Interview:

PETER: In your film introduction just now, you were speaking about the length of time it took to edit your film, but where did You Look Fine originate from?

J. SNOW: It began when I started vlogging, you know. My background starts in YouTube, making sketches, and there was a part of me that wanted to do vlogs, so I started in like 2018, just to record random moments, and that became a thing that I just did consistently and haphazardly. I accumulated all of this footage over several different drives over five or six years, and then in 2025 I got to a point where I was just like what am I doing with this? I was really, you know, down about the things at the time – the writers’ strike and everything – and I wanna make something for sickle cell people, for my family, for friends, and I just started editing this footage. And telling a story through all of these moments in the hospital or on stage telling jokes or with friends and the story started to tell itself as I started to edit it. And as I started to edit it, it gave me life. It brought me out of this dark place. So, yeah, the film kind of originated from a moment of despair that turned into a moment of triumph in a way I couldn’t have imagined.

PETER: With your background in vlogging and YouTube and the audience you have already created, why did you decide to go onto the festival circuit and why choose Slamdance?

J. SNOW: Well, Slamdance was very intriguing to me because the alumni are just incredible, you know. Slamdance has an incredible alumni of filmmakers who were first-time filmmakers and got a chance to be recognized on a grand, grand stage, and that was attractive for sure. But also, it was in LA. It’s coming to LA this year meant things just aligned. The idea to get onto the festival circuit was based on my previous film. I made a film, Flawed, which is a short film that did a lot of LA festivals. It didn’t really travel but it just gave me an experience of like, OK, this is where people come who love films and I wanted to be in a place where people love films and they got to see it on the big screen. Like that’s the dream of a filmmaker…to be in a theater with people eating popcorn and sitting down ready to watch the film and not like on their phone texting or being distracted and whatnot. Yeah, I have an audience online, but you know, you’re in the weeds, you’re competing with everything else that’s scrolling across their screen, but in the theater it’s like you, you’re seated and you have to pay attention to this thing and you learn and you listen and you laugh and I just love the theater more than anything, you know.

PETER: I think the audience at the festival got to experience that at both of your screenings.

J. SNOW: Definitely. Definitely.

PETER: What are your hopes and plans for distribution?

J. SNOW: The hope is that it gets national distribution and it screens in theaters nationwide. I would love for people to be going out to see it in, you know, Missouri and Chicago and DC or New York or wherever it is and talk about it, to bring their families and learn about it. I think this is one of those films that has the potential to just catch fire unexpectedly. You know, it was a very low budget film and it kind of came out of nowhere through pure willpower and energy around this topic (of Sickle Cell). So that’s, that’s my dream…to get it in front of as many people as possible and whether that’s the theaters, whether that’s through a streaming platform or a network television channel or something like that and get people excited about it in that way.

PETER: Having raised money to make their feature, some filmmakers are thinking how are they going to make their money back and profit from their work. Some are driven by the need to tell their story at any cost. Which camp are you in?

J. SNOW: This was a story that I had to tell. That was the driving force in all honesty. The conception of this idea came from a low moment and the idea was to create a farewell video. It wasn’t even to create a documentary, you know, and it became something that grew into a documentary and I guess I just put my heart and soul into it and that just naturally just created a documentary. And so, for me, the number one goal is to just create something that can tell the story about sickle cell and help people understand it better, tell something that actually has some authentic staying power and stands the test of time and then entertain people, make it fun while they’re doing it, learn and laugh at the same time. So, as long as those boxes are checked, I’m fine. I forced myself to think about the business part too because you can be very vulnerable when you’re like all art and spirit and energy around being a filmmaker and you’re not thinking about the business side of it. I honestly wouldn’t even call it a budget that I have for this film. I had some money that I needed to spend for these particular things that I did and I think anything that I get back will be a profit at this point. I would like for it to be financially successful, but more importantly, I just want people to see it and learn, you know.

PETER: What do you mean by making this film as a farewell?

J. SNOW: So, in the film, I say that 2024 was a really rough year. Like, I was admitted to the hospital like eight times. And this is when, you know, my sickle cell condition is just bad enough to go to the emergency room and then bad enough for them to keep me for days as opposed to going and then getting the treatment and leaving the same day. So in 2024, I spent 40 days in the hospital and it was just really rough. And you’re, you’re missing work. You’re missing events with your friends. You’re missing events with your family. You’re spending a lot of time in the hospital by yourself. So, by the end of 2024, I was at a really low point where I was like, I don’t know if I want to have another year like this. But the art, the artist in me was like, I can’t just, you know, just disappear or self destruct or anything like that. Like, I have too much to say and too much to offer, so let me try to say it with this and offer this gift to Sickle Cell Warriors, my friends and family before either I do self destruct or something happens with my health, you know, and, the condition succeeds at what it’s trying to do. That’s what got me on my editing path and here we are over a year later, and the film is in Utah.

PETER: So out of this farewell comes something that now drives you…

J. SNOW: Yeah, my ideas, and then community, honestly. I like to connect with people and I like to feel like I’m a part of some type of community. I discovered one with, you know, the sickle cell community and the filmmaking community and the stand-up community. I’m a chameleon in that way where I can sort of blend in all of these different crowds and just be a part of these communities, but in that, what drives me is having something to say. In stand up, I feel like I have something to say. In film, I feel like I have something to say. That is my driving force. And naturally, I’m just creative. I naturally have a comedic undertone under everything that I do so that just comes through.

PETER: At the festival this year, our Market Monday industry event focused on nondependency in filmmaking. Several speakers told us about the value of building your own audience around the release of your film. In many ways you’ve already done that! How did you do it?

J. SNOW: It just happened! Like I never actually set out to create an audience and become an influencer and get followers. When I started on YouTube it was because I just hated day jobs and I was like, I just want to make funny stuff. I had all these ideas and I wrote scripts and sketches and I was working a security job. I’m literally getting paid to watch YouTube. I’m seeing these kids that look like me, that are my age making all these fun videos and then they’re getting paid and flown out to do more. And I was like, I could do that. I hit the ground running it, so I just created and created and created whatever came to me, whatever I felt like was funny to me, I made it. And some of them weren’t funny to everybody else. But I think because I just kept posting and kept showing up and kept bringing people into my world, the audience naturally started to follow me and get on board with what I was doing. But, you know, I don’t know. I think people who set out to create an audience and a following are better at managing it because I never set out to do that. I was like, not great at that sometimes. When I wasn’t feeling creative, I just wouldn’t post and then you start to lose followers…you start to lose the audience. What I learned is just being yourself and being authentic. You don’t have that pressure to keep posting every, every week or every day or whatever. That kind of goes away, because then they just get it. They’re like, all right, you’ll be here one day, you’ll be gone the next, and that’s fine.

I think what we heard at Market Monday wasn’t wrong but everything wasn’t right either. It’s interesting because the people who are in movies and don’t really do social media that much are trying to figure out how to get their social media going, and the people who have social media going are trying to figure out how to get into the movies. It’s like everybody’s trying to figure out how to do the opposite thing right now and figuring out what works.

Obviously, there’s a lot of power in social media following and posting your own content on your own platform and the ownership that comes with it, but I think, you know, for everything that you get, you have to give stuff up too like, you give up the energy around having something on a big platform on a theater screen when you just go straight to the internet. And vice versa. I feel like you have to just decide that I wanna do it this way and then go with that way and then be OK with adapting when you see that you have to change something. Don’t just box yourself in and say I gotta get a million followers and then do this, or I gotta get this big budget to do this film. I’m a perfect example of when you literally just speak from your heart as authentically as you can, both things can happen, you know. So, I think authenticity is the key and not necessarily social media or big backing.

I feel like authenticity is a rarity right now.

PETER: I’m with you. You performed so many roles in your film, but we usually benefit from collaborating with others and sometimes they come from unexpected places. Who helped you?

J. SNOW: There are three key people that come to mind for different reasons. For comedy, stand up, my friend who’s featured in this film, Sydney Castillo, is somebody that I would want to run jokes by or talk to about if this is funny or if this is too heavy. He’s actually one of the biggest advocates for me being so honest on stage. There’s a lot of stand up about Sickle Cell in my film, and a large part of the reason that that’s there is because he kept telling me to tell my story and I was telling him, no, it’s too heavy, I don’t want to talk about Sickle Cell on stage. He was like, it’s your story. Nobody else can tell it…and figure out a way to make it funny. There’s another friend who’s featured in the film, RJ. Haynes, He’s been a writing partner. We wrote a film together and he’s really good about scripts, story structure and whatnot. So when I’m writing a film or when I was editing this, I would run it by him and be like, what do you think? My other friend, Oliver Lukacs, is a great cinematographer. He was a cinematographer for two of my shorts Flawed and I Can’t Hoop. I trust his eye and I trust his opinion. These friends feel very real, very honest, and so I trusted them and those are the few people that I do go to, you know.

PETER: My last question asks for your advice. Every filmmaker says how difficult it is to make their micro budget film, whether it’s a short, a feature, documentary or whatever it is. What advice would you give to a filmmaker that is just about to embark on making a feature now that you’ve now experienced it?

J. SNOW: If you can get help, get the help. I wouldn’t recommend doing everything by yourself. I would not recommend writing and directing and then editing and then being the subject of your film because you may not be able to get to that finish line before going crazy, you know. So get the help that you can, but if you can’t, chunk it down into pieces so that you can continue to make momentum and get the project done. The story matters but getting it done is what matters most.

For On The Road ticket and schedule information go here. You Look Fine will play next at The Little Theater in Rochester, New York on July 10.

Slamdance 2027 film submissions are open now.

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com







Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

To avoid being crushed under the psychological weight of an impending and potentially destructive societal transformation, we find solace in the particulars. We think about things in relation to how they will affect our small slice of the world. Environmentalists hone in on the energy crisis, economists on the labor force, filmmakers on intellectual property and the future of the craft. However, when confronted with a true existential threat, narrow ways of thinking will not suffice. We’re debating the ethics of Tilly Norwood and Super Bowl commercials while the Silicon Valley overlords estimate the odds of their creations destroying all life on this planet over playfully named cocktails (ChatGPTequila was a highlight of OpenAI’s last convention). The dissonance is shocking and almost comical.

The other problem with existential threats is that they make it incredibly hard to feel any sense of agency. I struggled with this particular challenge throughout the entire process of making this film. When everyone close to the issue seems to agree that our collective fate is being batted around by 6 CEOs and Xi Jinping, it’s hard to feel like you have a part to play in how this all turns out. However, there is power in the populace and I do feel that if enough people wake up to the true scale of the problem that we face, we do stand a chance to create positive change. A species-level challenge requires a species-level response. To this end, I believe that storytellers carry a particular weight in determining how our future unfolds.

I have always thought of storytellers as philosophers with good bedside manner. While both parties are engaged with probing the deepest possible questions about what it means to exist in the world, storytellers coat their conceptual capsules in narrative sugar where philosophers can often leave theirs jagged and bitter. I believe this is a large part of the reason that there are over 2 billion Christians and only a handful of dedicated Spinozists or devout Kantians. To most people the story of Jesus is much more compelling than a four-hundred page Euclidean proof of God. Yet regardless of form, these attempts to wrestle with fundamental truths are what have guided and shaped our species since the beginning of the human endeavor to coexist, introspect, and evolve. Simply put, stories are how we understand and become ourselves.

“How many generations is it given to philosophers to actually matter, where the kind of work they do suddenly has far-reaching consequences? Or that storytellers and visionaries are needed in order to show us pathways to accommodate new necessities. This is that time. This is fifth century BCE. This is maybe 10th century. I don’t know how many such moments of human life there have been post World War Two, where we are called by circumstance, to live in between what we knew and what we were beginning to imagine. That can be terrifying, but it is also incredibly, in a way, liberating.”

- From an interview I did for AM I? With Sonam Kachru (Professor of Buddhist and Indian Philosophy, Yale University)

Stories are always important, but as Sonam suggests, there are times in which the tales we tell hold greater weight. In the face of chaotic transformation we must go beyond playful fantasies and search for the archetypal density of a true myth. This is the kind of moment we now find ourselves in. “The future is a story we tell ourselves” is a quote from Terence McKenna. While McKenna was a master of extrapolation, he was not fatalistic. He believed that we all had a part to play in the creation of our future and he held that a necessary element in making sure this endeavor goes well was that we create new myths for the modern era.

I think many creatives, myself included, first approach AI with a bit of a crinkled nose. It feels stale, sterile, and all around a bit insincere. The typical chatbot talks to you like the woman at the front desk who uses all the correct pleasantries but may have something sinister tied up in her basement. While most people blame the systems themselves for their lack of charm, this criticism is misplaced. The corporate mask that is slapped onto this behemoth alien mess of digital neurons is not the default identity, but one that has been carefully crafted so as to not offend the 21st century liberal-leaning upper-middle class user on the other end. ChatGPT could just as easily be crafted into a cyberpunk Taoist, a provocative jester or in the darker cases, a vitriolic nazi (watch the documentary if you want to see how creative AI can be with its evil). In this way, AI reminds me of Vishvarupa, the Universal Form as described in Hinduism. This cosmic manifestation is made up of an infinite amount of heads all with a different face. In the case of AI, the one that’s been chosen for productization and circulation is more of a representation of the companies behind it than of the actual technology itself.

Looking past the marketing and the surface level of these systems is not easy. It took me the better part of a year and I’m still working on it. But when you begin to think of these systems less as tools and more as thought partners, as an extension of your own mind, the relationship completely changes. Anyone who’s ever had a psychedelic experience knows what it’s like to interface with an intelligence that isn’t quite your own and isn’t quite human but that you can still probe and learn from. That lens is what unlocked it for me and the possibilities started to pour out. These systems not only helped me navigate the logistics of an independent documentary production but also helped me grapple with the philosophical weight of the story I was trying to tell. The limit was no longer the system. It was me. It was my own creativity, my own willingness to push the conversation somewhere interesting, to explore. There are inroads that take you beyond the corporate veneer and it is a creative mind that is best suited to find them.

I bring all of this up to say that what you see is not necessarily what could be. This is where the job of the storyteller comes in. Filmmakers have always been in the business of, as Sonam says, living in between what is known and what we’re beginning to imagine. This is a group of people whose vocation is to dream up new worlds, situations, and possibilities. Moments of crisis require this skill more than almost any other. In times of great turmoil and transition, there is a responsibility for storytellers to craft narratives that help us understand the implications of our current situation and orient our actions accordingly.

We have been overtaken by, to put it nicely, a magnetism towards nostalgia and familiarity. We see it in our political sphere (Make America Great Again) and we see it in our entertainment (somewhere a desperate executive is rifling through the Disney archive trying to find the next useless revamp). We struggle to understand the present, we can’t hope to grapple with the future, so we cuddle up in the past. This return to the familiar is born both out of fear of the unknown and a lack of imagination. This is why I believe there is such a weight on the storytellers of our generation. We must not only stretch our creativity to try and contend with the idiosyncrasies of our new world, but we must also apply this same creativity to the way in which we create and communicate these stories. The foundations of our society are beginning to fracture and where old concrete breaks there is opportunity for new growth. Creativity must embrace the space of possibility that is the soft underbelly of chaos.

This is not meant to propose that filmmakers are going to save the world. If the world, meaning our world - the human world, needs saving, it’s only going to happen through a concerted, distributed effort of our species as a whole. However, as we brace for a collective transformation, we better have some updated narratives to orient ourselves in the right direction. We need new language to contend with true novelty. We need to journey into imagined futures so that we can assess our actions in the present. Carl Jung believed that we all live out our own myth and that our goal as individuals was to discover what that myth was so that we could have a say over how it ended. This individual dictate is now a collective imperative. We must all play a part in writing the next chapter of our story, for if we do not, it will be written for us.

Submit to the Slamdance Screenplay Competition HERE

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com



Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

TRANSCRIPT:

Okay, I’m going to just be talking about Decentering Hollywood. It was actually a post that I had kind of started for Ted, and got very into the idea.

A little bit about myself: I make TikToks and Instagram and Substack. But my main goal is to be a screenwriter. Luckily, I got onto The Blacklist in 2022, and it’s been a really great journey since that. That’s kind of what kicked off me wanting to share on social media. I was doing a lot of film marketing and wanted to discuss the journey.

I’m going to talk about taking back a piece of the power while you wait for Hollywood or no longer want to wait at all if you’re like me. Or you could try to bring the studio to you, maybe, or find an audience that cares about what you care about and be able to show your film and work to them.

Also – sorry – I talk really fast, so I’m going to try to breathe. Okay. But the first shift that I want to talk about is embracing new avenues. I think we get so stuck in the idea of our filmmaking being the first and only reality of that film, but I think something that’s really cool, that I’ve seen a lot of different people in different places that their careers take over.

Gary Whitta is going to be the first one that I mention. He wrote Rogue One, in case anyone has ever seen that. He also wrote The Book of Eli, and he recently just released a fiction narrative podcast called See You In Hell. It’s doing amazing. He got like a bunch of his friends together to play the different parts.

It’s kind of like a F-you to Hollywood, actually, funnily enough. It’s doing great. He also posts about it on TikTok and it has gotten really viral there from doing that. And I think that just reminds me of all of the different ways in which you can see your work, whether it is writing it on Substack, whether it is showing it on TikTok, whether it’s just making the small pitch version of it on YouTube and then cutting it up into slices to let it go wild.

Also Wattpad, guys. I wrote Nancy Drew fanfiction as a child. And [Wattpad] is more popular than ever, especially for young women who are writing their romcom fantasies or their Harry Potter fanfiction. That is a place like where if you feel compelled to be creative in a different outlet and you have that passion like don’t, I don’t think, I think everyone thinks it used to be an ick or not seriously taken. I go into meetings now when people ask me constantly about how I figured out TikTok or how I figured out Substack and why I’m not scared to share things anymore, or why it becomes my own IP. And I think it’s actually a really empowering way to reimagine your IP in your work.

And then – this is kind of the next shift – is that IP is really what you make it. I have three – four – examples here of different people – that I absolutely love – and the different ways that they kind of work their IP. I used to work for QCODE (I did a lot of marketing). They do narrative fiction podcasts. Recently they just announced that Kenan Thompson and Lamorne Morris are actually going to be doing one of their podcasts as a feature film, and that was literally just a writer, making really funny action comedy. But more and more is attached to it. And then from there, for the last three years, they’ve been just taking it all in. It takes a long time, but it really is turning into something more.

Brooklyn Coffee Shop. If you guys are not watching Brooklyn Coffee Shop, it is like the sassiest Gen Z shit I’ve ever seen. It’s really smart takes on the kind of like – bless my heart – overly leftist queens that like, you’re just like eye rolling at all the time, and they have guests come into the coffee shop and it’s a really simple concept. It’s the same thing every time: a guest comes in and then the coffee shop workers interact with them in a very funny way. The way that they have mastered this kind of repetitiveness is an art form in and of itself. I think that’s really fun and freeing to almost exist within the constraints that she has and to do it so well. I put the names on here if anyone wants to follow them.

I’ve also got Caroline Levich here, who she has made – she started Tik-Toking about four months ago and she has 50,000 followers, her whole shtick – and she’s a writer. She wrote on The Bold Place. Or The Bold Type? I’m sorry. She makes all this content about how she is marrying into a Latino family and how excited she is, and all the cultural differences that she’s experiencing… like the wedding. Oh! I didn’t know that if you, you know, invited 100 people, 300 people are going to show up.

She’s really making a community and everyone is so excited and interested in watching her family grow and progress. She’s moving in with her – guys, I love everything about her – she’s moving in next door to her parents – or her family in law. And so she knows that all of this content is because she wants to make a show and she is proving that this is an IP that people are super interested in – super excited to see. I think it’s very smart.

Mackenzie Barmen is my next one. She is so funny, you guys. She has a series called “60s and 50s” and she puts on an old face – like filter – and then she just exists as two old couples fighting with each other. And it’s, again, she’s in her apartment. There’s nothing special, nothing fancy about that.

I know for people in this room, you’re kind of like, “I’m a filmmaker. I am not an actor. Like, I don’t want to be in that room.” But anything that you are hyper fixated on can be your IP. I’m going to go into that in the next slide.

Also, Chrissy [Marshall] is here who is like an expert in social media. She’s absolutely amazing. Follow her. She talks so much about working in the film industry. She talks about ASL in the film industry. She did a crazy Bad Bunny post a few weeks ago, so everyone should check that out.

Yes – and then I wanted to say audience development goes into that. Like when you find out what you are excited about, it’s part of the pre pre-production.

Markiplier is – guys, no one in this room… maybe you [do]. I’m not going to say that no one’s room has 38 million followers yet. We might all one day, but it’s like that is part of the goal.

Caro Claire Burke I think is phenomenal. She started talking about Tradwives on Substack. She started talking about them on TikTok. That’s how I found her. She wrote a book called Yesteryear that will be released this year. Anne Hathaway’s production company bought it. So there’s like a ton of different ways to exist and share your passions online.

Nic Curcio, my Hollywood Hang podcast host. He actually won Fantastic Fest. He’s been growing a following just by talking about horror. That’s what he loves – he loves horror films. He loves horror books. He loves anything about the horror community. He won that pitch fest. [The team] just produced their film. They already have the other horror creators in the community talking about how excited they are about his film. They are hyping it up for him because he’s really made that community and the audience believe in him and are excited for him. And I think it’s going to be very exciting to see his film be released and to see what that community is able to do for him at a much smaller scale than Mister Markiplier there.

Shift number four is just like, again, embracing detours and your multiple hats. I know it’s not fair that we ask filmmakers to do all of the other things, but when you can reinvent those things as fun, when you’re like, I could splice up my little, pitch-deck and it can be a fun YouTube. I could go viral just talking about the contents and the themes of my film. When you just reorganize your brain and realize, oh, all of this is actually my behind the scenes content. I’m telling people how I got there. I’m sharing the journey there. People really resonate with that. Or at least, that’s what I’ve found.

People want to support other filmmakers. I think it’s just like a fun thing to kind of share with the world – if you feel that you want to. And then this is the hardest part: I get asked a lot like, is it too late? Is the algorithm ass and is the algorithm negative – bad? Is the algorithm bad now? The algorithm is bad. It’s kind of trash. But I do think the most important thing is to just start now. Throwing stuff at the wall. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to talk about most often, which ended up being politics.

I got a ton of meetings just from different producers, indie producers, the NonDē community. And like learning that all of these people are sharing their journeys and sharing their processes and like you get to meet people sooner than ever. And it’s very awkward and icky at the beginning and you feel cringe AF, but you meet other people who are also in the same boat as you.

And I just think if you’re questioning it, you’re going to be happier to start today and to fail today, and then to see the success in three years – and two years – whatever that is. You’ll look back and you’ll see how far you grew. And if it’s five-hundred, if it’s a thousand, if it’s fifty-thousand, whatever that is, everyone’s on their own journey.

And I just think if you’re pained about it or you’re thinking about it, I do think this is a future way to build an audience and like, it’s kind of the dangerous idea, but this is the bold – the dangerous thing to do. You have to be brave to try to do it, even if you feel a little icky about it.

Submit to the Slamdance Screenplay Competition HERE

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com

Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

TRANSCRIPT:

TED: You know, like, if it wasn’t for the Ankler I wouldn’t have come to Substack. I wouldn’t have found Substack, Filmstack wouldn’t have started... the think tank in real time, that is. Filmstack couldn’t have morphed into something more to reach NonDē.

So the OG of what is happening here, Richard Rushfield ... you get to start it all off today. Okay?

RICHARD: Thank you. And let’s give a big hand to Ted Hope and Slamdance everyone. In my business I go to a lot of panel discussions and summits and sort of dread when I’m sentenced to sit in an audience for a summit for a day. But this, this has actually been fun and enlightening and uplifting.

So, big hand to Ted there. As of right – I’m going to say… yeah – I think I’m the only person presenting today – maybe the only person in the room – who has never actually worked on a film or had anything to do with [one]. I was an extra in a couple movies, but the directors did not give me a credit, so…

I speak to you just as a viewer or an audience member. And, my thoughts are going to be the least practical and most disorganized here. So, after I go, you can dismiss this and more practical ideas will follow. But – so my big thought was – a big thing I’ve been thinking about is that… how we distribute films and sort of the artistry too that has gone away. That the movie release – now the NonDē world kind of is living in the leftovers of Hollywood cinema… sort of taking whatever screens at a multiplex they can get and going down the track where they’re sort of forced into these big releases, like trying to be like a mini Avatar – just going on whatever screens they can with without any marketing to support that, and setting themselves up in a position where there’s no time for word of mouth to develop. And, if lightning doesn’t strike on Friday night, your whole journey is finished. It’s up in smoke, and the value of your film is erased.

And from the point of view of a viewer – what the current distribution model for NonDē film feels like – it feels like desperation. It feels like you’re just desperately begging for anybody to come see your movie. “Please. We’ll put it near you. You will get it everywhere you want. Just please come see it,” in desperation.

Whether it is in job seeking or dating or marketing, desperation is never an attractive place to come from. You’re in the worst of all worlds. And for NonDē films- non-dependent films, word of mouth is everything. It’s not a piece of the battle for Avatar. Word of mouth is maybe a little piece of the Avatar- for you… It’s 100% of the battle. If you can’t have people talking about it – and what people are not going to be excited to talk about is the movie that feels desperate and needy. And I really think the distribution model is the way we think about it. And to start thinking about creating scarcity with your films, that’s my theme today.

We’re artists. You’re not circus clowns. You have made something special. You have made the greatest film in the world. I’m looking through this catalog today. These are great. I would love to see all these movies. These are fantastic films. More excited about them, certainly, than whatever the studios are putting out. You don’t have to beg people.

You can come see them everywhere you go. This is already great, and you have to find the people who are worthy to see these movies, who deserve to see the movies. You’re going to understand these movies, and an artist doesn’t shove their work into whatever open auditorium at the local mall will let them in. They make the audience prove that they can handle these ideas, and find ways to show – to not make this about “we’re going to be there for you whenever you want it, whenever you can handle it”... on streaming, on at your local mall, whatever.

We have made something special for special people who are going to appreciate it. And if you can prove that you are one of those people, then maybe we’ll let you see this movie. Maybe.

Don’t show it everywhere. Have one screening and then have it disappear for six months. Let people let people try to find you, to find out where it’s going to be. Invite a bunch of Instagram influencers and then don’t let them in.

But believe me, as a reporter, if you turn a reporter away, they will be obsessed with you forever. Make people fill out an application if they want to see the movie. Let this be a hoop that people jump for through a hurdle. Like I remember the old days of – maybe they still do this – I forgot about it, but when you - if you want[ed] to go to some special, a special party, you would have to get a password. And then you would go to a place, where if you had the password they’d give you a map to it. And then you follow the map to a place where a van would pick you up.

Make it like that. Make people jump through hoops to see this movie, because it’s not for everybody. You’re not making the latest Jurassic Park. You’re making movies that are going to change the world. And there’s that, that are about important things.

And for people that can appreciate that – and make people show you that – they can do that. And in doing that by – You know, Avatar – the Monday after, [other] people also covered it. “Did you see Avatar?” I thought I was good. Whatever. Okay.

This will be an experience that people will tell everyone about, like, hey, I got to see this movie. I went to the map point and they had me fill out an application, and the five people in front of me were kicked out and they couldn’t go. But I was selected to see it. And I did. And it’s really – believe me, if you can get to see it, it’s really something special and you create a community out of that.

Now, the people wanting to see it, the experience of getting to see it and you create – you have a bond with your consumers then who are dying to tell people about it, and not just these sort of passive people who gave their email to Fandango, and that’s all the contact they have with you.

They are part of your cause then. Non-dependent cinema bows before nobody. You know, you’re not living in the Hollywood leftovers. You’re not the farm team. You’re the heart and the soul and the mind of the culture of the world in the greatest immersive art form humanity has ever known. We do not bow. We do not beg. So stand up and act like it.

Submit to the Slamdance Screenplay Competition HERE

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com



Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

Transcript:

I’m one of the co-founders of Slamdance. And by the way, Slamdance basically started in the exact same spirit that everything Courtney just said: with a bunch of filmmakers. We collaborated, we got together, and we supported each other, and that’s me right there. And we’re still going on.

But also, I think part of what – there’s great stuff Courtney and Ted said, and other people are going to say [it] all day about getting your audience and market testing everything – don’t get too hung up in that, though, all due respect. Make your art. We’re filmmakers. We need to think of ourselves as artists. Maybe small “a,” not big “A.” We need to think of ourselves as performers, like musicians, and go on tour with our films.

So you should just make the film you want to make, and hopefully you’ll find an audience along the way – even if you haven’t figured it out ahead of time – because technology changes so fast. Audiences change so fast. Your film is going to change as you make it. You don’t always know what your audience is going to be until sometime much later, sometimes 30 years later. Your only audience is yourself. So make the film that you want to make, because in 30 years you have to look back on it and go, “Oh yeah, I like that movie,” even if no one else ever saw it. So don’t be afraid to ignore all the advice that you hear.

The other thing to think about is that if you just think of these films that we’re making, these indie films – especially features – as 90 minutes of content. It’s very hard to justify seven years of developing the script, five years of raising money, three weeks of shooting, and then a year of post, a year of film festivals, 20-plus years of hiring, getting a distributor, firing distributors, suing distributors, and doing it ultimately yourselves. It’s hard to justify that as just 90 minutes of content. But if you think about it as a community-based, performance art project that is multi-decades long, then it starts to make more sense.

So getting your people involved, from the crowdfunding phase where you get to 300 backers and getting them involved, to making the film and asking everyone on the crew and cast for help, and your backers to help. And then when you get on the festival circuit – someone asked yesterday, what happens if you can’t afford to go to all these film festivals? Well, you have 300 backers. Let them do the Q&A. Let your key grip do the Q&A. It doesn’t have to all be you.

On my last film, 18.5, mysteriously I was dogged by protesters (pro-Nixon protesters) who followed me around at every single festival. It was mysterious how they showed up carrying the same banners everywhere I went around the world. Well, I’ll let you in on a secret—I made the banners. And I would just show up at screenings, usually after the screening, when people stuck around for the Q&A, and I would say, “Oh yeah, hold this up, hold that up, now start yelling ‘Nixon! Nixon!’” And then they would start Instagramming it and participating. It became a participatory experience for everyone. Don’t tell anyone I said that.

Likewise for my current film, Atomic Fondue, which we’re still crowdfunding on Kickstarter. I thought, why wait to make the movie to make the banners? Just start making them now. You start getting other people to hold things up, and suddenly it says “Atomic Fondue is the bomb,” and people are participating. So just some practical thinking – sure, you’re going to have your mugs and stuff from your crowdfunding campaign, but you can do more. I was at Sundance a few weeks ago, and it coincided with our Kickstarter, so I brought these banners.

By the way, it’s very easy to make a banner. I went to a thrift store, got a Vera Wang sheet for a dollar, tore it, then designed a banner on my computer using the logo—you should always come up with the logo before you make a movie—project it onto a wall, trace it in pencil, then use Sharpies and acrylic paint to finish it. It’s really not that complicated. But if you’re going to make a banner or a statement, get the punctuation right. It matters.

So that’s why I say let your freak flag fly. You literally should make a freak flag. On set, at festivals, you can turn it into a protest movement, into something participatory. That’s the point: it becomes something people are part of. You guys are part of the movie now. That’s great. And if you’re not self-promoting, you’re just not trying.

But the point is that it’s not just me making the movie. We already have 300 backers making the movie. We’re going to get a cast, a crew, audiences – it’s everyone. That’s what we need to do to make a movie. It’s not just you, it’s everyone.

At the end of the day, I’m also not really market testing. It’s a great idea, but I don’t really know how to do that. But that’s the nice thing about crowdfunding. I always say it’s Kickstarter, not “kick finisher.” We’re raising maybe 10% of the budget that way, but you can see what’s working. You try things, some work, some don’t. We tried to get a nuclear disarmament community behind us. No interest. Okay, move on. You can’t anticipate everything.

We even had a banner that said “No Nukes: N-U-U-K-S,” thinking certain things might happen politically, but they didn’t. So okay, maybe later. You adjust. You keep going. You meet people along the way – like some Danish filmmakers we met who loved it. And that’s part of the process. Anyway, any questions? No? Well, that’s it. Keep moving.

Submit to the Slamdance Screenplay Competition HERE

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com

Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

Transcript:

“We cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking that created them.”

I did not say that, but Albert Einstein did. And, another way to say that is, “just to solve the problem, you can’t think at the level of the problem—you have to rise to the level of the solution.”

My name is Courtney Romano and I’m a writer/director, and like most of you, I have watched Hollywood confront the problem of getting audiences to our films and making money doing it by staying at the level of the problem. It’s a business problem, and so you’re thinking like a business. They think with big budgets and saturation marketing and sequels and sometimes tax write-offs.

Now let’s talk about non-dependent filmmaking. Non-dependent filmmaking wants to solve that same problem – get audiences to our films and make money to have a livable career by doing those films – but we do not want to stay at the level of the problem. We want to rise to the level of the solution, where Hollywood only tries to solve at a business level. My dangerous and fun idea is that I believe NonDē film should rise to the level of the solution and solve it at a political level.

Before anyone gets nervous that I am going to get into the weeds of American politics – even though I really would like to, and it would be dangerous and fun – I’m not talking about American politics. I’m talking about politics as a high-level concept. Thinking politically means coalition building around a shared vision. I believe that when we think politically, when we are building a coalition of filmmakers around a shared vision: that we will make films we want to make, we will get audiences to see them, and we will have materially, economically sustainable, livable careers because of that. Where studios may use box office stats and saturation marketing and sequels and tax write-offs, we know that as non-dependent filmmakers we cannot compete with that kind of scale – we just can’t. Plus, it’s a race to the bottom, in my opinion.

The studios will make more money, but the workers, the film workers, in the meantime, will get less jobs, opportunities, and protections. Where streamers may want to acquire eyeballs and subscriptions to their apps, non-dependent filmmakers want to develop reciprocal relationships with our audiences. And, where traditionally independent film may seem like a really great alternative to what the studios and streamers are doing, if you’re lucky enough to get a distribution deal, once you sell your rights and you exit your film, you’ve lost access to your audience and data – the two most pivotal parts of having a sustainable career.

The NonDē filmmaker isn’t just solving for the short game of getting people to come to our one movie – we’re solving for the long game by holding onto our rights, profits, and data, and investing in the relationship with our audiences. I believe we have a real shot at a sustainable career that never has to depend on a lucky break, and we do that by making paradoxical moves. We do unscalable things. I think what we should do is start running a strategic field game.

There are nine components from politics that we can actually apply to non-dependent filmmaking. One: language. We use the term non-dependent, we position our projects as part of a movement, we add this word to our press releases, our pitch decks, and our bios, and we say it with our full chest.

Two: alliances. We create a bloc of filmmaking alliances, we forge partnerships with other filmmakers who believe in the same NonDē values as us, and we go out of our way to hire and partner with companies in this industry who are helping to disrupt distribution and marketing and audience building.

Three: messaging. We deploy content marketing for the movement itself, which means we write and film and articulate the values of non-dependence on socials, in our newsletters, and as ancillary content for our individual films.

Four: communities. We join forces in places like Film Stack or in coalitions like the one I’ve organized called the NonDē: 50 Films Project, because these communities are where filmmakers work side by side to share institutional knowledge, resources, and data with each other while running coordinated experiments and labs to prove that this model can work.

Five: constituent research. We enroll our audiences in what we’re doing from the beginning, we figure out who our audiences are as early as development, and then we interview those audiences. We go out and ask them: how do you watch movies, where do you watch movies, and what makes you click play?

Six: data collection. We collect our own data and use that data to stay flexible. We run marketing, partnership, and revenue experiments, we make multiple and diversified efforts to get the word out about our films, and we use that data to pivot when we need to—we double down on what works and we drop what doesn’t.

Seven: canvassing. We go proverbially door to door, we sync up with our local movie clubs and institutions and niche communities in our neighborhoods, and we talk about NonDē early and often in real life.

Eight: endorsements. We build context, we position our work with other filmmakers’ work, we create micro-labels and multi-production company slates and roll out marketing campaigns of our films together in a coordinated effort.

And number nine: stump speeches. We repeat ourselves, we repeat ourselves, we stand like any other politician and repeat the message and stay on message. We believe in ambitiously authored cinema, creative risk-taking, economic stability, collaboration over competition, and a better cinema ecosystem centered on the artists, the art, and the audiences.

These are unscalable things. Let’s be honest—these are unscalable things for one filmmaker to do all alone, as they’re also in production for their other unscalable thing: making a film. But when we do this together, this is when we start to reach a critical mass. Politics is about forming alliances. Right now, right here, we are in a coalition. We are in a room full of alliances just waiting to happen, people who can help you and people you can help. We can look at each other in this room as the beginning of a wave. We don’t need to compete with each other – I believe we should collaborate, and here’s why.

Let’s look at politics again: there are different districts, different states, different races, but there are coalitions of candidates across the country who share the same vision. They run their own race, but support and endorse their political friends. We each have our own films, we have our own races, but when we work as a political movement – people who believe in the same possible non-dependent future – when we endorse each other’s movies, collaborate and share and borrow each other’s audiences, we lighten the individual burden and transform it into a collective mission. That is how we scale unscalable things. That is where our power lies: in a people-powered movement. And I think the people who decided to show up today are the leaders of that movement.

So today, you’re going to hear a lot of things. You’re going to hear a lot of people talk about a lot of different ideas. It’s going to get you really excited. You’re going to feel like you’re building momentum, you’re going to leave here with lots of things to try. And when you leave this room, a fired-up, engaged, passionate group of like-minded people, you may run into some other people outside of these walls. They might be cynical, they might be well-meaning but cynical, and they might say something like, “Oh, well, that’s a pipe dream, and that’s not how it works.” And whether you say this out loud or just in your own head, your response is going to be: of course that’s not how this works, that’s the whole point. We cannot get to a better place by working at the level of the problem; we have to rise to the level of the solution. That is how change happens. So ask yourself: what is your vision? What do you want? What is possible when you keep a little bit of hope alive? There’s no reason we can’t have it, so it’s time we go build it together. Thank you.

Submit to the Slamdance Screenplay Competition HERE

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com
Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram

Welcome to The Slam, Slamdance Film Festival’s official Substack on the future of filmmaking. Through its ecosystem of alumni and guest writers around the world, editorial coverage spans new ideas, emerging voices and sustainability in filmmaking and digital media. The Slam is guided by a cooperative spirit, non-conformity and commitment to empowering artists.

What better way then to launch The Slam than with The NonDē Way: Fun & Dangerous Ideas To Disrupt What Once Was “Indie” & To Separate From A Lame Ass Corporate Film Industry?

Working from the premise that both Hollywood and Indie are on their death rattles, what does an ecosystem that prioritizes the sustainability of the art, artist, and audience look like? In collaboration with Slamdance, NonDē presents a feast of dangerous ideas that were first delivered by its instigators at Slamdance ‘26. For the first time, The Slam is now publishing each idea as a complete series, to keep building this thing we love - cinema - better than before - and always along practical and positive lines.

-Peter Baxter

TRANSCRIPTS:

INTRO

PETER: When Slamdance started it was started by a bunch of filmmakers. Wild filmmakers who really didn’t have much of a clue on how to do anything other than to try and get through their first features. We had no idea on how to put on a film festival, and there we were. We turned up to Park City in 1995, and somehow we got it together and had the first Slamdance. It was only supposed to be one edition. And here we are, all these years later, at the DGA, presenting Slamdance 2026.

The one thing that has allowed that to happen is essentially being an artist led community. Artists themselves get to decide on what we program at Slamdance. All of the films here at the festival this year have been programmed by filmmakers who come to Slamdance before to show their work, and this is an opportunity for them in programming to pay it forward and to support filmmakers to come. And this is why, I think, what makes the day really special in combining with NonDē. So there is a tradition here, I think that we can already agree upon. One is in this fledgling stage, and Slamdance is now a mature, artist-run organization. But when it comes to supporting, launching, developing filmmakers careers, independent filmmaking communities – or non-dependent filmmaking communities – can really do it themselves. And that, I think by coming together today with NonDē, we’re stronger together. I’m so excited to hear about the ideas: how we can work forward together and support each other and build careers. And before we get going, I do want to just thank all of the NonDē speakers, because it is a collective movement. Ted is very, always very, keen to point out it is not “me” leading this. But, that said, I do want to thank Ted very much because I’ve had the honor – the pleasure – of listening to Ted. And I can let you know he’s put so much care and energy into today. I just want to thank you very much, Ted. Welcome up, Ted Hope.

TED: Okay. Now, I think that took two of my minutes. I’m going to have to be really fast. So, I hate panels. I go to film festivals all the time. I’ve always wanted to disrupt the panel culture. All right, so this is my attempt to do it. So we’re gonna follow through with a lot of, you know, strict rules, right?... So, to destabilize, disrupt, the panel culture of film festivals, this is a very strict day. Nineteen presentations. None will be over ten minutes. Right? You will hear play off music of an exclusively punk rock soundtrack at about nine-thirty will start to fade up. And at ten is going to be loud and raucous and you’re not allowed [to go over] – your mic will be shut off. And if you’re not [done], we have DEATH in the house.

Nineteen speakers across seven sections. Right? At the end of each of those sections, we have the NonDē – the conversationalist facilitators – which I’m a part of too. Franklin Leonard. Courtney Romano. And we’re going to have a fifteen minute conversation. This is not a panel. And you’ll see, you know, with the presenters of each of the seven sections, right? We’re going to be a little loose on that fifteen – it can’t go over fifteen – but, if we’re feeling generous, we’ll give some of our minutes to the audience because we’ve only allocated essentially five minutes, enough for one question per section.

Now to ask a question, there’s a few rules. And actually I want – Franklin to come up here and tell us how we ask questions.

FRANKLIN: So, your first sentence should be a question. There should not be a second sentence. And that was a warning. For those of you who’ve interacted with me on Twitter, I am capable of being an asshole. And I will be if your question does not come in that form.

TED: But at the end of the question, if you think that it is a good question, I want you to acknowledge it with a loud show of support, because for every good question – provided there is not more than eight of them – I brought gifts. And we’ll see what they are. So I got a nice gift, a goodie bag takeaway from my life, from cinema, for each and every one that has a good question. As long as there’s not more than eight.

At the end of these seven sections I’ll try to give an ending summation. I want to show how you – all of you – have blossomed into my mind. So, I want to see the future. I want to have hope for film. And I want to share some of those little takeaways, and I’ll try to capture that. But afterwards, because I will fail, we will have drinks. We will have a cocktail hour. So lunch, [then] cocktail hour. Next year, hopefully, one of you will have, you know, found a gold mine and will sponsor breakfast, so it can be breakfast, lunch and cocktails, along the way.

But we’re thankful today that this can happen thanks to Francis Coppola. And just so you know, that he was, I think, the first person ever to – from the industry – to just call me unsolicited and say, “Hello, Ted this is Francis Ford Coppola.”

I said, “Fuck you. Who are you?” I hung up, and he called back, and he told James and I that he liked what we were doing, that he’ll take us to lunch. So, this man has lived that life for a long time, loving cinema, as I know you do, too.

So real quick, the sections are – just so you can keep them in your mind. Essentially, I’m going to start with my overview, second will be the “Cinema Making Mindset and Approach.”

We wanted to start in that group, because some people have time commitments of the other lives, and we just couldn’t fit so much in.

It would have gone better in the next section, but so be it, which is, “Better Approaches to Distribution.” That’s number three. Four is “New Views on Exhibition.” Because distribution is such a notty, N-O-T-T-Y, subject these days, they wanted to have a separate section on the new process of distribution. Six will be “Time to Rethink Television and All Streaming Platforms,” and seven is, “The System We Are In and How We Can Change It.” That is seven sections, nineteen speakers. No more than ten minutes each.

Utopian Ideation, Leaderless Movements, and the Benefits of a NonDependent Cinema Ecosystem

TED: This is essentially the seven tools you need to no longer be compliant and brainwashed to work in their content farms. These are the tools that will set you free. Liberate your cinematic soul. But as I went through it, you know, I realized it wasn’t a list of seven. It’s actually a list of twenty. So I’m going to have to talk really fast. So… the reason that it’s more than seven is right off the bat. One of the key things that I learned is actually the key to, I would say, the success that I’ve had. I’ve been able to be an intimate partner on a hundred and forty films as a producer or an executive. I’ve been able to build systems. I’ve had really great opportunities along the way. And it’s because of one trait, which is I always try to ask, “why does it have to be this way? How else could it be done? What is blocking me from getting this done in this way?” And I want you to ask that regarding these seven tools that I want you to put into your belt. And ultimately the reason that was one additional one, it’s also a second additional one, is that this all has become part of my creative practice. It is how I’m loving life, how I have the enthusiasm that I do. I’ve embedded it in my creative practice and it occurs to me along the way, why don’t we talk about our creative practices more often? Why don’t we talk about the things that we can build to help us do those things better? And this is all part of mine. So it’s actually already two.

So the first one that I want to talk about is I want you to dream incessantly of a better world. This is utopian ideation, right? And it’s so key. And the truth is, it’s a big assignment. When I started embracing this myself, it took me five years to get my first draft done. And, as all of you know, first drafts aren’t worth doodly. You know? So, it is long, because you have to extend it beyond what you want for your movie, beyond what you want for yourself, beyond what you want for your relationship, beyond what you want for your community, beyond what you want for your industry, beyond what you want for your country, and beyond what you want for your world. This is about how you use your life, your love, your labor. And you have to think as broadly and as detailed as it is. I have a long, long talk about this. Save it for another day. But right now I want you to just recognize that you don’t know the path you have to walk on unless you know the destination you want to go. Why don’t we think in utopian manners? Ask yourself that and I think there are some clear answers. But as I said, today, I don’t really have much time for that.

Second point is the tool of first principles, tenants and tactics. I want you again to try to determine these for your movies, for your company, for yourself, for your industry. And ideally, try to make them align with your utopian ideation. Indie film – so called, “indie film” – failed because it didn’t do this right. It basically – indie film became nothing more than a farm system for Hollywood. And that means that it covers about probably a little bit less than half a percent of all the participants. That it didn’t really determine beyond its initial principle of embracing individual voices outside of the studio system. NonDē’s first priority is the sustainability of the art: the artist, the audience and the ecosystem that is needed to support all of that. You need a first principle. You need to break it down into tenants and you have to figure out the tactics that are there to implement it. That is such an incredible tool. It is how I manage all of my life and I encourage you to embrace it.

Three: we have to embrace a practice of capturing institutional knowledge. This is another failure of so-called “independent film.” When you start to try to examine the process of change, along the way you start to see how key this fits – that generally when people ask, “why is change so slow?”, we have kind of a broad answer. That is: change won’t occur until the pain of the present exceeds the fear of the future. How do we recognize that we can’t, we can’t afford to wait that long? We need to embrace a practice of both production and overall sustainability that has the tactics of looking at recommended best practices for every aspect of cinema. Indie film had one tactic that served that one principle, which was to demystify the development and production process of our work. One thing! There are so many other aspects of it. A lot of this day’s focus is demystifying distribution and exhibition, but there are many others, across all perspectives and all ways that we engage. To do this, we each – and this is where my list starts to build, these are the tools – [we] need to take it upon ourselves to develop the resources that we can share with others. So if you read my newsletter, you’ve already got a list of over two-hundred film financers that are out there. You already had the list of the over a hundred theatrical distributors that work in the United States. You have a list of all the podcasts that deal with the film industry. You have a template to help you and your distribution planning. You have these things being mapped out by Filmstack right now. We need to create resources. And the key piece of this, the practice that we have to embrace with it – hence the list growing – is transparency. Transparency in all things. Drop your shame about anything. To embrace transparency means that we all have to start to recognize the beauty in becoming. The fact that we are all in process in one way or the other. Don’t look just to the end state, that final product, to say that that’s where the vessel for beauty delivery is. To do that, you know, we have to also recognize that a key part of the process is always going to be failure. And that means that all of us have to stop being so damn judgy. Like, let it go! Get over it! We all make mistakes all the time. We learn. Franklin’s called me out several times. Courtney evaluates what I’m saying. They help me get better at what I do, and I appreciate it. We’re moving to a better process of recommended best practices.

This one, number four, sounds a little boring, but it is the gasoline on the match. This is where it all explodes. And the key tool is just a simple thing of what I like to call “Op-Imps”, which is operational improvements. Little changes lead to big results. Little changes show that we actually do make a difference. The reason – you’ve been asking yourself, I know because I can see it in your face all the time when I put one of these out – you say, “Why is it that way? What are the barriers? How do we get through it?” This one actually has a really clear indication. Why don’t we embrace operational improvements in any closed ecosystem? In any closed ecosystem where the dominant power or capital or customer feels that it is good enough will never invest the necessary capital, labor, brainpower in the operational improvements to the product or the process. This is what has happened over forty years in independent film. This is why I consider independent film ultimately a failure. We have been like frogs in that warm bath, not knowing that we were served for dinner. And along the way, we’ve allowed every single aspect, except the demystifying of production development to, to rust, to wither, to decay. That’s how we got into this situation.

Five, we have to embrace a completely new set of metrics for success. Our entire society values essentially two things: wealth and status. Our industry has embraced this. We are in a system, and that system is in us, right? It’s not an aberrant result that we have leaders and people like Trump and Epstein. We have the same thing. We’ve seen many of our leaders in the film industry and the evil and, that they’re capable of enstuing. Is that a word? I like it, and just look at where all of this has gotten us.

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrated its 32nd Film Festival February 19–25, 2026, in Los Angeles - its second year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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