indieWire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

indieWIRE is a daily news and social networking site for the international independent film community. It covers indie, documentary and foreign language films, as well industry news, film festival reports, filmmaker interviews, and movie reviews. The website has sections for high-profile film festivals, the indieLOOP community, filmmaker and industry weblogs, as well as resources and tools for emerging and established filmmakers.

Contents

[edit] History

The site launched on July 15, 1996.[1] Following in the footsteps of various web- and AOL-based editorial ventures, indieWIRE was launched as a free daily email publication in the summer of 1996 by a group of New York and Los Angeles based filmmakers and writers. Initially distributed to a few hundred subscribers, the readership grew rapidly, passing 6,000 in the fall of 1997.[citation needed]

[edit] Sundance '97

In January 1997, indieWIRE made its first appearance at the Sundance Film Festival to begin their coverage of film festivals. It offered indieWIRE: On The Scene print dailies in addition to online coverage. Printed on site, in low tech black and white style, the publication was able to scoop traditional Hollywood trade dailies Variety and The Hollywood Reporter due to the delay these latter publications had for being printed in Los Angeles. Due to a zealous staff that was willing to print and distribute said dailies at all hours of the day and night, often handing them out to audiences waiting on line for films, indieWIRE was soon dubbed The School Paper.[citation needed] While the style and look of the print dailies improved over the years, the nickname stuck.

[edit] Fee-based service

In January 1998, indieWIRE announced it would be charging for their services. While met with cautious optimism by Wired magazine,[2] the experiment failed and indieWIRE returned to a free service less than a year later.

[edit] Reception

indieWIRE is said to cover lesser known film events ignored from the mainstream perspective.[3] Forbes gave it the 2002 "Best of the Web" award.[4] indieWIRE has been praised by Roger Ebert,[5] Kevin Smith, James Schamus, and Tom Barnard.[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The New York Times and Emerging Pictures in Association With the ...", MarketWatch. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "IndieWIRE now in its eleventh year ... is the leading source of ..." 
  2. ^ Brown, Janelle (December 22, 1997), Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1997/12/9312
  3. ^ "indieWIRE", Wired. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "Currently, indieWIRE has little to no competition: trades like Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety may cover independent film, but from a Hollywood perspective, hidden by a huge amount of mainstream news. As filmmaker Doug Wolens points out, indieWIRE is one of the few places where filmmakers can consistently and reliably keep on top of often-ignored small film festivals, what films are opening, and what other filmmakers are thinking." 
  4. ^ "Best of the Web", Forbes Magazine, March 25, 2002. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  5. ^ "Unknown title", Yahoo Internet Life, 1999-06-18. 

[edit] External links