Once upon a filmmaking, there was a time in the not so distant past, where I eagerly awaited Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Film, Sundance Film Festival Audience Winners, Festival de Cannes Official Selections, and the IFC Gotham Independent Film Awards.

This morning, the 2016 Gotham Awards nominees were announced. For many insiders, journalists, filmmakers and Academy voting members, today signals the advent of awards season and the red carpet parade. Each year the list of names, production companies and distributors become more recognizable and achingly familiar, leading to the inquiry: Where is the independence? What is independent film?

While posing the rhetorical threat, I will offer some of this year's roster of nominations: Paramount Pictures, Amazon Studios, Roadside Attractions, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, Annette Benning, Natalie Portman and Jeff Bridges. There is nothing particularly independent about said nomenclature and as a producer of independent film, the evolution from indie to Hollywood is to change or evolve the studio system from a closed narrative to an inclusive movie production arena where all stories are told. It is also to emerge from meager budgeted innovative cinema production to fully secured productions capable of being articulated to larger audiences.

With that said, I congratulate the 2016 Gotham Awards nominees, and look forward to not fully knowing any of the winners.

Filmed In A Day

Life In A Day, is a historic global experiment which created the world’s largest user-generated feature film. Life In A Day is a documentary film shot in a single day by well people all over the globe. Produced by Sir Ridley Scott and directed Kevin Macdonald on July 24, 2010, un-famous and non-celebrity world denizens were given 24-hours to capture a glimpse of a day in their lives on camera.

From the more than 80,000 clips submitted, the most compelling and distinctive 1,125 scenes were selected and edited into the final film - an experimental documentary film. The finished film had its world premiere screening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was then made available for worldwide viewing on YouTube, but only for a very limited time.

Now comes its theatrical release, set for July courtesy of National Geographic Entertainment. Life In A Day is groundbreaking, innovative and transcendent filmmaking.">