There is a filmmaker based out of Portland, Oregon named Chris Sparrows who posts a new video on YouTube every Thursday. He is a filmmaker and a storyteller. He is someone in love with the craft. Someone who does anything he can to create using the powers given on the canvas of choice — YouTube. Chris creates so often, it could be argued that festivals mean nothing to him. He lives his dream for his audience, an audience that can already find him.

He doesn’t need the gatekeepers of a film festival to grant him access to the life he’s already seeking and living.

If any of you read IndieWire in the last week and saw the article from Chris O’falt on the news that Amazon is likely to pull ‘Film Festival Stars’ from the market and thereby collapsing the independent scene at Sundance, I’m sure you found it as soul-crushing as I did.

What it means is the last bastion of true independence at Sundance is likely to disappear at this year’s festival.

Instead, the big boys in Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, as well as largest studio-owned independent distributors IFC and Magnolia will likely be the only players showcasing their content for hype.

For the true indies — if they’re there at all, they are not on a level playing field.

No one is buying what they’re selling.

Sara Kiene, head of distribution strategies at non-profit powerhouse Cinereach was quoted “With most audiences finding new content on platforms like Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, I am concerned that films that can’t find suitable homes from one of those outlets — whether from the Festival Stars program or otherwise — will never even have a chance of being discovered.”

Sundance’s ​Creative Distribution Initiative run by director Chris Horton worries the market will move more and more away from niche and other unique movies that Sundance used to celebrate.

“As SVOD platforms focus on original content and acquire fewer films for streaming-only rights, many independents will have challenges reaching wider audiences,” he said. “This shift in priorities, along with the demise of FilmStruck and Fandor and the absence of Prime Video Direct at this year’s Festival, underlines the need for new models for independent film to reach core fans we know are hungry for fresh, original work.” — Horten.

Well, my friends — this is a call to arms.

What this article points to is a problem without a solution and what I am proposing to you all today is two solutions.

The first one — find your niche that appeals to your film and service them online as much as you can. Join their forums, find out where they speak on Reddit and on Facebook. Tweet to them. Show them as much of your content as you can with the aim of eventually giving them your film for free. If the market is interested in what you have to say then you should have an opportunity to service that market again with a follow-up film. One that you can potentially monetize.

The second option I present is MINNIMAL MOVIES — a YouTube channel that I just started this afternoon.

Minnimal Movies exists for you and by you. It is a platform for filmmakers of any age or experience. Basically, if you have picked up a camera and made a film — This is your channel.

This is a channel developed to house true independent films looking to bypass the festival circuit completely, or simply find an audience that they may never have reached.

100 % copyright will belong to you, the filmmaker.

This is just a housing mechanism for your work.

You can send me your film in a downloadable link to minnimalfilm@gmail.com, and I will put it up on Minnimal Movies.

Should the channel adhere to YouTube’s requirements for monetization i.e — reaching 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours watch time, we’ll monetize and give 100 % of the revenue to the contributing filmmakers based on the viewing habits of the audience.

One day a week I will release the analytics for the channel on a subreddit I’ve also created r/independentcinema to show the transparency of which films are entitled to what portion of funds.

Since I’m literally in the process of just inventing this model right now, I’m guessing this will become more solidified based on user-feedback the more we progress down this rabbit-hole.

I know this is not a model that will appeal to everyone — but reading that article told me that an alternate must be invented. This is why I created Minnimal Movies.

As Portland filmmaker, Chris Sparrows says — “Everything is a story”.

I hope you’ll join me and be a part of this story.

Let’s build and unite our tribe.

Let’s save indie cinema.

WATCH OUR CALL TO ACTION HERE: