PUSHING BOUNDARIES: SEIZING THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION

Presented by Vanishing Angle
Saturday, October 24, 2020
4:00 PM PT

Award-winning quadruple-threat Jim Cummings joins us to share his experience on navigating the industry as an independent filmmaker from idea inception to dynamic distribution. He'll give his expertise for each step of the process, whether you're making a short, a feature, or a short-to-feature. Having found success himself on an untraditional path, Jim will shed a light on the realities and limitless possibilities of "doing it yourself."

Followed by a Q&A moderated by NFFTY alum Anna Baumgarten, a Short to Feature Lab Fellow whose short film Disfluency (NFFTY '18) is being developed into a feature film to be released in 2021.

Featured

Jim Cummings

Jim Cummings is an independent filmmaker, writer, and director that is working to find new ways to connect to audiences. Jim has proven to be an action oriented thought leader, mentoring with Sundance Institute’s Collab and founding the Short to Feature Lab. He has been giving speeches at places like SXSW since 2014 and doing articles with Filmmaker Magazine and Ted Hope’s Hope For Film and rants on Twitter about the state of independent cinema, and what comes next. His first feature, Thunder Road (SXSW & Deauville Grand Jury Prizes), was successfully self-distributed. His second feature, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, was just released theatrically and at home with MGM/Orion Classics. His third feature, The Beta Test, is going to be a whole lot of fun to share with audiences in 2021.

Anna Baumgarten

Anna hails from the Michigan mitten and strives to tell stories with truth that find common ground between people of polarizing backgrounds. As a filmmaker she has an independent TV pilot, a dozen short films, and a digital PSA campaign under her belt. Most recently, Anna's short film Line Dry premiered at the Oscar Qualifying Palm Springs International Shortsfest 2020. In 2018 she was selected as one of ten Short to Feature Lab Fellows for her short film Disfluency (directed by Laura Holliday, written and produced by Anna) which was developed into a feature film she directed and is currently in post production. The feature will be released in 2021. Anna continues to seek out opportunities to create collaborative media content. She is the media partner of SafeBAE, an organization founded by the young survivors in Netflix’s documentary Audrie & Daisy. SafeBAE works to provide sexual assault awareness and prevention education to middle, high school, and college students. Anna produced their digital PSA campaign #QuitThisShit featured in Teen Vogue.