Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen helps new filmmakers

Are you an indie filler who longs for insight and guidance, but …

• Can find film Festivals exhausting?
• Panels, distance?
• Lectures, too far away?
• And finally, must serve movies for living or will be completely and irrevocably screwed?

Well, then. Do I have a deal for you.

Lars Knudsen and Ari Asterthe producer and director behind “Heredary” The upcoming “Eddington,” Accepts applications for Square Peg Social and the deadline is July 29. The four-day event in Austin, Texas will provide 20 author directors and 10 producers with programming, private dinners and other intimate gatherings that are all designed to help you make your movie.

Indiewire is the exclusive media partner for the event, which will complete October 23-26. Full application details are here And you can use code indieview for 25% discount on the application fee.

Talk about Zoom from Chicago, where he and Square Peg Partner Aster produce Henry Dunham’s “enemies” In the lead role Austin Butler and Jeremy Allen White Lindar Knudsen a month’s worthy night shot.

He knows it sounds cloud to say he wanted to give back with Square Peg Social (SPS). That said, after making 50 movies, it’s true.

“I just remember that I started and didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Many filmmakers have struggled. Sometimes when I meet them they say it’s super useful just to talk for 30 minutes and give advice on what they do is right, or if there is something I would suggest they do instead.”

SPS sounds like a dream: four days of smart and talented people-one-to-one relationship of prospective filmmakers and like-minded directors, producers, department heads, writers and talent representatives-all hanging around Soho House Austin, with conversations tailored “around what they want to hear.

The design of the event, he said, came out of the necessity.

“There are some producers who are very good at teaching and talking,” he said. “And I’m definitely not one of them. I think I’m much better in a very informal, intimate, one-on-one environment. I can sit with a young filmmaker for two hours and just tell them everything they want to know but put me in front of a lecturer and talk for two hours-it’s just won’t be very productive.”

Knudsen was also inspired by the advice he and his former producing partner, Jay van Hoy, received from Matthew Greenfield (now president of Searchlight Pictures) during the earliest days to get films on your feet.

“Twenty years later, I still thank him,” he said. “He produced for Miguel Arteta at that time. He was someone like Jay and I looked up to and would always call if we had a question. It wasn’t really about getting advice; it was just knowing,” we have never done it before and we don’t know what is around the corner. Are we on the right track? “For him it was probably only 15 minutes on the phone. There is a reason why 20 years later I still remember it.”

Let’s be clear: For the naked eye, Knudsen, 39, seems to have indie production beaten. He has released 50 films and has nine more in different stages of production (including Yorgos Lanthimos “Bugonia,” Which focus will be released this fall), with about 30 projects in play at each given time.

However, the reason behind all this activity goes back to the nature of the indie movie: for everyone it is and will always be uncertain.

“It’s delicate. It can be removed,” he said. “You can have an actor who is linked to a movie for six months and then the actor decides that they do not want to do it anymore and the film does not happen as something that these young producers and directors will definitely experience … kind of continuing.”

If you wish to submit your application to SPS, You can find all the details here. (Please note that the applicants are responsible for travel and lodging.) And if you want to know what SPS is looking for, this is: Talent that looks so good that they want to spend four days talking about it.

I close this by letting Lars speak for himself. It is also good advice for all future filmmakers.

“I mean, some of this is obvious, but there is someone who has originality and someone with a voice. The people who do not necessarily send people whose films we would produce. There are people we know must say something important and needed. And I think it can be over all genres and all subjects.

“I think we will know what attracts us. I remember that I met Robert Eggers for the first time, and he hadn’t really done anything. Someone had a kind of sliding ‘the witch’ to us and we met him and had not seen anything he had done. You have the same thing with ari. It’s just a gut feeling … This is what they need to do with their life.

“What many directors have in common is that there is nothing else they can do than this. And I (want) to feel that in posts. With Jay and I, when we started producing, we both really thought, really to produce is all we can do. There is nothing else we can do, and if we do not produce we are a little fucked.

“There is something exciting and dangerous about what it is, I do not have a plan B. I have nothing to fall back on. I have to succeed. I think the reason we could make as many films as we did together, and even without any money, was what drove us.

“It wasn’t even the love of it,” he said. “It was just like, this is important. That’s all we have to do. We have to continue. If we don’t, we’re on the streets. That’s the kind of way of thinking we are looking for.”

If it sounds like you, Apply now.

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