My name is Andy Mingo and I’m a filmmaker living in Portland, Oregon. A couple months ago I'm on my couch flipping through the channels, bottom feeding on the entertainment shows, you know the ones, red carpets, A list actors like Ashton Kutcher with Demi Moore in tow, Jim Carrey, and Golden Globe winner, Paul Giamatti. I'm about fifteen seconds in when it dawns on me that I'm not witnessing a Los Angeles event, instead I'm watching coverage of the Sundance Film Festival. Now I'm not one to bitch, I'm a big fan of Giamatti in 'Sideways', and Carrey carried 'Spotless Mind' onto my top twenty list, and Ashton Kutcher... well let's just say I've seen some of his performances.

That aside I start to wonder, when did independent film erode into just another arm of the entertainment industrial complex? Didn't independent film used to represent those directors on the edge, funding films with credit cards and collecting cans in alleys (cliche I know). But am I misremembering, or was there a time when the hope existed that a director could make a film for under 30 thousand dollars (a true independent film) and had a shot at perhaps being able to follow the dream and make films as a career? Let me give you some examples: David Lynch, who collected cans to fund 'Eraserhead', Darren Aronofsky and 'Pi', Robert Rodriguez, who became a lab rat to fund 'El Mariachi', Robert Townsend and 'Hollywood Shuffle', Kevin Smith whose film, 'Clerks' was paid for with credit cards, Edward Burns and 'The Brothers McMullen'... or even ‘The Iconographer’

Anyway, my point is that I'm doubtful that such films would really be given a chance today, what without any known Hollywood names, shot on low grade film stock with final cuts that were much less perfect than the "Independent" films now being shot on multi million dollar budgets. More specifically I find myself an up close spectator... There I am, Andy Mingo, with my feature length film, ‘The Iconographer’. With a budget at around 20,000 and armed with nothing more than a great story and a committed group of actors and crew, chances are that in the end it will not be enough (short of a miracle) for you ever to come across ‘The Iconographer’ or any films by Andy Mingo for that matter.

Perhaps it’s time to create a distinction (and perhaps hope) for those making films on the far edge of personal finances in a shaky economy, a distinction between what has become known as "independent" and what is "True Independent Film" made by those filmmakers with nothing to lose except their credit score, filmmakers who make films because they can't not make them, because in the end that is what defines a true independent film.