I built and ran Film Initiative with a friend at the time. It was an independent-film website with articles, interviews, news, and a small forum. We launched it in 2001 and closed it in 2003.
I had been trying to recover the site for years. The Wayback Machine has 65 captures between July 2001 and July 2025, though many are incomplete. This version draws on the front pages from September 29, 2002, February 1, 2003, and February 19, 2003. I also recovered the About and Features pages and five forum threads.
The stylesheet survived. The images did not. I rebuilt the layout from the original measurements, colours, class names, and screenshots. Links to recovered material open local notes. Empty controls lead to a short notice instead of a dead page.
Features in focus
An interview with Mats Evenson
Mats Evenson discusses the Swedish Film Industry, his acting process, what he looks for in a director, and the unique challenges involved in playing the prince of darkness.
An interview with John Fries
John Fries discusses Urban Legends, what it's like shooting without a budget, and his short film Blue Myst Road, which was shot over a one year period within the Pittsburgh area.
Adventures in cannibalism
In May of 2000, four members of Left South Productions, including myself, walked into a seventy acre wooded area, in High Ridge, MO. Two years later, the DNA strand of my film debut, Cannibal, collects tech-dust inside an expensive computer...
Previous features
Latest forum threads
> New RSS feeds [0]
> I need a help with my logline [0]
> Filming in Uzbekistan [0]
> Your favorite movies [2]
> Questioning the Academy Awards selection process [1]
> What is an independent film? [16]
> What do you think it takes to be a professional critic [10]
> Congratulations [1]
News
Know something we don't? Submit it.
Rebel with a cause
It's an old story, a beleaguered director facing the Hollywood machine, bearing the weight of alienation which has stifled so many remarkable artists. Yes, this is another reconstruction of the events leading up to the demise of Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote.
Echoing critic Jack Mathews, Gilliam truly is one of the most original minds in filmmaking, and the possibility of experiencing his realization of Don Quixote is indeed an enticing vision.
Making history in one take
Russian Ark was shot in one day, with a single continuous tracking shot, preceded by over two years preparation and the creation of a new hard-disk technology.
This is quite a feat for Tilman Büttner, a former Steadicam operator and new member of that elite club known for groundbreaking Cinematography.
A voice for Palestine
From the opening scene of Santa Clause being chased up a hill overlooking Nazareth, to the almost frantic poetry of the film's visuals, Divine Inspiration takes you on a journey through the absurdities of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.
Elia Suleiman's Jury prize-winning film at last year's Cannes, displays his "cultural baggage" admirably, addressing the grave realities of his homeland with the kind of comic jest that makes the horror and madness of a people cut off from any sense of sanity almost bearable.
Peter Jackson takes aim at NZ Film Commission
Two members of the New Zealand Film Commission have been uninvited from the premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This slight is a result of the recent liquidation of Kahakura Productions, and the way the commission handled the film Kombi Nation.
Peter Jackson has called upon the New Zealand government to investigate the liquidation process, and is in turn condemning the New Zealand Film Commission for its lack of competency in its role of getting New Zealand films out before the public.
While the New Zealand Film Commission diverts blame, and criticizes Jackson's unfairness regarding the matter, Kombi Nation sits in a canister somewhere collecting dust.
More recovered news
Telefilm Canada tightening its grip
Telefilm Canada, the primary provider of financial assistance for the filmmaking community in Canada has just released their 2003-2004 Guidelines, which will severely limit available funding opportunities for Canadian companies.
This reliance on Box Office receipts for investment percentages, the performance envelope, will force many smaller companies, previously depending on Telefilm's financing, to rethink their business plans, or apply for funding elsewhere, in an already starved marketplace.
The Warrior is British
It seems that there's still some common sense left in the world; right on the heels of the Oscar's rejection of The Warrior, The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has confirmed that it considers The Warrior to be British.
Terry Gilliam recovering from Don Quixote
Between floods, financing problems, the illness of an actor, and the inability to get work as a fantasist--when the genre is the biggest that it's ever been--has finally pushed Terry Gilliam over the edge, into Italy, where he puts one rock on top of the other...
Kevin Spacey talks about TriggerStreet.com
Within the first 16 days, 28,000 people registered, 450 short films and over 800 screenplays were submitted, with a total of 13000 reviews. To say it's a hit is an understatement, and incidentally, the production company of the same name doesn't profit from the website.
Jubilee celebration
The Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee is looking for local as well as international entries for their juried festival.
The early deadline submission is December 1, 2002, with the final concluding January 14, 2003.
Competitive filmmaking?
1st round finalists have been selected to take part in Midnight Movie Making Madness on October 4-6. Teams of filmmakers will compete to create two short films, with a random subject and genre.
Atlantic Film Festival awards
The 22nd Atlantic Film Festival has wrapped, with Thom Fitzgerald's The Wild Dogs winning for Best Canadian Feature and Shandi Mitchell's Baba's House winning for best short film. The People's Choice Award for Best Picture went to Michael Moore for his film Bowling for Columbine.
Francis Ford Coppola honored
In 1969, Francis Ford Coppola received the Gold Shell award for The Rain People at the San Sebastian Film festival, and 33 years later the festival pays homage to the filmmaker that influenced so many.
What the feeds recovered
I also found three surviving feed files. The fullest is an RSS 2.0 snapshot dated 26 April 2003. It preserves post identifiers, dates, and short descriptions. It also recovered several later entries whose pages are now missing:
- a notice that Film Initiative would be closing, posted 9 April 2003
- an extended deadline for the 2003 IFP/Los Angeles Screenwriters Lab
- notes on networked digital cinema, Because of Mama, Dramatica Pro, screenplay titles, American film-production tax credits, and John Cameron Mitchell’s next film
The closing notice begins: “Film Initiative will be closing down, very soon, perhaps indefinitely.” The feed truncates the rest. I do not remember writing it. Finding that sentence was the oddest part of rebuilding the site: an old database still knew what I had said after I had forgotten it.
The two January 2003 feeds contain the same fifteen entries. The RSS 2.0 version supplies timestamps, beginning with “Steven Buscemi Defines Independent” on 10 November 2002 and ending with “A Voice for Palestine” on 13 January 2003. I have kept copies here: RDF and RSS 2.0.
The original source also contained a comment I had left for people looking at the code:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Steal my code,
But for god’s sake give me credit.
What? It sucked? Do I look like a damned poet?
What I was on about
The site treated independent film as a practical community. The About page talks about apprenticeship, access to working filmmakers, and the internet as a place to exchange useful information. The news posts are preoccupied with production costs, public funding, distribution, and institutional rules. The forum is smaller and less formal. People posted loglines, promoted locations, compared favourite films, and argued about the Academy Awards.
I was also unusually interested in the machinery of the web. XHTML, CSS, RSS in four formats, browser warnings, syndication, and the source-code joke all received prominent space. When web standards were visible explains that part of it.
Recovered pages: About · Features · Forum
Related: Filmmaking in Saint John · Saint John on screen · Insecular (2012–2013) · When web standards were visible · Museum