Finding your voice, community, feedback, and the soul of cinema....
FSDD #84 is all about support and deeper meaning
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A Reminder to Back up Our Words with Action
Editor’s Note: This slot/write-up was originally supposed to run in November 2025 (in FSDD25), but due to technical glitches never did. We are running it now as originally intended because we think it is important. Please excuse the tardiness.
Mark Hensley breaks down his experience trying to screen his film for FilmStack, which includes being the first film to ever screen on the FilmStack Discord, and going to other festivals, and reminds us that we have to carry our support into the real world and outside of just Film/Substack.
He also reminds us that you can make a film anywhere, about anything, even on a small island in Greece.
Update: It’s funny what time does—even just a few months. Since November 2025, FilmStack and NonDē have burst into the real world with incredible momentum and real, tangible success. Hell, we even went to Slamdance. But Mark’s words are still important. We need to remember to support each other and our work. We need to show up for each other, as best as we can, as much as we can. That’s how we keep this going.
And, obligatory reminder: Not everyone on FilmStack is NonDē and not everyone in NonDē is FilmStack. But regardless of where you fall, we need to support each other (when reasonable and possible).
Also, Mark’s film, Clown N Out, is now streaming! If you didn’t catch it before on Discord (which unfortunately most of us did not), now’s your chance to watch.
(SS)
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Your Script Needs This Feedback…
In fact you as a cinema-maker, as a storyteller, need this feedback. It will not only elevate your script but it will also elevate the way you think. As Charlotte Simmons states:
Simply put, I have no interest in telling you whether something feels too this-way-or-that, or whether something else doesn’t feel this-way-or-that enough. I’d be happy to do so on request, of course, but my experience of your script doesn’t actually have anything to do with the truest, most nutritious version of it; what seems too intense to me might not feel intense enough to another, and we’d both be correct, because we’d only be talking about ourselves, not your script.
So — true to the style I’ve made a name for myself with here on The Treatment — rather than calibrate my feedback according to what I want out of the script and telling you what to change, my approach seeks to directly empower you — the writer — to intuit the best changes/direction for your script as you see fit.
(AS)
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Maybe cinema’s power is a spiritual one
From where I sit, memory and grief are in a perpetual dance. What we choose to remember and choose to forget are inextricable from our human condition of loss. But perhaps most interesting to me right now is Neave Glennon’s insightful investigation of how cinema is the ultimate ghost machine.
Not does it just conjure images that have long since died, but it conjures feelings in us, the watching audience, that translates “an absence into a presence”. Films make something ethereal and untouchable into a visceral reality in us as we watch it. And perhaps that is the most spiritual act of all.
(CR)
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Reminder! KLA Media Group Wants to Promote YOUR Feature! For FREE
Don’t forget to take advantage of this generous offer from Kelli McNeil-Yellen of KLA Media Group! If you have a feature, “old” or new, that is currently publicly available in some form (TVOD counts), then you are eligible to have your film promoted by Kelli and KLA—for FREE! Docs and narratives welcome.
Thank you, Kelli!
Google Form: https://forms.gle/4jcUgjSbYke4jmPp9
Reach out to KLA Media Group directly with questions.
(SS)
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The Long Process of Finding Your Voice
I often talk about how the most important part of becoming a filmmaker is finding your own voice and how it is that voice that will set your work apart from everyone else’s. In this piece filmmaker Mauro Mueller / El Suizo beautifully reflects upon the long process of finding a voice as a storyteller. Discussing how identity, culture, and the stories we keep returning to gradually shape a filmmaker’s perspective, often long before audiences ever see the films themselves.
Whether we like it or not, we start building an identity as storytellers long before the work itself arrives. For a long time I resisted the language of “branding.” It felt corporate, slightly cynical, as if cinema were just another product competing for attention in a crowded marketplace. Filmmaking, at least the version I fell in love with, felt closer to a long conversation about the human condition than a marketing exercise.
But eventually I realized that what people call branding is often something much simpler.
It’s simply the moment when others begin to recognize your voice.
(AS)
BONUS: FilmStack in Action Helping Others
Who’s sharing what, you ask?
ARB= Alex Rollins Berg AS= Amanda Sweikow Avi= Avi Setton CR= Courtney Romano SS= Sara's Soliloquies TH= Ted Hope
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Thank you so much for including and quoting my piece here. It really means a lot to see it resonate within this context and conversation.
What I especially appreciated s this reminder that community only really exists if it translates into action: showing up, supporting, watching, engaging. It’s easy to keep things in the abstract (especially online), but the real impact happens in those small, tangible gestures.
I think that idea connects deeply to filmmaking as well: voice, identity, and community aren’t built in isolation. They’re shaped through exchange, through others reflecting something back to you, just like this.
Grateful to be part of this dialogue and to see these threads connect.