By Justin Sanders
Another Slamdance Film Festival has come and gone, and with it, another winner of the CreativeFuture Innovation Award. This year’s winner, Polish filmmaker Barbara Rupik, has a primordial, ancient quality in her approach to visuals and narrative, despite still being a student at the National Film School in Lodz. Her winning film, The... Read more
In early March, before COVID-19 changed the world, VICE published an irresponsible piece of “journalism” headlined “Gen Z Is Leading a New Wave of Internet Piracy”. Now that we’ve settled into our quarantine routine, we want to talk about how bad it is. VICE’s piece, written by Canadian “author” Sarah Hagi,... Read more
By Justin Sanders
It was a dark and stormy night when the online forum r/nosleep closed its doors to the general public. The horror story-themed Reddit forum (known as a “subreddit”) had built a massive following by curating some of the scariest tales on the internet. Its authors had a gift for the spine-tingling detail... Read more
By Ruth Vitale
Stop us if you have heard this one before: a Google-funded organization has cited Google-backed research to spout misleading piracy claims that benefit Google. This time, the guilty party is Re:Create, a purported coalition of “Innovators, Creators and Consumers United for Balanced Copyright.” They started circulating a “fact” sheet titled Copyright Infringement on the... Read more
By Justin Sanders
With their expressive visuals and cartoony speech bubbles, comic books offer the breeziest of reading pleasures, even when the material is dark or heavy. But don’t mistake “breezy” for “easy.” In their acclaimed comic book series, Crowded, the self-described, British-born “comics line art duo” of Ro Stein and Ted Brandt flex an illustrative panache so... Read more
By Justin Sanders
Images courtesy of The Brothers Buoy. So, you want to be an Instagram influencer… First of all, you’re not alone. In a recent study of Americans age 13 to 38, 86% of participants professed to a willingness to post sponsored content on Instagram for money. And 54% would be happy to become... Read more
Consider the word “use.” It can mean both to “take, hold, or deploy (something) as a means of accomplishing a purpose” or to “exploit (a person or situation) for one’s own advantage.” There’s a latent hostility to the word “use” (use drugs, use other people, use up your remaining karma),... Read more
With streaming entrenched as the dominant form of video consumption online, it’s easy to forget that piracy via the illegal downloading of actual files (AKA the old-fashioned way), remains alive and well. In fact, according to digital piracy data firm MUSO, torrent-based digital theft makes up around 20 percent of all... Read more
By Justin Sanders
Let’s be clear – it’s difficult to make a living in any creative pursuit. However, it’s especially difficult to make a living as an author. Say you have the temerity to actually, against all odds, write a book – which, for most people, takes years of toil and strife. Now, you actually have to... Read more
By Justin Sanders
Think of the last time you went on a ride, or strolled through a museum exhibition, or visited an aquarium, zoo, or some other location that was built to be interacted with. You probably remember the way the experience made you feel – thrilled perhaps, or intrigued, or delighted, or bored. But... Read more