This week, I am traveling down to the Atlanta Film Festival to celebrate their 50^th Anniversary – I was running the place when it turned 25 –  which has caused me to reflect on what has changed for the better and for the worse in independent film since its founding. If you speak to almost anyone in the film industry today, you hear a lot of doom and gloom. Unless someone is an up & coming creator, working in AI, or is so established that they’re somewhat insulated from the turmoil, everyone is affected somehow. But if you look back at the history of what is now the Atlanta Film Festival, you’ll learn that times have been worse in some ways, much better in others, and yes, they point to things we should be thinking about today.

While the history is murky, back in the late Sixties and early Seventies, Atlanta had a big film fest called the Atlanta Film Festival, and believe it or not, it was apparently one of the biggest film festivals in the world at that time. There were even proposals going around that Atlanta could be the next Cannes Film Festival, and that was an ambition of the fest. That seems hard to believe today but remember, Atlanta had an international airport, and there were only a handful of other festivals in the world (the festival is one of less than ten in the US that is 50 or older…wow!). There are rumors that at one point there was matching money at hand to turn the fest into just that, but local politicians couldn’t be convinced to raise the rest of the funds. One must wonder…if only?

At the same time, there was a small group of local, scrappy, very independent filmmakers in town who felt they were being ignored by the Atlanta Film Fest, which they saw as more focused on Hollywood and those international ambitions. True, the fest had been one of the first festivals to premiere Steven Spielberg’s first short shot on 35mm film, Amblin’, which won the Silver Phoenix Jury Prize – marking his first festival award, and he was an indie back then, but they felt left out. They also needed access to equipment, which was super expensive back then – most people couldn’t afford anything bigger than an 8mm or Super-8 mm camera, much less a Steenbeck to edit their films. They also needed a place to network, show one another’s films and learn from one another. So, sometime before 1976, a group of indie filmmakers in Atlanta formed a group called Independent Media Artists of Georgia, Etc. or IMAGE (incorporated in 1977). The name was more important than it sounds – they chose media artists, not filmmakers, not just because it made a better acronym, but because many of them were working in other media, and they considered radio, and the new formats of VHS and Beta, and other “new media” to be invented to possibly be the future of the field. And the “etc.” in the name symbolized their ambitions to unite artists from outside of Georgia – they thought, “hey, let’s also be a hub for artists from throughout the Southeast, because no one is showing these other artist’s films, either.”

Then in 1977, IMAGE partnered with the Arts Festival of Atlanta to host the first ever Atlanta Independent Film & Video Festival in the bathhouse of Piedmont Park. They would show the indie film and videos that weren’t being shown by the local film fest, from indie artists near and far, and indeed one of the first films shown was Tennessee filmmaker Don Evan’s  “Grant Proposal Film,” which was just that – a short film made to raise funds to get a grant from the NEA, so he could make a movie. Gayla Jamison, who was one of the founding members of IMAGE, and its first executive director from 1977-1980, told Paige Parvin for the 25^th Fest’s program guide (I am quoting this from a hard copy I own because I can’t find it online) that the first films were shown “in a bathhouse that had been used as anything but a bathhouse. So, there we were showing these films and videotapes in a place that smelled like old tennis shoes.” The festival continued to show films outside in Piedmont Park for a few more years, before moving to the big leagues of showing them at the High Museum of Art, which remained a venue up until the early 2000’s, when the museum cut their film program and wanted too much money to rent their remaining auditorium (which is now being repurposed into a “multipurpose space” for families, meaning the High leadership is high… and clueless, but that’s another article).

Note how even at the beginning, there was a tension between people who wanted their festival to be the next big thing (back then it was Cannes, now every town wants to be the next Sundance), versus those who wanted to showcase indie up & coming filmmakers. The indies had to get scrappy, and turn alternative venues into their cinemas, and there was a spirit of camaraderie – of showing one another’s work, be it in progress or finished, and of uniting indie communities scattered around the country.  There was also a sense of merging the old (film) and the new (video), and I’m sure there was plenty of handwringing over the barbarians at the gate (those tweaking video players to make “new media art” as opposed to traditional films). These battles continue today, and I think there’s more than one town where some scrappy folks might just start their own, new festival, as they get ignored by the establishment.

There was also something important going on in the background – governmental and foundation support for media arts. This was around the time that the NEA had been formed, and they were giving grants to media centers like IMAGE across the country, as well as direct grants to artists. The NEA was also funding regional arts councils, like the Georgia Council for the Arts, which would couple that money with local government money to help build arts infrastructure and support artists locally. IMAGE was able to form and launch the film fest with support from these two organizations, along with (at some point) local county and city arts funding. At the same time, the MacArthur Foundation was giving grants to regional media centers, and rumors are that Foundation personnel thought that they might seed and save democracy by supporting local media arts production and exhibition. Oh, and probably not a small thing either, but Jimmy Carter was in the White House, as the first president from Georgia, which undoubtedly put some pep in the step of the founders, if nothing else. 

Today, the NEA has been gutted, most regional arts councils are decimated or completely gone, and MacArthur supports media, but dropped its support of regional media centers in the early aughts. The infrastructure that supported an entire sector of the field is gone, and we’re even more independent today. Groups like the Future Film Coalition have formed today, to try to bring back support for filmmakers, and dream up new ideas, but maybe the FFC wouldn’t be needed today, if funders had just kept supporting these regional media centers?

Anyway, the festival and organization kept growing. There were multiple different leaders, and a ton of programmers (and volunteers, even) who took the festival in new directions and went on to do lots of other cool things. At one point, Ruby Lerner ran IMAGE, before going on to run AIVF and then founding Creative Capital. I met her, and she became a mentor of mine when I was interning for Anne Hubbell, who ran the fest and then IMAGE, before she went on to Kodak, and now she also runs Provincetown Film Fest. 

By the time I came back to IMAGE as executive director in 2001, the fest had dropped the word independent from its name – not because it wasn’t indie anymore,  but that was just assumed, and soon we would decide to drop the word video as well, again because the word and medium had become absorbed into the mission so fully. At the same time, the festival was undergoing the same changes that happened at nearly every US film fest around that same time. Before I even got there (earlier, as an intern in 1993/4), Sundance had become a big deal, as had Slamdance. Indie film was a “thing,” and you had the launch of IFC (1994) and Sundance Channel (1996). Films were selling for millions, and you could turn indie film into a career. Sponsors started to pay attention to indie films and film festivals, and more launched every year. 

Film festivals also started to slowly shift in their mission. Essentially, they professionalized and homogenized a bit. I’m sure fest leaders will debate me on this, but I think what happened in Atlanta was a microcosm of what was happening everywhere. The films got bigger; the venues got nicer; the ticketing and programs and look and feel of everything got smarter. There was more attention on what would get press, because that brought the audiences, which brought more revenue, and more sponsors, in a seemingly endless loop. 

Most (not all) fests maintained some sense of showcasing their local film scene, but a tension started to rise between how many local films you could show versus bringing in the latest hit from Sundance or Slamdance. The sense of regionalism started to disappear a bit, too. While there was good and bad to this, you could still argue that film fests were fulfilling an important mission of connecting regional audiences to films they wouldn’t get a chance to see otherwise, or to see them on the big screen and with the director in attendance before they went on to broadcast (there wasn’t much streaming yet). When I came back to Atlanta in 2001, there was no Alamo Drafthouse or Landmark Cinema. If George Lefont didn’t show a film at his theaters (two of which are now operated by AFF head Christopher Escobar), or Linda Dubler didn’t program it at the High Museum, or we didn’t show it at the Atlanta Film Festival, you might not ever see it. That isn’t quite as true anymore, as almost everything ends up online somewhere, and many festivals are premiering films just weeks before they launch in theaters and/or online. The need to satisfy sponsors, press, and larger audiences has led to some slippage in the mission to showcase the truly new, or more challenging works (I know there are exceptions everywhere). 

Film fests were also important for another reason that remains relevant – qualifying for the Oscars. One of the most anticipated films of 2001 at the Atlanta Film & Video Festival was a homecoming film from two local film hero’s – Ray McKinnon and Walton Goggins, who had made The Accountant, and they were both in attendance and nervous as f#ck, because they needed to win the Best Short award at an Academy Qualifying festival, which we were (and the fest still is), and Atlanta was clearly their best shot at winning. But it wasn’t a sure thing – you might think so in retrospect, but we had a jury that wasn’t from Atlanta, and the jury got to make the decision, not the numerous film big whigs, local politicians and donors who kept calling me every day trying to ensure their win. They won the award and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short, and to this day, I think it’s one of the best shorts I’ve seen. Luckily, I’ll get to talk to Ray about it onstage this weekend.

But, here’s the thing – these were two very successful actors, and Ray has serious directing chops. They’re better known now, but they had to fight like hell to get attention for their art. They also made the film they wanted to make, and that was a thirty-minute short. To this day, the irony of short films is that longer shorts do better with the Academy voters, but they don’t do well with fest programmers, who like 10–20-minute shorts. A 30-minute short is competing with two 15 min shorts, or three 10 minute ones for a slot, and programmers want to showcase more films, and (perhaps wrongly??) think that audiences have a tough time with longer shorts in a program. And after they made the film and won the award – life didn’t get easier. Ray had to work like hell with his wife/producer and actress, Lisa Blount (who tragically passed away in 2010) to make their next indie film, Chrystal, which is brilliant (Blount’s performance is incredible). Today, people look at Ray and Walton and think this was all inevitable, but it was hard work, and while it was assisted in small ways by fests like Atlanta and Sundance, most of their success came from their talent alone. 

But if they were doing the same film today, they’d have an even harder time. Back then, they could win Atlanta and then do a bit of campaigning and have a chance at winning with the artistry of the film, and their names (the actor branch knew them well and over-indexes on voting, apparently). Today, they would need to get picked up by an HBO, Netflix or New Yorker, or maybe Garden & Gun (?!) – someone who would also foot the $500K approximate bill to run a successful awards campaign these days. Shorts have become their own little industry, and the competition for the awards has become a big business.

Back in 2001, I had also convinced Will Packer to join the board of IMAGE. He was already a producer to watch in Atlanta but hadn’t won that actual award yet (from Variety and then others). In fact, at that time, Will was mainly known for Trois, which had come out the year before, and was one of the highest grossing films of that year, and at one point it had a higher per screen average than any film in theaters. But not unlike now, Will and his creative partner at the time, Rob Hardy, could barely get attention before then from anyone in Atlanta, much less Hollywood. Or let’s be honest – anyone White. They had the attention of Black audiences and had executed one of the most successful reverse tier theatrical releases perhaps of all time (they opened in small cities in the South which had large African American populations, and used that word of mouth to then open later in NYC and LA). He was also a pioneer of a type of brand funded film – having Bronner Brothers as an investor, and then a marketing partner as well, meaning you couldn’t go to a Black owned hair salon in the US and not see marketing for the film. 

I was at an early meeting of what became the Georgia Production Partnership – the group that formed in the early 2000’s and helped lobby for the tax incentives that put Georgia (back) on the map, when Will stood up and essentially said – I’m here with a film with the top per-screen average in America and you guys need to be supporting filmmakers like me, not just hunting for Hollywood to come here. I nodded my head in agreement and then looked over and realized I had gone to high school with this crazy kid. We reconnected and yes, we had even been on the football team at the same time – Will was younger so he was JV when I was Varsity, but he could actually play ball and I mostly sat the bench. Which is a fair comparison of our careers to this day (Will is not penning an ode to the AFF tonight, I bet), but trust me when I say getting out of St. Pete Florida and into any part of the film business at that time was not an easy endeavor for anyone. Obviously, Will has gone on to make Billions – yes with a B – at the box office. But even Will has had to admit that today, it’s no easier to get his films made – especially a romantic comedy with two (great) Black leads. 

But Will’s take on the state of the business is also very interesting. As he told Deadline:

 “It’s hard to get any film made. It always has been. It is doubly hard in today’s environment. There’s an oversaturation of content in the market. Audiences can watch anything, anywhere, anytime they want. That means you’ve got to do something else to stand out.  Industries ebb and flow, and we’re definitely in an ebb right now in terms of Hollywood production. There has been a decline in the number of projects being made by Hollywood. So the long answer is that, yeah, it was really hard to get this movie made. Additionally, this movie has two Black leads. Hollywood is making less in general, so you know they’re proportionately making fewer projects starring Black people. I had to work really hard to make this happen, but that’s what I do. That is my job. But even for somebody with my pedigree, it was difficult.”

It’s not only that it’s hard to get a film with Black stars made today – it’s that we live in the attention economy, and that Hollywood is making less (see consolidation, but that’s another story). But Will knows his job – to get shit done. And that’s what producers were doing back in 2001 and today – figuring out how to make the impossible seem inevitable. That’s one reason he’s getting honored at the AFF Gala this Friday night, and they’re creating a producer’s award named in his honor this year, which will go the very prolific Alex Orr.

As I look back at the 25^th Anniversary year of the fest, three other things stand out. First, I used to be able to complain that none of the local journalists and critics gave us enough attention. But I didn’t know how lucky I had it back then. The local paper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, was a real newspaper, even with a publisher who wanted it to become more like USA Today. At that time, we had two major critics of note at the daily paper, and we had a few more over at the very successful (for the times) local weekly, Creative Loafing. And you could even hope for an occasional article from the local business paper, or numerous other, smaller weeklies and monthly zines. I don’t live in Atlanta anymore or follow its local scene, but in spite of some good local press this year (and at least one familiar writer still in the mix), no one can deny that local press has been decimated, and that coverage, much less actual criticism has nearly disappeared from the equation.

Second, the debates on the technology shaping the future continue to dominate the discussion but will likely seem overblown and quaint years from now. Back in the 70’s it was VHS. In the early 90s, I had an argument with someone over whether the DVD would supplant the laser disc (?!), and the 25^th AFF had a few panels on the impact of digital on filmmaking. Weird side fact – the Atlanta Film Fest was also one of the first to feature true digital projection, which was a luck of the draw thing because Digital Projection Inc. was located just up the road, and was the prominent manufacturer of early digital projectors (I hear they don’t even support the festival anymore). We also had one of the first satellite to digital projection screenings – a precursor of web delivery and later DCP’s thanks again to Digital Projection, Inc, and Lance Weiler, who was always cutting-edge. But I remember close to knock-down, drag-out fights over the rise of digital with local cinematographers and cinephiles back then, all of which seem quaint now. I suspect those same arguments will be happening at the 50^th AFF this year, but concerning AI, and they might be just as quaint in 25 years (if we’re still alive…). 

Third, getting support for the arts, and finding your audience, is hard in any town, but it was and remains especially hard in Atlanta. For the 25^th Anniversary, we made a concerted effort to get more corporate and local business support. That worked for a few years, but we never got the level of support of arts organizations in any other similarly sized city. A glance at this year’s sponsor list shows some great local supporters (and thanks to them), but none of the major sponsors that you would expect for a festival hitting its 50^th year. Atlanta is also a city of sprawl, and getting audiences to come into town and find parking to see an independent movie remains an issue. There’s a sizable movie-going audience in Atlanta, but it has never translated to the consistent audiences you see in a town like Cleveland, for example, where their film fest sells out almost every screening, and there’s a palpable excitement in the air when the festival is taking place. I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of sponsorship, which leads to a lack of marketing funds. It also has to do with the state of the press in town – SXSW was started by the team who ran the Austin Chronicle, and that was never happening in Atlanta. Despite 50 years of amazing programming and dedicated staff and fans, my hunch is that there are still large chunks of the movie-going audience in Atlanta who don’t even know the town has a world-class film fest. 

Despite all of that, the festival continues. It’s being led by someone – Christopher Escobar - who is passionate about cinemagoing in Atlanta, and who cares about this history and knows exhibition and festivals intimately.  And with all the changes to the industry, film fests like the AFF remain vitally important, maybe more now than back in 1976. We face a time of abundance, where we have thousands of titles to choose from, and millions of hours uploaded to YouTube every minute. But finding what you want to watch is harder than ever and breaking through that noise as a filmmaker is harder than before, so you need curators and festivals to help you reach an audience. And filmmakers need a place to show their films to an in-person audience, which is increasingly difficult for indie films, as the major streamers buy fewer indie films, and too few theaters can afford to take a chance on giving a screen to a little indie that might could. Festivals remain a place where a community can come together to celebrate film, to learn from other filmmakers and industry, and see new work they probably won’t see anywhere else. Challenges remain, but this is also a time of opportunity. As Sundance moves to Boulder – after seriously considering a move to Atlanta – anything is possible as we look towards the next fifty years of the Atlanta Film Festival. 

I plan to chat about this on a panel at the Atlanta Film Festival this Friday, and after I see what’s going on at the 50^th Anniversary, I’ll report back here on what I think might happen in the next fifty years, not just at the Atlanta Film Fesival, but also with film fests more broadly.