It's clear to me that there's at least one person on the inside at Sundance who wants to take more risks and screen films that don't don't fit neatly into the monoculture - he basically told me as much during their deliberations in October 2022 before Sundance ultimately passed on my film, which remains unreleased because 30 other festivals also passed on it after that - but it also really seems as though his hands must be tied by the culture and ideology that's captured Sundance (and the vast majority of the rest of the nonprofit institutional film world as well) over the past several years.
The sense I get is that he wanted to pull things in a new direction after what happened with Jihad Rehab, but simply didn't have the power to do so as one programmer, even a veteran programmer.
Still, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at some NEA meetings right now. Beyond the artistic constriction, there's also clearly been a great deal of illegal discrimination taking place in the context of these nonprofit institutions in recent years, and, as weird as it is for me to find myself thanking the Trump administration, it really looks like the new executive orders about DEI are going to start pushing things back in the right direction again. Guess we'll see how things play out.
Your piece is really thoughtful and well done. Deserves a wide audience, and I say this as a Catholic who wouldn't be wild about some themes. That's not really the point of course. Great job.
It's a good piece, and I'm sorry you've been dealing with these issues as well (although I'm glad you've been spreading the word about this for some time).
The way all of this has affected our culture (and god knows how many individual artists) really is incalculable.
(Just as an aside: it looks like the link to Part II is no longer working!)
wow, that's so interesting. I'm so sorry to hear about your movie, and am looking forward to reading your post. Yes, I hope the executive orders push things in a more sensible direction.
Admittedly my film covers some thoroughly edgy subject matter and might have been a difficult sell even ten or fifteen years ago, before what you describe as "the great chill," but knowing that a guy who's been watching thousands of the best films made over the past twenty years (somebody who's ostensibly one of the top festival programmers in the world) appreciated it and was considering playing it at Sundance while it simultaneously can't seem to get into any film festivals certainly is a trip.
One odd element of this equation is that the film features no shortage of climate doomerism, although near the end that narrative is called into question, to some extent. Viewers are left to decide how they feel about the film's subjects and their actions.
A lot of what's happened may come down to Nina Paley's presence in the movie. She was denounced as a TERF in 2017 while we were in production (although the film doesn't get into that at all; it's a retrospective piece about the 90s). Before being cancelled, she had connections in the film world and even played a short at Sundance back in the early 2000s. Trans issues are also presented in a heterodox manner and the film's trans protagonist is certainly problematic, to say the least. It seems very likely that the idea of a straight white male director making a film about a problematic trans figure played a role in what happened as well.
I've largely made my peace with it now, and have been tentatively planning my own substack release. That said, with these executive orders coming through, I now find myself conflicted. Does this mean the movie will once again be a viable candidate for festivals in another year or two? Or am I just waiting around for nothing?
It's difficult of course, because I'm largely a nobody, even though my previous (significantly more rough around the edges) film about perennial presidential candidate Vermin Supreme played at a few fests and wasn't entirely ignored. So far as I can tell, I've put an inordinate amount of work into doing what needs to be done to at least get somewhere in this industry, but in the institutional contexts, I don't seem to get anywhere. It feels as though I've been almost entirely blocked out and excluded from the whole thing.
In any event, if anyone reading doesn't have time to read my lengthy essay on the matter and is interested in the film, here's a five minute trailer:
I forget who did the research, but someone determined that few books by political conservatives appear in school libraries. But books by political liberals flourish. Don't bet on finding either of the Bush's books, or Trump, or Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul. But try to find a school library that DOESN''T have books by both Obamas, Hilary, Joe Biden, etc.
You don't have to be mindless hypocrite to be a progressive, but it helps.
Oh yeah, I think The Free Press wrote about that. So all those righty books aren't banned bc they were never allowed in the first place! That's a slick move -- those who control what goes into a public library can create their own little monocultures and still claim to be free speech martyrs!
also - lots of righty books don't even get picked up from the big publishers or agents to begin with, so those manuscripts are stuck at the bottom of the drawer forever.
oh yeah - don't get me started on the public libraries! While I love them and go weekly, I still notice even in my free Florida state - on the new books shelves, the books approved by progressives to conservatives are probably 2:1. And when I look at the librarians and staff employed.... well, let's just say they represent DEI hiring practices.
Good points, LB. The censorship runs deep and ironically ideological intolerance by the gatekeepers let's them tell the outside world that the Eight Percenters are the ones being censored! To be fair, it does happen sometimes but not as often as the other way around.
Isn’t amazing that many of the same people who complain about misinformation on social media sites like X and Facebook also assert the ridiculous notion that a man can become a woman. Is any statement more a prime example of misinformation than that piece of nonsense?
Yeah, your narrative lost me, timeline-wise. I thought we were in 2025, then suddenly it's 2010, or is it? Then someplace else? I can't tell what time your base frame of reference is in, from whence all your past/present/future tenses should spring, nor when if ever you shift your base.
It's clear to me that there's at least one person on the inside at Sundance who wants to take more risks and screen films that don't don't fit neatly into the monoculture - he basically told me as much during their deliberations in October 2022 before Sundance ultimately passed on my film, which remains unreleased because 30 other festivals also passed on it after that - but it also really seems as though his hands must be tied by the culture and ideology that's captured Sundance (and the vast majority of the rest of the nonprofit institutional film world as well) over the past several years.
https://cinematimshel.substack.com/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently
The sense I get is that he wanted to pull things in a new direction after what happened with Jihad Rehab, but simply didn't have the power to do so as one programmer, even a veteran programmer.
Still, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at some NEA meetings right now. Beyond the artistic constriction, there's also clearly been a great deal of illegal discrimination taking place in the context of these nonprofit institutions in recent years, and, as weird as it is for me to find myself thanking the Trump administration, it really looks like the new executive orders about DEI are going to start pushing things back in the right direction again. Guess we'll see how things play out.
Your piece is really thoughtful and well done. Deserves a wide audience, and I say this as a Catholic who wouldn't be wild about some themes. That's not really the point of course. Great job.
and btw, here's the story of my latest clash with the monoculture: https://thecoddlingmovie.substack.com/p/filmmaking-during-the-great-chill
It's a good piece, and I'm sorry you've been dealing with these issues as well (although I'm glad you've been spreading the word about this for some time).
The way all of this has affected our culture (and god knows how many individual artists) really is incalculable.
(Just as an aside: it looks like the link to Part II is no longer working!)
wow, that's so interesting. I'm so sorry to hear about your movie, and am looking forward to reading your post. Yes, I hope the executive orders push things in a more sensible direction.
Admittedly my film covers some thoroughly edgy subject matter and might have been a difficult sell even ten or fifteen years ago, before what you describe as "the great chill," but knowing that a guy who's been watching thousands of the best films made over the past twenty years (somebody who's ostensibly one of the top festival programmers in the world) appreciated it and was considering playing it at Sundance while it simultaneously can't seem to get into any film festivals certainly is a trip.
One odd element of this equation is that the film features no shortage of climate doomerism, although near the end that narrative is called into question, to some extent. Viewers are left to decide how they feel about the film's subjects and their actions.
A lot of what's happened may come down to Nina Paley's presence in the movie. She was denounced as a TERF in 2017 while we were in production (although the film doesn't get into that at all; it's a retrospective piece about the 90s). Before being cancelled, she had connections in the film world and even played a short at Sundance back in the early 2000s. Trans issues are also presented in a heterodox manner and the film's trans protagonist is certainly problematic, to say the least. It seems very likely that the idea of a straight white male director making a film about a problematic trans figure played a role in what happened as well.
I've largely made my peace with it now, and have been tentatively planning my own substack release. That said, with these executive orders coming through, I now find myself conflicted. Does this mean the movie will once again be a viable candidate for festivals in another year or two? Or am I just waiting around for nothing?
It's difficult of course, because I'm largely a nobody, even though my previous (significantly more rough around the edges) film about perennial presidential candidate Vermin Supreme played at a few fests and wasn't entirely ignored. So far as I can tell, I've put an inordinate amount of work into doing what needs to be done to at least get somewhere in this industry, but in the institutional contexts, I don't seem to get anywhere. It feels as though I've been almost entirely blocked out and excluded from the whole thing.
In any event, if anyone reading doesn't have time to read my lengthy essay on the matter and is interested in the film, here's a five minute trailer:
https://youtu.be/mbNjLqZVbdo?si=u6R2ELj3GE6xTy5B
And a pretty good summary of my predicament from Film Industry Watch:
https://filmindustrywatch.org/when-liberals-are-caught-in-the-dei-crossfire-on-identity-politics-sundance-donald-trump/
I forget who did the research, but someone determined that few books by political conservatives appear in school libraries. But books by political liberals flourish. Don't bet on finding either of the Bush's books, or Trump, or Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul. But try to find a school library that DOESN''T have books by both Obamas, Hilary, Joe Biden, etc.
You don't have to be mindless hypocrite to be a progressive, but it helps.
Oh yeah, I think The Free Press wrote about that. So all those righty books aren't banned bc they were never allowed in the first place! That's a slick move -- those who control what goes into a public library can create their own little monocultures and still claim to be free speech martyrs!
also - lots of righty books don't even get picked up from the big publishers or agents to begin with, so those manuscripts are stuck at the bottom of the drawer forever.
oh yeah - don't get me started on the public libraries! While I love them and go weekly, I still notice even in my free Florida state - on the new books shelves, the books approved by progressives to conservatives are probably 2:1. And when I look at the librarians and staff employed.... well, let's just say they represent DEI hiring practices.
Good points, LB. The censorship runs deep and ironically ideological intolerance by the gatekeepers let's them tell the outside world that the Eight Percenters are the ones being censored! To be fair, it does happen sometimes but not as often as the other way around.
Isn’t amazing that many of the same people who complain about misinformation on social media sites like X and Facebook also assert the ridiculous notion that a man can become a woman. Is any statement more a prime example of misinformation than that piece of nonsense?
Yes, and why then do we have to be bound by the age we've been "assigned" or the species for that matter?
Yeah, your narrative lost me, timeline-wise. I thought we were in 2025, then suddenly it's 2010, or is it? Then someplace else? I can't tell what time your base frame of reference is in, from whence all your past/present/future tenses should spring, nor when if ever you shift your base.
You need some editing help.