Brian Newman is one of the more trenchant observers on the documentary scene. He’s worn many hats in the industry: as an indie film producer, as the CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, as a programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival, and much more. He currently leads a consultancy called Sub-Genre, doing content, strategy, development, distribution and marketing, for which he writes the Sub-Genre newsletter that a lot of media folks read. He has, as you'll hear in this conversation, some hope for the independent documentary world, even in the face of recent media consolidation, as we talk about how an ecosystem friendly to independent documentary once sprung up, and also how it might be sustained in the world of commercial media. More about Brian here.

Note: In this episode, we mention that one of my favorite films of 2022, Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There,” is not streaming. Reid says he hopes to have it available on iTunes and Amazon on 1/10/24. Highly recommended!

Films mentioned:
Shored Up (2013), Ben Kalina
I Didn’t See You There (2022), Reid Davenport

Other mentions:
Atlanta Film Festival
Tribeca Film Institute
Ted Sarandos
Cara Mertes
Frontline
POV
Independent Lens
Camden International Film Festival
The D-Word
International Documentary Association (IDA)
Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF)
Sundance Film Fe

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Special thanks for helping make this series happen: Sara Archambault, Florence Barrau-Adams, Jon Berman, Ben Cuomo (music), Jax Deluca, Pallavi Deshpande, Nancy Gibbs, Kathleen Hughes, Caroline Kracunas, Laura Manley, Alexis Pancrazi, Liz Schwartz, Jeff Seelbach, Lindsay Underwood (logo/graphics)

This episode was supported by a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.