Since the ‘70s, Emerson’s magazine, the Independent, has strived to surface underground autonomous filmmakers who were overshadowed by big-budget productions.
With film festival coverage and guidance for young filmmakers, the magazine appeals to an audience passionate about the industry and watching movies.
“The Independent has been a resource for making contact with other people in the industry,” said Tim Riley, NPR critic and one of the magazine’s faculty advisors, when talking about the audience that the Independent can help because of its existence. In fact, it was the loyalty of its audience that helped the magazine survive.
“It’s one of the very few of those magazines that started back in those days and have survived,” said Riley. They faced financial problems while still in their infancy, and again during the pandemic when the magazine was launched as a one year class—nonetheless, the now student-run magazine persists, combining contemporary tastes with a strong tradition.
As far as the new ideas of the magazine are concerned, Riley mentioned that its focus shifts every year according to the editorial team that takes over. Through the past couple of years, the magazine has covered multiple different film festivals and has created festival calendars for them.
The Independent also makes sure to bring filmmakers together as a platform where networking events and mixers are announced. Aside from film festivals, the magazine has also gotten involved with interviewing and making profiles of various independent film directors, actors, or screenwriters that are new to the film industry.
According to Riley, writers often compare films that overlap in essays analyzing their techniques and visuals. Essays comparing big-budget movies and independent movies have also been written in order to show the differences between the two types of filmmaking.
The magazine aims to publish two to three times a week and “publish as much stimulating, provocative, and innovative content as possible,” Riley said.
However, that depends on the amount of crew that the magazine will have and the number of pitches they will receive. Riley encourages anyone who is interested in pitching a story to do so, since they don’t have to be a staff member to write a story or an essay.
In fact, the magazine itself relies on outside sources since there are many freelance writers providing stories and pitches. There’s an opportunity for students to ask for coverage of their own independent film if they believe that it can be generative. Riley says they’d love to follow a filmmaker’s journey from start to finish and emphasize the creative process when it comes to making movies.
