Thom Powers famous quotes

When you're at a film festival, you have a rapt and enthused audience and if you can point them to a Kickstarter campaign, that's a great way to leverage that enthusiasm. Even if you don't need finishing funds, it's a way to get outreach funds.
-- Thom Powers

#Enthusiasm #Film #Fund

I think for a film that has real theatrical potential a sales agent is key. For a film that may find it tougher in the American marketplace, such as many of the docs in the world competition that may not be competing for deals - any subtitled film has a harder time in this marketplace - for those films I don't know that a sales agent necessarily helps for the kinds of smaller deals that may or may not be offered.
-- Thom Powers

#Real #Thinking #Keys

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film.
-- Thom Powers

#Running #New York #Thinking

For some reason at Sundance, more than other festivals that I'm aware of, you find filmmakers rushing to screen works that sometimes aren't completed. In my seven years of programming at Toronto, I'm not aware of any documentaries that went back for serious editing after their premiere - other than those presented as works-in-progress. But at Sundance every year there seems to be a few films that push the deadline so hard that they get taken back to the edit room afterwards.
-- Thom Powers

#Taken #Editing #Years

You can start a documentary with just a camera, as opposed to a fiction film where you need actors, a crew, a script, a lot more start-up resources. It may be self-perpetuating.
-- Thom Powers

#Self #Cameras #Needs

It's a reality of film festivals that you can't see everything. You're dividing your time between seeing films and utilizing that unique space to have meetings with people that you can't otherwise.
-- Thom Powers

#Unique #Reality #Space

I think certain filmmakers going into Sundance or other big festivals should consider screening more for press and tastemakers before the festival. The traditional wisdom has always been the opposite: to not screen for anyone prior, let your film be seen by an audience, and generate the buzz from there.
-- Thom Powers

#Thinking #Opposites #Festivals

Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.

The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests.

AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FILM. Exacting, enraging and revelatory. A clear, temperate and devastating account of high level arrogance and incompetence.

A successful film is a good film, and a non-successful film is a bad film. It's as simple as that.

I'm always honored, but I think for every 100 of those that come along, one of them is actually going to happen. And, the fact that this was an offer on a major film that had a start date, was pretty impressive.

It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.

The body must be credited with an immense fund of know-how.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

The mutual fund industry has been built, in a sense, on witchcraft.

Money is not a fund of knowledge.