Josh Sapan is the head of Rainbow Media, the parent company of IFC, Sundance and Mad Men’s AMC. He also understands how digital technologies are directly impacting filmmakers and the film industry and came to talk about it at Independent Film Week.

Josh Sapan with everyone I love from Mad Med (Sapan is on the left)

The conversation began with a look at the particulars of Rainbow Media, specifically IFC and the newly acquired Sundance.   Sundance Selects will bring 50 new (non-fiction) releases from Rainbow per year.    He then went on to explain how Video on Demand (VOD) works and how it is giving independent filmmakers opportunities they never had in the past.

VOD as is stands gives 50 million people the opportunity to see a film vs a theater run which is considerably less.   In fact, Sapan sees the VOD movement today as just the beginning and predicts that in 5 years, independent films on VOD will be able to have 5 million dollar gate (profits) (now they have closer to 1).

The only real challenge here is tearing filmmakers away from their romantic dreams of the movie theater (I’m not sure if you could tear me away..)  Not only are theaters the ideal aesthetic setting for a film but they are also still the general meter of success.   Sapan says that filmmakers need a new point of view for a new world.

Part of the reason for the new world that Sapan cited was the importance of film critics, both in print and online and of bloggers.   Newspapers can only review so many films but bloggers can bring many new, littler films to light for their audiences - creating buzz and giving a little film a chance to succeed.

They went to discuss IFC’s recent acquisition of Steven Soderbergh’s Che and how the four hour movie would be released both in theaters and on VOD (I get to see Che in 2 weeks!).   The dual distribution plan will allow more people to see the four hour film in it’s entirety and also will eventually allow it to be in more theaters.

One of the more interesting moments of the discussion was when Sapan was asked about a project he started called “discarded art.”  What he essentially does is find art that has been thrown away (he goes to art schools on locker cleanout day and finds things in the trash and at flew markets) and auction it off for charity.   I went to the website : http://discardedart.com and reveled in the amount of self portraits that been tossed - it made the me that threw all my self portraits away feel so good.

Overall though things seem good for independent filmmakers - they just need to see the television as their friend and not their enemy.

takepart and buy some art for charity today!

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