Microcinema

10 to Watch in 2010... Plus Five Runners-Up

After 10 days of Facebook-exclusive interviews, the suspense is finally over: The Independent's 10 filmmakers to keep an eye on in 2010... and the runners-up.


An image from Dash Shaw's <i>Slobs and Nags</i>.

They come from all walks of life, and each has a different story to tell. Some have found success, while others are just beginning their careers. And although their filmmaking reflects this diversity, they all have one major thing in common (other than being on this list): talent. Be sure to take notes as you read...you'll want to remember these filmmakers.

Choosing The Independent's 10 to Watch is like trying to predict the future, or the stock market, or the weather in New England. The films on this list are in all stages of production and the filmmakers range from seasoned professionals to debut artists. So you might wonder how we named this particular group. How, exactly, does one go about predicting what 2010 has in store?

AIVF: And What it Meant to Me

I first became aware of AIVF when Martha Gever was editor of The Independent. I marveled at this national organization that put out each month a magazine chock full of weighty, intellectual and critical articles on film and video.

Voices from Issues Past

What happened at AIVF over the last 30 years?

On the Margins of the Multiplex

Young visionaries bring indie cinemas to small cities


Group shot of The Film Streams Cinema Project.

In 1973, a young, cinema-loving bohemian couple fled the high rents of Manhattan for the more affordable suburbs of Huntington, NY. Once there, Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky found that they had also fled, inadvertently, the vibrant independent cinema scene in New York City, which was then in its heyday, with more than a dozen arthouses sprinkled throughout the boroughs.

The Short Story at Sundance

Behind the scenes with the short film programmers


Watching 2,000 short films in four months isn’t something you take on in your free time. It requires a finely honed system. For Roberta Munroe, one of the Sundance Film Festival’s two short film programmers, that system resembles an assembly line of video playback equipment.

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

A festival in the world’s most remote capital city


As I start writing this, I’ve just ejected from my VCR the 349th entry for this year’s Revelation Perth International Film Festival and…well…it looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

Karen Cooper

Keeping NYC’s Film Forum up and running


“At this moment, my biggest dream is
to find the source of our HVAC leak without having to shut theaters and tear into walls,” says Karen Cooper, executive director of New York City’s Film Forum. “There’s nothing less glamorous than a broken machine.”

Cave Paintings, Churches, and Rooftops

Microcinemas come of age


While the Lumiere brothers originally screened their films in a Paris café, the term microcinema was not coined until 1991 with the naming of Rebecca Barten and David Sherman’s Total Mobile Home Microcinema.

D.I.Y. or Die in Seattle!


Community Media Conference

September 9–15, 2002

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