My contribution to the growing FilmStack inspiration challenge.
Shout out to the Filmstack community as a whole and Ted Hope and Avi Setton for asking me to contribute to the FilmStack Inspiration challenge.
Distribution is Political
As I’ve written before, my introduction to film was joining the punk rock documentary collective Target Video in the early 80s. I fell in love with how a group of outsiders were taking media – music and film – into their own hands. As a neo-Marxist/anarchist economics student at UC Berkeley, I saw how the structure of media within late stage capitalism was, if not suppressing voices, certainly blocking a wide and diverse range of opinions and artforms – and the birth of DIY showed a path where artists could reach audiences directly.
All these years later this is still the same if not getting worse. We are in the midst of growing suppression of speech from schools to major media outlets. The disruption of our industry over the past decade has resulted in a few large media conglomerates that more than ever not only control the means of production, but more importantly control the means of distribution and the means of audience attention, making it harder and harder for diverse and challenging work. This involves overt cancellation of shows/Colbert to media platforms paying homage to the autocrat in the White House. But not all of the suppression is overt – in film sales today there is a general awareness that the platforms and studios are not touching anything political (read progressive political). Social media platforms regularly shadow ban content and social advertising for progressive leaning projects.
I got into filmmaking because I believed in the power of stories to challenge dominant narratives, to shift culture, to spark change. But storytelling doesn’t matter if no one sees the stories. Distribution is what moves an idea from the screen to the streets—from intention to impact. In our late capitalist society, it’s the primary mechanism by which art reaches public consciousness, and therefore, the public square. No distribution means no audience. No audience means no conversation. And without conversation, there’s no democracy—just a monologue. This is what has inspired me to devote so much of my career to helping other filmmakers distribute and market their films.
Distribution is Community
While so much media content is consumed in silos, accelerated by streaming platforms business models, I am continually inspired by the power that cinema has when seen in community with other humans. I still remember the first time I saw The Librarians, the first theatrical screening of The First Step, recently One Battle After Another and all these years later the first time I saw Target Video at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. This is why I keep writing about event/theatrical releases.
We are yearning to be in community – especially in the face of the techno-futurist/techno-fascist takeover we are witnessing. As Kyle Chayka writes in Filterworld
“This book is an attempt to reclaim our experiences from recommendation systems—to revisit the things we like and experience together. . . . Real learning happens off the platform—when we finally take time to put things together ourselves.”
Organize and Mobilize
A post about inspiration this week would not be complete without a mention of the election of the new mayor of New York City – Zohran Mamdani. What is particularly inspiring to me, is how he was able to form a coalition that many of us knew existed: young, diverse, working class, upper class progressives (and so many more) and win with a boldly democratic socialist message.
I used to be very involved in political campaigns – I was stuffing envelopes for the National Woman’s Political Caucus when I was nine (thanks to my 2nd wave feminist mom). I worked tirelessly on campaigns after that culminating in being a precinct captain when a former member of the Chicago 7 ran for congress when I was 16. After he lost I realized that everyone I had worked for and believed in had lost. I gave up conventional politics and then found punk rock.
It feels different now – the democratic party seems to have a chance to be invigorated by democratic socialists – and other young leaders who are winning on the progressive left using people power to oppose oligarchs. It was heartening to see a large grassroots organizing effort with over 100,000 volunteers (me among them) overcome the tens of millions of dollars spent to defeat Zohran. It gives hope that perhaps this democracy might work. I am currently reading an excellent book on organizing v& movement building: This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler. Highly recommended for anyone interested in social change at this moment. I’ve written before about how reading the book Chokepoint Capitalism helped inspire me to co-found the Future Film Coalition to mobilize our field to fight for a level playing field and sustainability.
Why Art Inspires Me
“This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.” ― Maria Popova
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Berthold Brecht
Seeing those Target Videos caused me to give up a scholarship in economics at Stanford University and live in a rat infested loft in the San Francisco mission district shooting punk rock bands. It changed my life profoundly and I know it did for people I met on tour. Since then much of my own personal work has involved stories of artists – either musicians, graffiti and street artists, or performance artists. Even my podcast about people’s psychedelic experiences, Plantscendence focuses on artists and how their journeys enhanced their creativity.
Being able to help artists bring their work into the world excites and motivates me every day.https://jonreiss.substack.com/p/distribution-is-democracyfilmstack