Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Mission Statement

Today, an independent filmmaker is a revolutionary fighter, in a prolonged popular war. This is the same war that Free Software and GNU/Linux activists fight against Microsoft; that the Slow Food movement fights against McDonald's; that independent musicians fight against the RIAA and the Apple Music Store; that Fair Trade activists fight against WalMart and the WTO; that the Zapatistas fight against the patriarchal systems of control in Mexico. There are no spoils to be had on this battlefield, and no prospect of a quick and easy victory. Yet, buoyed by belief, and by the lack of a sustainable or sane alternative, the guerilla soldiers on. In the case of feature films, the battle for an independent, personal art form is already won (thanks to the MiniDV tape and the DVD), lost (thanks to the studios and their admirers), and irrelevant, anyway. Irrelevant, because the feature film was the original art form of the twentieth century. It can't be the original art form of the twenty-first, as well.

-Alex Cox,
Director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy