A film only exists the moment it is shared. How do independent filmmakers find platforms and audiences to expand the life of their films?
UnionDocs is thrilled to welcome María Vera to lead a two day workshop about the ins and outs of distribution and finding the perfect platforms for your film projects! María is based in Lisbon and is the founder of the incredible Kino Rebelde, a Festival Distribution and Sales Agency that focuses on documentary, experimental and hybrid narratives. Their catalogue represents a breadth of exciting artists such as Lynne Sachs, Naomi Uman, Mike Hoolboom, Trương Minh Quý, Marko Grba Singh, Alexandra Cuesta, Agustina Comedi and Dimitris Athiridis, among others.
Independent cinema commits itself to non-commercial creative gestures. It embraces inventive documentary modes, and hybrid or experimental filmmaking styles. The films that emerge from this commitment to creative freedom may find a home in an art-house cinema, a museum, or a gallery. They may also be programmed at film festivals seeking out work that doesn’t shy away from existing between genres.
But for any of this to happen, thinking through the distribution of a film is a crucial step that determines its place in the world after it is created. The how, when, where and why are questions that filmmakers must tussle with while the film is being conceived. The tricky part is to keep working on your film while also asking yourself questions like —
Who do we want to tell our story to and how can we be strategic in reaching them?
What is the best time for a premiere and where would it have the best impact?
This is a crucial yet underestimated part of the production process and this workshop hopes to help filmmakers tune their attention to this part of the filmmaking process. We exist in a moment of a huge proliferation of new windows, platforms, and digital possibilities. This also creates the crisis of overproduction and the inability to stand out in a crowd.
Faced with a panorama where the audience’s demand is diverse, voracious and constantly mutating, independent cinema pursues the same objective – to carve out a place, to be an alternative and to feed a type of audience that values and needs non-hegemonic narratives, stories and visions.
This workshop aims to provide the tools for a theoretical and practical foundation that allows filmmakers to understand the current context of independent film distribution, its challenges and the many ways there are to navigate this landscape.
We’ll address a range of concepts and considerations such as potential audiences, funding and festival logic, budgeting for a distribution plan, the importance of a good teaser and trailer, sales channels or platforms that can further extend the life of a film, parallel distribution possibilities, local and international markets, and the more niche and alternative windows that may make sense for your project.
We hope this two day intensive will shed some much needed light on an aspect of the filmmaking process that is systematically opaque. Our hope is that you leave with a foundational sense of the many maps of distribution that could give your film the reception it deserves!
