Comments on: Ronnie Bronstein and Abel Ferrara, Together At Last http://blog.spout.com/2007/12/19/ronnie-bronstein-and-abel-ferrara-together-at-last/ Daily coverage of what is truly interesting in the film world Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:29:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Bryan Poyser http://blog.spout.com/2007/12/19/ronnie-bronstein-and-abel-ferrara-together-at-last/#comment-47686 Bryan Poyser Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:20:47 +0000 http://blog.spout.com/2007/12/19/ronnie-bronstein-and-abel-ferrara-together-at-last/#comment-47686 This is something I had to grapple with as a committee member for this year's "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award. There were some great movies that were ineligible specifically because they had gotten theatrical distribution by the time we started deliberating. But, that award and the Indiewire list are definitely more geared to an industry audience than a general audience - we specifically chose films that were 'available" (and amazing) like Frownland, Chop Shop & Munyurangabo in the hopes that more attention on them would lead brave distributors to take a chance. Since the nomination announcement was made, Koch Lorber picked up Chop Shop, so the strategy maybe even kinda worked! Speaking as someone who made a film that ended up on a couple "Best Undistributed" lists but still had to wait a couple more years just to get it on DVD, I can say for sure that landing any kind of distribution is the true victory. As great as they are to receive, year-end accolades won't pay back investors or convince new ones to back another movie. This is something I had to grapple with as a committee member for this year’s “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award. There were some great movies that were ineligible specifically because they had gotten theatrical distribution by the time we started deliberating.

But, that award and the Indiewire list are definitely more geared to an industry audience than a general audience - we specifically chose films that were ‘available” (and amazing) like Frownland, Chop Shop & Munyurangabo in the hopes that more attention on them would lead brave distributors to take a chance. Since the nomination announcement was made, Koch Lorber picked up Chop Shop, so the strategy maybe even kinda worked!

Speaking as someone who made a film that ended up on a couple “Best Undistributed” lists but still had to wait a couple more years just to get it on DVD, I can say for sure that landing any kind of distribution is the true victory. As great as they are to receive, year-end accolades won’t pay back investors or convince new ones to back another movie.

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