…and one more thing for me to add to my ever-growing reading list…

Said Me lol

As if yesterday wasn’t filled with enough “stop the presses” type news announcements (yes, I’m talking about HBO Max & Warner Bros. 🎤 drop!), OVID.tv decided to drop some good news in our laps as well.

The art-house/indie doc/global cinema streamer has introduced its new companion blog — OVID.tv: metafilm. The streamer says that it aims to be

a gathering place for diverse audiences to find stories behind the films, valuable context, unknown histories, ongoing debates and dialogue in text and video form.

This is right up my alley! They’ve also said that they will be giving folks a peek behind the curtain and opening the books to share with audiences, filmmakers and distribution partners the real number and metric and dollars and cents of the business — this means a lot for indie filmmakers in particular! This is like Criterion Channel (with their blog, behind the scenes commentary and interviews) and Seed & Spark (making the distribution game — and numbers — more transparent for filmmakers) had a baby — and I’m here for it! Unlike the other big name streamers, OVID.tv will make their subscriber numbers and trends (anonymous but accurate), viewership and usage data for all the films on the streamer available.

Making this announcement all the more major, the streamer’s Director and Icarus Films president Jonathan Miller — in an open letter — invited his colleagues, distributors, other VOD and SVOD services and all interested parties to join in on this conversation. OVID.tv strives to be “a part of a vibrant community, part of a movement even…looking for and committed to artistically adventurous, alternative visions and engaged socially-conscious filmmaking.” This is what I’m talking about! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Miller goes on to say that they “want to engage with everyone — with ideas about the films on OVID, what we do and how we can do it better…and about how we can build with supporters and members of OVID, as well as interested critics, producers, distributors and filmmakers, a vibrant space for challenging the corporate media giants, fostering an environment of and for alternative voices and vision.” 🙋🏽‍♀️ I volunteer!!!

metafilm already has some good content on the blog (usage info by title, filmmaker interviews with Madeline Anderson — the first African-American woman to direct a documentary film — and so much more), with more data, articles, interviews and video discussions coming at least twice a week. Head over here to check out the blog. This is the beginning of something good…