The final day of VIFF Industry - the industry event of the Vancouver International Film Festival - focused as in previous years on indie film and programme making.
First off was a series of shorts by documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner profiling comedian Russell Brand, musician Amanda Palmer and street/graphic artist Shepard Fairey (the man behind the Obey the Artist and the Obama 'Hope' posters). Timoner, who made docs DIG! and We Live In Public, recently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to support her online network A Total Disruption. The platform carries interviews with tech entrepreneurs and innovators - like the founders of Reddit and Linked In, as well as clips featuring what it calls “Chief Executive Artists” like Moby and Amanda Palmer.
The snappily edited shorts - similar in style but longer form than the shorts I found at A Total Disruption like the Minecraft one (below) - gave us a sense of the individual’s vision and the disruptive nature of their work.
After the screenings, Timoner talked a bit about her goal with the crowdfunding campaign to support the network. Initially, there were doubts. She felt like she was “jumping off a building”.
Her son had asked her why she was going to ruin her career. On the first day of the campaign she didn’t even make $1,000 of her $96,000 goal. The campaign eventually raised $144,449 with 903 backers.
There wasn’t much time after the films for Timoner’s talk but such was the interest in her work that there was a small crowd gathered to listen to her in the foyer afterwards.