Ava DuVernay’s Array teams with Google for $500,000 filmmaker grant

Ava DuVernay’s arts and social impact collective Array has continually made good on its mission to amplify the careers of underserved creatives and crew members in film and TV, with a number of initiatives across its various production, distribution, and nonprofit arms. Now Array is extending its reach even further with the help of Google. Announced today, June 2, Array is partnering with Google Assistant to offer a $500,000 grant to an emerging filmmaker. The Array + Google Feature Film Grant, which is specifically geared toward creatives from historically underrepresented communities, is intended to cover the production costs of a filmmaker’s first feature and will be staffed through Array Crew , the collective’s database for hiring below-the-line workers. “Our nonprofit organization Array Alliance has had a strong relationship with Google for a couple of years through various initiatives,” DuVernay says. “This partnership came about pretty organically as both teams discussed the furthering and fostering of equitable moviemaking.” The recipient of the grant will be selected by an advisory committee within the independent filmmaking community, including Gabrielle Glore, festival director and head of programming at Urbanworld; Francis Cullado, executive director of Visual Communications Media; Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and executive director of IllumiNative; María Raquel Bozzi, senior director of education and international initiatives at Film Independent; and Smriti Kiran, artistic director of the Mumbai Film Festival. “It was important because we truly believe in collaboration and the community model at Array,” DuVernay says of opting for an outside committee instead of an internal selection process Read More …

This startup lets you make money like an Airbnb host—for screening movies

Back in early March of 2020, Christie Marchese was feeling good. She’d just received a $100,000 investment for a new company that was set to launch that month. Her plan was to apply the Airbnb model to the movie industry and turn individuals into movie screening “hosts” who would be given the tools to organize film screenings in places like churches and community spaces. This would bring smaller, independent films to areas of the county they might not normally travel to, and also allow filmmakers and others to help build a bigger audience for a film that, say, was only destined for streaming.   “Our thought was, can you have a movie theater chain that distributes independent films, foreign-language films, to a much wider network of theaters that aren’t traditionally theaters? Where you don’t have to show a movie five times a day for three weeks to barely break even?” says Marchese, who’d already dabbled in the entertainment space as the founder and former CEO of Picture Motion, a social impact agency that builds campaigns around TV shows and films. “So can we use mixed-use spaces? And can we create a financial model that encourages entrepreneurship or that taps into that—to sound super cheesy—gig economy? Where someone could make $500 hosting a movie one night a week? That’s pretty good money.”   [Image: Kinema] Then, of course, COVID-19 hit. Suddenly a company built around in-person gatherings was an unsustainable proposition. Marchese’s dream of disrupting the movie theater business was put on hold. But rather than wait the pandemic out, she turned to her CTO, Tim Knight, and asked, “can you build a virtual cinema?”   After all, people might not be able to attend a live, screening of a film, but they could attend one digitally. Knight came up with a prototype for a digital platform with built-in, live text chat and video broadcasting capabilities so that after a film is streamed, audiences can participate in a panel discussion or virtual chat with a filmmaker Read More …

Why Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM should be blocked

In Tuesday’s announcement of Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM—the historic film studio behind the Rocky , Legally Blonde , and James Bond  franchises—Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, naturally dropped two major Hollywood buzzwords.   “The real financial value behind this deal,” Hopkins said, “is the treasure trove of” —ding-ding-ding— “ IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality” —ding-ding-ding— “ storytelling .” Yes, in the latest proposed media merger, intellectual property will be married with innovative storytelling to create a company like no other. This has never been done before . . . if you don’t count Disney, Comcast, Sony, ViacomCBS, or the 10-day-old prospective merger of Warner-Discovery. Indeed, just as Marvel and Star Wars spin-off TV shows now populate Disney Plus, prepare yourself for a Rocky -themed reality-TV show (with real boxers!) and as many Bond prequels as Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (the highly protective producers of the franchise) will allow for, to roll out on Amazon Prime Video.   What is more worrisome, though, is the even greater monopolistic foothold that this deal gives one of the world’s richest and most powerful companies, one whose market cap is not in the billions but trillions. Now, beyond just selling its own products, like baby oils, in its own marketplace and thus edging out smaller, independent businesses, Amazon will be doing the same thing with movies and TV shows at a scale of 10 times what it’s currently been doing in entertainment. Read More …

This virtual team-building guide is the cure for Zoom happy hours

As many companies have seen employees working from home for more than a year thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, they’ve been searching for ways beyond conference calls and purely work-focused Zoom meetings for workers to connect online. Naturally, that’s led to an influx of online team-building activities , often replicating the types of activities companies would once engage in for in-person bonding, from wine tastings to virtual escape rooms. But while there’s no shortage of potential Zoom-based social activities for companies to book to entertain employees or clients, it can still be a lot of work for managers to find activities that are right for a particular audience. That was the experience of Healey Cypher, chief operating officer at the venture studio Atomic , who said he found himself spending substantial amounts of time looking for better alternatives to the oft-dreaded Zoom happy hour . The experience led Cypher and his team to experiment with reaching out to vendors offering online experiences and to companies that might be in need of quality group entertainment in order to help pair them together Read More …

How two Southeast Asian superapps beat Uber at its own game

In 2009, while Uber’s cofounders were gearing up to launch, a cadre of young Asian entrepreneurs-to-be entered the MBA program at Harvard Business School. Out of that group came two ride-sharing startups that would evolve quite differently than their American cousins. The company now called Grab was conceived by Malaysian students Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan (no relation) as their entry in a business-plan contest. They didn’t win—but later, they wound up out-Ubering Uber in burgeoning cities across the 10-country ASEAN region in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, another classmate took a zigzag route to the top. Nadiem Makarim, working remotely with buddies back home in Indonesia, started Gojek as a side project while finishing his MBA. This ride-share app has branched into businesses from massage therapy to moviemaking. And just this week Gojek announced the largest business deal in Indonesia’s history, its merger with e-commerce giant Tokopedia. (Disclosure: Golden Gate Ventures is a small shareholder of Gojek via its acquisition of Ruma Mapan. We’ve also invested in Gojek’s spinout, GoPlay.) Both Gojek and Grab are now venture-funded decacorns. Each is headed for a dual IPO on New York and Asian exchanges. And they’re racing to dominate much more than ride-hailing on Southeast Asians’ mobile phone screens. Grab and Gojek each offer what hasn’t yet been seen in the U.S. market: a superapp combo, featuring a payment app that’s a potential gateway to selling anything people may wish to buy. Gojek’s Winding Road Gojek began modestly in 2010. At first it was a “minimum viable product” venture—a local, low-tech operation led on a part-time basis by its faraway founder. Read More …