The Film Culture We Want Is Ours to Build

A few weeks before the world shut down in 2020, I was at the Berlin International Film Festival with a friend whose film was premiering there. On Sunday afternoon, during what I remember as church hours, we ended up at a gathering in Kreuzberg filled with filmmakers drinking coffee, eating soup, smoking out the windows, and talking about movies.

Nobody seemed to be pitching anything or trying to get something out of the room. They just wanted to be around other people who cared about cinema as much as they did.

I remember thinking I wanted more of that in my own life.

Los Angeles is filled with filmmakers, screenings, festivals, and film history, but filmmaking itself can still be isolating. You write, edit, raise money, and carry a project for years. You can live in the center of the industry and still feel like you’re doing most of it alone.

It took me a few years to understand how I might recreate some version of that room, but that feeling eventually became Past Present Feature.

Building the Film Conversation I Wanted to Hear

Past Present Feature began as a film and filmmaker appreciation podcast with a simple premise: speak with filmmakers doing exciting work in the present, often while their films are first appearing at Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Berlin, TIFF, NYFF, Locarno, and other major festivals, while also tracing the films and experiences that shaped them.

Which films rearranged their brains? What did they make before anyone knew who they were? What did they learn from the project that failed, the budget that disappeared, or the limitation that forced a better decision?

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