DIY Filmmaker Digest 8 -- Week of December 8, 2025
Permalink A fresh roundup of links, interviews, and news for DIY filmmakers.A fresh roundup of links, interviews, and news for DIY filmmakers. π‘
Welcome to this week's DIY Filmmaker Digest β part syllabus, part mixtape, part fever dream of cinema's shifting ground. Below you will find: essays and interviews that ask what artists are tinkering with, what systems are breaking, and how you might improvise your own way forward. There's a mild New Mexico bias, plus podcasts, videos, and trailers to keep your queue weird and your outlook restless.
But first, a little business: we have a Kickstarter live right now for a future Dust Wave project -- our friend Melissa Flores needs your help to get Tethered Girl funded! Melissa is a Mexican-American filmmaker and Tethered Girl is her latest short film, a fantasy western performed entirely in Spanish with an all-Spanish-speaking crew! Don't worry gringos, there will be English subtitles π.
The Kickstarter ends Friday, December 12th at 11:59 PM MT. Support Melissa and Tethered Girl before it's too late!
Also -- we're showing Annihilation at the Guild Cinema! Come join us on December 12th at 10:30pm for a screening of the 2018 cosmic horror classic -- buy a ticket here.
And now, the digest:
Articles
Hamnet Review: The Rest Is Silence
βWhat artists actually do is act like field mice, picking up this bit of string and that scrap of metal and configuring it all later into something entirely new, their way of processing the world by filtering it through time and experience.β
How Do You Campaign for the Oscar or BAFTA Short Film Awards?
βCampaigning for short film awards, with its international scope and email blasts, does not come cheap.β
I Didn't Get into Sundance (again).
βIn art, it's not just about sales; prestige and relevance matters too.β
Guillermo del Toro, Richard Linklater and More Predict the Future
βAmong some of their predictions, or at least hopes: a resurgence of indie films, a renewed focus on storytelling, and more reverence for human experiences no AI can simulate.β
The Inside Story of How Netflix Won the Warner Bros. Auction
βThe general feeling in the industry is dire. Most people in Hollywood would have preferred that Warner Bros. remain independent so that the industry doesn't lose another buyer.β
Hal Hartley Is Still Figuring It All Out Onscreen
βSuddenly everybody would let me in the door with my little film. I benefited from that, but [only] for about five or six years, and then everything kind of got co-opted back into corporations again.β
The Best Movies of 2025, According to John Waters
βNew York City is the only place you might have been able to see all of my top ten this year.β
'The Goal Was to Scare a Kid': The Wild World of Films-within-films
βYou're scared shitless, because it's the first thing that the studio will see.β
7 Reasons Why I Believe 2026 Will Be the Year of Microcinemas
βNow that we've lost theaters to streaming, cinema to content, quality to apathy and greed, and an entire generation of filmmakers - with another on the way - let's check our stubbornness, hypocrisy, and gatekeeping the enjoyment of others at the door.β
Surveying the Oscar 2026 Contenders: Documentary Short Film
βOn the other hand, you worry that this elite gatekeeping creates groupthink and forecloses whatever slim dream there might be of meritocratic competition.β
Inside the First Square Peg Social: How Filmmakers Can Benefit
βI don't need to worry about fucking foreign sales. I don't need to worry about algorithms that decide what a value of a project is. I need to worry about my voice and the story I'm trying to tell. That's what's important.β
PBS Frontline Launches Production, Distribution Arm Frontline Features
βThe first four official Frontline Features productions include Oscar contenders 2000 Meters to Andriivka and Antidote.β
Where Have All the Indie Hits Gone?
βIt's part of Netflix's business plan to rob us of hits.β
Encounters with Straub and Huillet and Costa
βIt may be the most religious film yet made by Communists.β
The Chair Company Is a Show About How Fun It Is to Use the Computer
βFor years, the web was something to be explored, clicking hyperlinks and bouncing between sites, but is now the domain of the mega-platforms, which have been perfecting their recommendation algorithms to keep users captive inside walled gardens.β
Here's Everything You Missed from Apple's Immersive Video and Audio Seminar
βThis is maybe the most important topic covered at the seminar and goes over how all of the features support reviewing preview content on Apple Vision Pro, mixing in Spatial Audio, managing camera motion data, and delivery of final bundles using purpose-built presets.β
Interrupting the Amnesic Race Towards the Future: A Conversation with Rick Prelinger
βBut when you think about home movies, they are definitely not cinema. To call home movies a portion of cinema is completely reductive. Home movies are life.β
Podcasts & Videos
The Town with Matthew Belloni - Is Film School Still Worth It? With a Top Dean
"We spend years learning theory and craft, yet step out into a job market that's shrinking, hyper-competitive, and often built on connections more than merit."
The Lack - The Devil's Advocate
"The lawyer cares more about winning than anything else. He puts winning above everything. The truth. The good. The family. Love itself."
Struggle Session - Halloween 2025 with Christopher Jason Bell
"Every Hellraiser is good. Even the one with the fake Pinhead is a really earnest attempt at making a decent Hellraiser movie with an extremely low budget."
Games You Should Only Play Once
"While I had always seen games as art, this game felt like an art piece that you could play."
They'd Never Get Away with This Today ...
"It's the lengths productions go to keep people safe and give the illusion that this is real. New York makes it real."
βNetflix Lightingβ and the Death of Cinematography
"It's a lot easier to make flat and lifeless looking movies than it is to make bold and creative decisions on set that you have to shape your entire production schedule around."
Eye of the Duck - The Lord of the Rings (1978)
"Bakshi is like, no, actually animation can be for adults. It doesn't have to be explicit, although he does make explicit stuff, but it can be nuanced."
Decoder Ring - Videomate: Men
βIt's about how risky it is to be vulnerable and all the things we will forgo that we might love just to avoid that risk.β
Twenty Thousand Hertz - The Secret Soundtracks of Movies & TV
"Filmmakers couldn't afford to commission an original score, so they'd use these cheaper library tracks, and through that process, a lot of this stuff ended up in film soundtracks."
Horrors on the Internet Archive
"This wasn't some elaborate ransom situation or guerrilla marketing campaign. It was just one of the strangest things to come from the early internet."
The Lost Chapter: Yuki's Revenge
βI know you feel you must avenge your sister ...β
Trailers
Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 94 min
Mexico, Fantasy, Horror
4K re-release in theaters Winter 2025
Starring Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook
Dir. John Patton Ford
USA, Comedy, Thriller
In theaters February 20, 2026
Starring Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Ed Harris
Dir. Dennis Cooper, Zac Farley, 92 min
In theaters November 26, 2025
Starring Charlie Nelson Jacobs, Ange Dargent
Dir. Aidan Zamiri, 103 min
UK, Drama
In theaters January 30, 2026
Starring Alexander SkarsgΓ₯rd, Rachel Sennott, Jamie Demetriou, Charli XCX
And that's this week's digest. We just posted pictures from our most recent showcase, Attack of the 50 Ft. Dust Wave! -- go check them out! What an amazing night, I'm still buzzing from it weeks afterwards. Building community and supporting emerging filmmakers is what we're all about, and it was on full display on that night. And we're far from done!
2026. You're not ready for what's coming.
I don't have a Letterboxd or anything, but here are a few movies I've watched (or rewatched) and enjoyed recently:
As always, everything we share is chosen with the same compass: collectivity over ego, experiments over formulas, access over gatekeeping.
Keep making what only you can make, keep passing the torch sideways, and keep stitching together the world we actually want to live in.