The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is produced by Cinequest, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that is also responsible for Picture The Possibilities and the distribution label Cinequest Mavericks Studio LLC. Cinequest awards the annual Maverick Spirit Awards. In addition to over 130 world or U.S. premieres from over 30 countries, the festival hosts writer's events including screenwriting competitions, a shorts program, technology and artistic forums and workshops, student programs, and a silent film accompanied on the theatre organ. Founded in 1990 as the Cinequest Film Festival, the festival was rebranded in 2017 as the Cinequest Film & VR Festival and expanded beyond downtown San Jose to Redwood City. It took its present name in 2019.
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) is an annual film festival organized by the California Film Institute. It takes place each October in Mill Valley, California and welcomes more than 200 filmmakers, representing more than 50 countries, each year.
Picturehouse is an American independent entertainment company owned by CEO Bob Berney and COO Jeanne R. Berney. Based in Los Angeles, the company specializes in film marketing and distribution, both in the U.S. and internationally. Its releases have included La Vie en Rose (2007), which earned an Academy Award for Best Actress for Marion Cotillard, Metallica Through the Never (2013), and Adam Wingard's Sundance Film Festival selection The Guest (2014), an Independent Spirit Award nominee starring Dan Stevens.
Kenneth Turan is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 until 2020 and was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "arguably the most widely read film critic in the town most associated with the making of movies".
IndieWire is a film industry and film criticism website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "include all aspects of Hollywood and the expanding universes of TV and streaming". IndieWire is part of Penske Media.
Mark Cavagnero Associates is a San Francisco, California-based architecture firm, founded by Mark Cavagnero, FAIA in 1988. The Firm's portfolio is of various public-serving projects for public, non-profit and institutional clients.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Patrick Wang is an American writer, economist, director, and actor. His first feature film, the acclaimed hit indie film In the Family, was released in 2011. He later directed the acclaimed two-part indie film A Bread Factory in 2018.
Yoav Potash is a writer and filmmaker whose works include the documentaries Crime After Crime and Food Stamped.
Village Music was a record store in Mill Valley, California owned by John Goddard. It was nationally recognized for its extensive collection of old, rare and specialty records. Village Music was also known for its in-store performances and anniversary parties at the Sweetwater Saloon by well-known musicians who were also Village Music store customers. A documentary about the store's history and the surrounding music community, Village Music: Last of the Great Record Stores, was released in 2012. The store closed in 2007.
Indie Rights, Inc. is an American distributor of independent films, based in Los Angeles, California. Indie Rights is a subsidiary of Nelson Madison Films and was incorporated in 2007 to act as distributor for other independent filmmakers. The corporation began as a private MySpace group where the makers of independent films could get information about the changing face of film distribution; founders Linda Nelson and Michael Madison created Indie Rights so that distribution contracts could be signed by a legal entity. The corporation distributes films largely through video on demand services, though more recently it has overseen such theatrical releases as We Are Kings and Fray, both in 2014.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017. Their first scripted film venture was Nyad, a biopic chronicling Diana Nyad's quest to be the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida.
Madeline's Madeline is a 2018 American drama film written and directed by Josephine Decker. It stars Helena Howard in her first film role, alongside Molly Parker and Miranda July. The film follows a teenage actress who is encouraged by her theater director to blur the lines between the character she is playing and her actual identity. The film is known for its experimental visuals and the improvisational process Decker used to create the story, not unlike the characters themselves.
Rafael Santiago Casal is an American writer, rapper, actor, producer, director, and showrunner originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also an online creator of music, poetry, web shorts, and political commentary.
Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.
Dick Johnson Is Dead is a 2020 American documentary film directed by Kirsten Johnson and co-written by Johnson and Nels Bangerter. The story focuses on Johnson's father Richard, who suffers from dementia, portraying different ways—some of them violent "accidents"—in which he could ultimately die. In each scenario, the elderly Johnson plays along with his daughter's black humor and imaginative fantasies. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling. It was released on Netflix on October 2, 2020.
Time is a 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson and her fight for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.
Nicole Newnham is an American documentary film producer, writer, and director known for the Oscar-nominated movie Crip Camp (2020) which she co-directed and produced with James LeBrecht, and the multiple-Emmy-nominated film The Rape of Europa. With the Australian artist/director Lynette Wallworth, she produced the virtual reality work Collisions, which won the 2017 Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary, and Awavena, which won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary. Both Collisions and Awavena premiered simultaneously at Sundance and the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Awavena was selected for the 2018 Venice Biennale. Her most recent film, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. That film also made the influential 2023 DOC NYC Awards Short List and won Special Mention for Editing, edited by Eileen Meyer.
Darius Marder is an American film director, screenwriter, and editor from Massachusetts. He is known for directing and co-writing Sound of Metal, for which he was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film received a total of six nominations at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning Best Editing and Best Sound. Marder also edited the Academy Award-winning documentary Freeheld (2007).
Britta H. Sjogren is an independent filmmaker and academic.
