Indiepix chairman, Barnet Louis Liberman, saw the potential for “breaking down the barriers between filmmakers and their audiences.” When the company was started in 2003, the creators saw a chance to be involved not only in the marketing and distribution of independent film, but to be an integral component in filmmakers’ careers, shepherding long-term relationships with artists from all over the world. In 2005, Jordan Mattos, a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, joined the company and helped build the acquisitions division that would embody that ethos. He concentrated mostly on narratives, foreign films, animation and shorts. In April of 2006, he brought Danielle DiGiacomo into the company to head up the documentary acquisitions arm, and together they have gone about curating the best of what they find out in the world at festivals, markets and through their vast network of friends and colleagues.

Partnering with many international festivals and organizations such as Evil City, IFP, Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series, Festival de Cannes, Newport, Red Shift, Woodstock, Full Frame, SXSW, and Festival Cinerail, Mattos and DiGiacomo discover fiction and nonfiction gems the world over. Last year, a nonfiction work-in-progress called Billy the Kid came to their attention and they quickly took it to the company’s president, Bob Alexander, advising him to put the time, money and effort into producing the film. This past year, Jennifer Venditti, the film’s director, went on to win the top doc prize at SXSW, Edinburgh, Melbourne and Los Angeles and the film is currently working its way towards an Oscar qualification as it rolls out its theatrical run.

Like many acquisitions folks at these small companies, Jordan Mattos and Danielle DiGiacomo are guided by their instincts and personal sensibilities. I had a chance to sit with both of them shortly after IFP’s Independent Film Week to talk about the company and their shared vision for growing one more (sorely-needed) place for stellar, underrepresented independent film:

Renew Media (RM): How was your week at IFP? Did you see anything that particularly struck your fancy there?

Danielle DiGiacomo (DG): I saw a lot of works-in-progress. In between the speed-dating meetings, I would run off to the filmmaker library and try to see as much as I could there. I saw a film called 21 Below and met with the filmmaker. It’s an incredibly compelling film, a family drama.

RM: Jennifer [Venditti] told me that someone told her it reminded him of Billy the Kid.

DG: I think that was [A&E Indie Films’] Ryan Harrington. Basically, Bob [Alexander] said to me, “Find the next Billy the Kid.” I told Jen that at the A&E lunch and she thought that was really funny. And then she called me that night and said she thought I should take a look at 21 Below. The director [Samantha Buck] and producer [Jenny Maguire] are both actors by profession. Like Jennifer, they’ve never made a film before; they haven’t been schooled in it and don’t know the classic rules. They just found a story and followed it.

RM: Have they completed shooting?

DG: Yeah, they’re looking for post funds now. That’s the same state Billy the Kid was in when it was sent to us—it was a rough cut. I think this film has that kind of potential; it’s a totally different story. I think the editing is going to be key as it was for Billy. Enat Sidi is fantastic.

Jordan Mattos (JM): I really liked a film called Frontrunners. I’ve started a correspondence with the filmmakers.

DG: I was also quite taken with Predator House. Despite the subject matter, it’s handled so well—the filmmakers really humanized it using a classic character-driven structure. It’s based around four characters, including the owner of the house who’s fascinating in her own right, who transformed this apartment building she owns into a halfway house for sex offenders. It’s totally captivating.

RM: Jordan, when you joined Indiepix, had you worked in distribution before, or was it totally new to you?

JM: It was totally new—I’m a filmmaker. I started out there as an intern and the position that I currently have just grew organically. There wasn’t really an acquisitions department, per se, that existed within the company. Bob was acquiring catalog titles only, nothing new or undiscovered. In the process of reaching out to filmmakers at IFP, we realized we needed to create a structure for new acquisitions.

RM: So it sounds like you moved things from a strictly distribution-based entity to more of a production house. That’s unusual for a brick-and-mortar distribution company. Since your tenure, how many films have you acquired and helped finish and distribute?

JM: Probably a bit over a hundred titles since 2005. But that’s a combination of submissions and projects we’ve personally curated. Our hand-picked projects also, usually, include a very personal relationship with the filmmaker.

DG: We actually had to write a little company history yesterday. Jordan was really responsible for building the whole acquisitions division. Jordan’s one of my oldest, dearest friends and he invited me to accompany him to a film festival. During that time, I really hit it off with Bob and started advising him on documentaries. I came on part-time and then my position grew as I started acquiring documentaries for the company as I traveled the festival circuit. We’re a good tag-team and I think we’ve also become the personalized face of Indiepix. We have really personal relationships with all of our filmmakers. We try to make that a part of why an artist would want to distribute their work through us and that does turn out to be the most rewarding thing in all of this. There are so many films that exhibit at festivals and don’t get distribution—that’s one of the holes we’re trying to fill.

RM: Are you also responsible for Indiepix sponsoring so many festivals and partnering with other filmmaker organizations? The company now has a strong profile as a supporter of independent film.

JM: Again, it was from a place of really liking the people involved and wanting to support their efforts–festivals such as SXSW and Woodstock, which is a relatively new festival. It really was just a matter of going to the web sites and being impressed by the programming; there was something fresh and different from everything else out there. It’s not just a random thing—obviously, a place like Woodstock is a festival with which it makes sense to affiliate ourselves.

DG: It’s the kind of festival that meshes with the spirit of Indiepix. It’s not about hierarchy or catering to famous filmmakers, having different levels of passes. It’s really about fostering a community and being supportive of that community.

RM: Full Frame felt like that to me, as well.

DG: We have a relationship with them, too. After the Hamptons, I told Bob, “Well, if you want to reach out to the documentary world, you should sponsor Full Frame.” I helped broker that deal with him and Nancy Buirski and our relationship with them grew. Right now, I’m trying to do the same thing with the True/False Film Festival.

RM: Are you intuitively moving along, or in building all of this do you have a clearer sense of how you want to structure what it is that you do, in terms of increasing productivity, where you can take more films into the Indiepix fold? Or are you intent on keeping it quite small so that you can really handhold and develop deep relationships with a stable of filmmakers? Or, perhaps, a combination of both?

DG: We just hired someone who’s in charge of the general submissions. Jordan and I really want to be responsible more for original acquisitions by going to festivals, and other film-related events where works-in-progress debut.

RM: The fun part.

DG: Exactly! We want to make Indiepix a place where people can find really great films that have been on the festival circuit, real quality work. However, Billy the Kid was sent to us randomly, so there are always great things that will come through submissions. But, we don’t really have the infrastructure to support having hundreds of titles that we can spotlight, so it will always be a balance of submission and curatorial.

JM: We do have a catalog that is the bread-and-butter for the company, the base from which people are buying films. Bob really wants to build that catalog, on an Amazon-type level, offering thousands of titles.

DG: So yes, we’re moving in that direction of having both. We’re re-branding, basically, and now we’re going to have a designated place for “Indiepix films.” So that’s where you get that spotlighted filmmaker, the distribution package where we’re actually taking an active production role, both in helping to finish and market a project, in addition to the DVD manufacturing that we already do. That might be another branch, or division, of the company.

RM: I think that’s an ideal scenario for any filmmaker who’s struggling to finish and distribute his or her project.

DG: Because we’re friends with so many filmmakers, because we are filmmakers ourselves, we have a passion for this that goes beyond the business of reproducing and distributing DVDs.

RM: The ’08 festival season has started in earnest—what’s the Indiepix game plan?

JM: It’s a really exciting time for us. This is when we start bringing in new projects and establishing new relationships with filmmakers.

DG: We also have a release slate we’re ready to launch. As we grow as a company and as our visibility grows, and as the caliber of festivals we attend grows, every month our release slate gets better and better. We have some really great films on the table that we’ve brought in, like Red Without Blue, a documentary that won at Slamdance and other festivals, and also showed on the Sundance Channel. We’re doing a whole university tour with them and it’s going into retail stores on October 2. Again, a very personal choice since I’m an identical twin.

JM: It’s also a really good film.

DG: Of course. [laughing] I mean, I brought in Cocaine Angel and I was never a coke addict! You were never an eight-year-old girl in foster care. [She’s referring to Jordan’s recent acquisition of Paola Mendoza’s project, Autumn’s Eyes]. Technically, he heads up narrative acquisitions and I head up docs, but we’re constantly crossing those lines—a good project is a good project, period. So we’re planning a couple of events around Paola’s film, one at the Jersey City Museum of Art [the film takes place in New Jersey]. That’s part of the personal relationship we have with filmmakers—release parties, screenings, university tours—getting the word out in the community and creating awareness virally to find audiences for the film.

RM: Your impetus to get out there and find stuff is really what it’s going to take.

DG: The hardest part is not convincing filmmakers to go with us, it’s convincing consumers to buy a film that they’ve never heard of when they can buy the latest offering from Criterion.

RM: Well, Criterion has a track record due to the length of time they’ve been around. It takes time to build that kind of reputation, to build a catalog that, sort of, speaks for itself. And they’re also distributing well-known classics for the most part. In your mind, who is the Indiepix patron?

JM: I think it’s a person that’s definitely well-versed in film, who’s familiar with different genres, someone who knows what a documentary is.

RM: Are you targeting a specific demographic?

JM: No, we’re building our own demographic by putting ourselves out there and having personal relationships with filmmakers and audiences.

DG: It’s our job to find those titles that we think are good enough that people will buy them even though they’ve never heard of the project or the filmmaker. We just hired a marketing person to concentrate on fleshing all that out. We have so many “niche marketing” products going out, it’s a lot to keep track of. So each [curated] title has its own outreach program. We’re not really reaching out to a general consumer population. So for Red Without Blue, that’s the college student population; that’s a big market for us.

RM: Or anyone who’s a twin.

DG: Yeah, twins groups, trans-gender groups [one of the twins goes through a sex-change operation]—that kind of thing. But in the larger Indiepix demographic sense, I think it’s targeting people who don’t have access to any kind of independent cinema where they live.

RM: If Indiepix were to start its own festival, what kind of programming would it consist of?

DG: Probably very similar to the same kind of product we produce and distribute now. I’ve done a lot of programming and I know what I’d want to do.

JM: I would want to include a good deal of foreign film—films that nobody gets to see here [in the US]. We just went to Cannes in the spring and saw a lot of great stuff by young, cool, talented filmmakers that will never see any kind of distribution, particularly for their shorts. They have a totally different industry over there that isn’t equipped to deal with product like that. I’m all about having an international presence; it’s important. I’m working with some Columbian filmmakers and other foreign festivals to start relationships with these people.

DG: My programming, so far, has involved documentaries. I programmed something with Women Center Stage at the Culture Center that was all female documentarians, very specific. But I’m also into art cinema, shorts, other fare—I think it would be what we like. Actually, I think we would put on a really good festival.

RM: I think you would, too.

DG: I mean there really aren’t enough festivals! [laughing] I would probably program something similar to True/False, which already exists. It sounds like a film festival meets the Flaherty Seminar, which I attended last year—seeing films mixed with really great conversations afterwards, attended by real film lovers, creating a strong sense of community. It was a life-changing experience.

RM: Maybe an American festival but held overseas somewhere—Europe, South America—perhaps, changing locations every year.

DG: A good arts festival anywhere can rejuvenate a place with a dying cultural life. We were talking to a friend in Italy about doing something along those lines. That’s a place where it’s just impossible to survive as an artist—they feel like they have to go elsewhere to do anything creative and still be able to sustain themselves. They need some inspiration. We should revisit that.

In terms of general directions for the company, we hired a marketing director, we’re working with a PR firm, we’re narrowing down festival strategy so that we can have a bigger presence at certain fests that we think are really going to continue to generate good buzz. We’re continuing to creatively partner with people and build relationships with local cinemas in Brooklyn to do regular screening series; we might be programming something with the Tribeca Grand—all of these things are in the pipeline.

We’re building relationships with the educational market, we’re starting to do university tours, doing radio interviews, pumping up advertising in places like MovieMaker magazine and other publications. Our site traffic is increasing every month and sales figures are increasing every month. We’re really building steam.

JM: We’ve gone from about one sale every three weeks to about eight a day, currently.

RM: In just a couple of years?

JM: Yeah.

RM: That’s impressive. Where do you see your own filmmaking careers headed? Basically, considering what’s planned to go under the Indiepix umbrella, you’ll have executive-level responsibilities if you continue with the company.

DG: I’m sure our answers will be very different. As a producer, I’m fostering other filmmakers, connecting people, giving advice. With everything else I’m doing, that’s a creative process in and of itself. Becoming an associate producer on Billy the Kid means that now I’m being asked to produce on different narrative projects and other things that people talk to me about. It’s very exciting and I find that I’ve become very interested in this whole producer role. I just don’t think I’m an artist; I don’t get caught up enough in my own stuff. I think Jordan has a different answer.

JM: Yeah, in the sense that I’m very caught up in my own stuff. I’m a writer and I’ve wanted to make films since I was a little kid. For me, it’s been a very long process of being aware that this is what I want to do with my life. This whole adventure is one avenue I’m taking that will lead me to that goal of making films.

DG: Doing what I’m doing now has made me aware of how naïve I was as a filmmaker. I had no idea what it entailed after the shooting is done.

JM: Working in distribution has been very sobering and educational for me as a filmmaker. It’s given me a more mature stance on how you find audiences for your film. It’s been very helpful in that regard.

RM: Considering that yours is one of the companies that is at the forefront of this new wave in how films are being made, marketed and distributed and having a strong Internet presence, being a creative person is almost essential to ensure any kind of success and help other creative people make their way in a good, solid business sense. I can’t think of anything that would benefit you more.

DG: It’s way better than film school, that’s for sure. We were thrown into the fire. When Jordan invited me to that film festival, I had no idea what was going on. And now we’ve done it for two years together. We’ve been to Sundance and Cannes and the major festivals; we’ve been to the regional festivals. You start to realize that the filmmakers and the industry and the press people have a totally different experience than the general consumers who might buy a pass and come see some movies while the festival’s in their area.

But what I do know is that you have to really be on top of your game to keep up with it all. I give a tremendous amount of credit to people who self-distribute—it’s an incredible amount of work.

RM: The sky’s the limit in terms of options—from completely DIY’ing it to partnering with a company like yours. Or Blockbuster, for that matter.

DG: Well, I don’t think there’s anyone doing exactly what we’re doing.

RM: If they are, then they’re fairly new and growing, too. And thank goodness for you all.

JM: It’s really the special event stuff we do that differentiates us, I think—throwing parties, our tangible community support, and again, our relationships with filmmakers.

DG: We’re cinephiles—totally passionate about film.

JM: All of this, of course, wouldn’t really be possible without Bob’s vision and support. His trust in our intuition and instincts is what enables us to bring in the content that we do. He has his vision and Danielle and I have our vision, as well. Sometimes, they don’t mesh, but that’s natural—we’re coming from two different worlds. But he’s always totally open to our ideas and what we bring to the table. He has a lot of faith in us.

DG: He’s seen that what we’ve done and what we continue to do has paid off. He sees the business as more of an e-commerce, catalog-based site and we want to be more active and present in the community. He consulted at a lot of big studios for about 20 years and was also a consultant in the home video market, which is where he saw all the money being made. He also saw that Hollywood was churning out a lot of crap. And so that’s why he wanted to start something for independent filmmakers in the DVD online market. He’s very progressive and forward-looking—much more savvy than I am. But just as passionate. That’s really where we connect the most.

JM: He listens to us when we speak, which is always nice in a boss.

For more information on what Indiepix has in store, submit a project, or to get in touch with Danielle or Jordan, you can visit the site here.