Promising new blog: "Self-Reliant Filmmaking"

Tennessee-based filmmaker Paul Harrill has a promising new blog called "Self-Reliant Filmmaking." (Harrill teaches at Temple University, was awarded a Jury Prize for short filmmaking at Sundance, and was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.) From Paul's first post, a declaration of principles:

The purpose of this weblog is to talk about and to encourage the practice of making high-quality films at a low-cost and/or with small-labor systems. A good term for this practice is "Self-Reliant Filmmaking."

Self-reliant filmmaking is interesting for at least two reasons:

Less interference, more production: Self-reliance can let filmmakers bypass in whole or in part the common gatekeepers of cinema production (i.e., studios, production companies, etc.) and exhibition (i.e., major distributors). Needless to say, not needing a corporation’s permission to make a movie can free you to make more of them.

Handcrafting: We believe, quite simply, that the way something is made shapes the nature of the thing itself. Self-reliant films are by definition handcrafted, and this is a good thing for today’s cinema, which needs as many human, soulful works as it can get.

While some might consider this naïve, we see examples of self-reliant filmmaking throughout the history of cinema -- from the Lumiere Brothers' first films up to works by some of today's leading filmmakers, like Abbas Kiarostami and Lars Von Trier.

I look forward to reading more.