I had an image pop into my head this morning: a large, expansive book store with its shelves crammed full of books.  Who reads all of these things?  Who sorts through them?  Who plucks the unlikely ugly one from the far corner, the one wedged between two bold, flashy great American novels?

It reminded me of how short our time is, and even if we spent every day reading and reading and reading, we could never manage to fill our brains with a thousandth of the material worth absorbing in this world.

It's depressing.  But on the other hand, perhaps it's not.  Perhaps it's liberating and wonderful to know that there is so much amazing, life-enriching and thought-expanding work out there, that we shouldn't feel bad about skipping the drivel.  And it's encouraging to think that there are so many needles in the ever-growing haystack of thought and entertainment, that we can fill our lives with an unending sense of discovery.

Perhaps it's just nice to know that if we write something worthwhile, there might be a place on a bookshelf for it, somewhere out there.  And someone, somewhere, might actually pick it up and read it.  Or even stumble across and order it off of amazon.com.

Which brings me to movies.  It's horribly scary sometimes to imagine all of the content being produced and looking for distribution.  The number of films being sent to festivals is exponentially higher, and the number of films who get distribution from a festival is getting lower.  Let's face it, folks: the mere act of making a movie is no longer that big of a deal.  Home movies get mistaken for art, and art gets mistaken for boring.  How do we navigate these vast and stormy seas?  How can a filmmaker ever hope to have his work seen, much less be paid for it?

The bookstore is growing, the shelves are expanding in every direction.  But people are still reading... now more than ever.  And if there's hope for those little eclectic books, who take a reader hours, days, or weeks to get through, then there's certainly hope for independent film, which only requires a one or two hour (or minute depending on the film) investment from its audience.

As our methods of viewing and distributing movies expands, it's daunting to consider what method is appropriate for an aspiring filmmaker's work.  Is the goal simply to get work seen by as many people as possible, or is maintaining a certain level of prestige or quality control important to the film's integrity and the filmmaker's reputation?  YouTube offers an enormous audience for mass consumption, but does little to lend the film any more cultural weight than a 1980's music video remix or a clip of someone's yawning cat.  Vimeo and other video services offer higher quality and a more cultured audience, but still marginalize the work.  And between these free venues and the traditional box office there are countless other methods of distribution and exhibition, almost all of them untested against the marketplace, much less that of time.

But I'm beginning to believe that these venues will eventually help filmmakers get their work seen (and even paid for), even if they do not serve as the actual avenue.  As expectations for how we receive our media begin to change, more and more subcultures and micro-demographics are being created.  We begin to turn to new places for our quality content, and not rely on traditional modes of discovery.  I believe that the dream of the big box office distribution will always exist for filmmakers, and I don't believe that the movie theatre experience will ever go away (that's a whole other topic for discussion), but I do think that we're going to see new hope for independent film unlike any we've seen before... once this cultural shift begins to settle, and once the industry has figured out how to incorporate and redefine itself.

And we can hold out hope that if we keep trying, keep pressing, eventually we'll get that coveted spot on the Best Seller's shelf.  But even if we don't, we can take solace in the fact that the authenticity of our voice now has a microphone, however small, and that now, more than ever, audiences are willing to browse the back shelf, too.