Are You an Arty Weirdo Making Weird Art? There's a Fund for Your Films Now | No Film School

Dan Schoenbrun’s career trajectory has shown that he is a man on a mission to shake up the filmmaking world, from funding to production to distribution. After serving as one of the initial funding gamechangers as Head of Film Outreach at Kickstarter, he went on to produce innovative films like the SXSW-premiering omnibus collective:unconsciousthat was then released unorthodoxically online via BitTorrent bundles, and a feature-length doc made entirely out of YouTube clips.

“We want to be kind of like Robin Hood if he was really into surrealism and late Tarkovsky.”

Continuing his efforts to both experiment and support a variety of other filmmakers, Schoenbrun has recently teamed up with producer Vanessa McDonnell to curate The Eyeslicer, which the team describes as “a mind-melting variety TV show designed to introduce audiences to the most daring American filmmaking happening right now.” Season one included over 50 shorts from such diverse filmmakers as Frances Bodomo, David Lowery, Lauren Wolkstein, and Yen Tan. Now, you can be part of season two, with a bit of funding for your work to boot.

With The Eyeslicer’s new Radical Film Fund, Schoenbrun and McDonnell are paying-it-forward from a successful Kickstarter campaign to provide $500-$2,000 microgrants to 10–15 original shorts. These can be created in pretty much any style, as long as they’re “personal, provocative, and proudly non-conformist.” The selected proposals are considered commissions, and are expected to be completed by April 2019 for inclusion in season two of The Eyeslicer.

The fund has a philosophy that extends beyond simply putting work into the world. According to a lengthy and useful post detailing what the team is looking for, “We want to be kind of like Robin Hood if he was really into surrealism and late Tarkovsky.” Honoring both their philosophy and true independence for filmmakers, rights to the selected films will be non-exclusive. That way, “We’ll work hard to get the finished shorts out to audiences through the show, and filmmakers will be free to do whatever they want with their shorts outside of The Eyeslicer as well.”

Read the entire post about the fund’s philosophy here and then go ahead and apply by August 17, 2018. If you’ve already completed a weird short film that might be a good fit for Eyeslicer’s second season, you can submit it for consideration now through Film Freeway.

Featured image from 'The Eyeslicer'

the eyeslicer dan schoenbrun

What's the Hype With 'Interstellar' Revisiting Cinemas After a Decade in 70mm IMAX?

Here's Why You Need to Revisit 'Interstellar' in 70mm IMAX

Celebrate the love and hope at the center of Nolan's space epic in the format it was meant to be seen.

If we know anything about Christopher Nolan, he likes to go big. Nolan started with smaller-scale stories (as many of us do) with early noir adjacent works like Following, Memento, and Insomnia, then started going and staying big with his illusionist drama The Prestige. Since then, the scale has been various degrees of massive, with the biggest scope in his time-and-space sprawling epic, Interstellar.

While Interstellarmight not be everyone's favorite Nolan outing, there's no denying it's an impressive feat of filmmaking and his most emotional—if watching Matthew McConaughey's Cooper desperately try to reach his family through quantum space-time doesn't make you cry at least a little bit, what's going on, dude?

With Interstellar'sIMAX release, it's a great time to shed some tears in a public setting in one of the most prestigious film formats around. As we mentioned in our film gauge piece, Nolan loves shooting on film and utilizes 65mm intentionally to provoke a tone of massive scale. In that regard, Interstellar was made for 70mm IMAX. That goes without saying, dawg. That being said, other factors make Interstellar a perfect movie to revisit in theaters while you can.

Let's break down the release further below.

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