Black Independent Film Champion Michelle Materre dies at 67

Michelle Materre, a distributor and educator who promoted the voices of Black women in films and released influential independent films from Black creators, died March 11 in White Plains, NY. She was 67 years old. A friend, Kathryn Bowser, said the cause was oral cancer. Ms Materre was an early advocate of independently published work …

Still Independent and Still Outstanding

It showed that the “independent” (often shortened to “indie”) culture that emerged in the ’90s was maverick, original, and relatively low-budget. This meant movies that weren’t Hollywood blockbusters, and music that wasn’t released on corporate labels. And while art doesn’t necessarily follow the same moral or economic model, the Independent Art Fair founded by the …