren Faire chronicles a “fantastic and farcical succession battle of Shakespearean proportions at the Texas Renaissance Festival”. The series debuts June 2nd - watch the trailer.
🪐 Into the Shortverse
🪭 (Fan)tastic Films! - Inspired by the brouhaha over The Hunt For Gollum being briefly pulled from the internet and by a host of interesting new entries submitted to us in recent weeks, we put together this collection of Fan Films. Not a definitive ‘best of’, but instead a balance of fresh + faves, the list is perfectly timed for summer blockbuster season.
🎖️ Best of the Month: May 2024 - The Shortverse complement to S/W Best of the Month, this edition is packed with 14 new faves including the recent grand prize winner at the AI Film Fest, a chilling short horror starring TikTok megastar Rahul Raj, and a charming period drama about two Chinese immigrants in 80’s New York.
🔗 Links in Comments - You can now add links within comments! Not only that, but we’re doing magic to clean up the urls and present them nicely. So you can drop a SV link to a video or person into your comment and we’ll automatically reformat it to show up as the title or name. Check it out!
🎊 Festival Updates
Festival season comes to my hometown of New York with a battle of the boroughs showdown between Brooklyn FF starting today and next week’s Tribeca Festival. I’ll be out for a bit of both events and will report back on anything interesting.
In the meantime, to put a bow on Cannes, congrats to Nebojša Slijepčević for taking home the short film Palme d’Or and to alum Daniel Soares for receiving a special mention. If you want to peruse the Official Selection & La Cinef we have pages and trailers in Shortverse.
Also, did you know that Short of the Week is a qualifying festival for the Canadian Screen Awards? They just announced the Cinema Arts winners last night, so congrats to the short film winners in Live-Action, Documentary, and Animation.
📅 Upcoming Deadlines
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