Am very sad to learn of the death of Leslie Lowes, aka James MacGregor, Northern Editor of Northern Exposure from 2000-2001, authoring over 340 stories; and News Editor from 2006-2011, authoring and curating over 700 more. He was also the author of the microbudget chapter of Netribution's Film Finance Handbook. Before any of that, Tom Fogg interviewed him about his production company Penultimate Productions. / Nic
The sudden and untimely death of Jess Search at 54 left many stunned and sad. Obituaries rightly focussed on her huge contribution to documentary and social impact filmmaking – but miss something key: Jess was also a web pioneer. The digital community she founded with Cath LeCouteur 25 years ago has a long legacy – helping countless filmmakers, and demonstrating that social networks could make at least enough money to pay their moderators.
Netribution went live on December 31st 1999 as a weekly magazine and filmmakers' encyclopedia, written in plain HTML, and growing to over 2,500 pages. It ran for 99 weekly issues, thru the dotcom crash and 9/11 until February 2002. Some is archived here, as it's static (ie without a database) it's never been upgraded or hacked, and looks much the same as it did then.
In January 2006, Netribution returned (below) as a dynamic user-generated filmmaker group-blog, publishing 1000s of submissions until May, 2014, when the last user-generated article was published. As its built on a database, using a content-management-system, it needs to be regularly upgraded, and has changed its appearance many times.
The death of Jess Search at 54 left me stunned and sad, not least as it's some 20 years since we'd last hung out. Obituaries rightly focussed on her huge contribution to documentary and social impact filmmaking – but made only a passing mention to co-founding Shooting People 25 years ago with Cath LeCouteur. This misses something key: Jess was also a web pioneer.
Mary was casting director for Spielberg (Indiana Jones), George Lucas (Return of the Jedi), alongside Superman, Withnail and I, Alien, Harry Potter and many more.
Archivist and filmmaker, Stanley built the UK's largest left-wing footage library, and made a series of films about Chile under Pinochet, including Companero, about Victor Jara
After bringing dozens of film stories and scoops from Scotland and the North of England to the London film set in the first Netribution with the weekly column Northern Exposure, Shetland-based James (pen-name for a film producer) produced and re-produced over 650 stories for Netribution's re-birth from 2006. He wrote Shooting People's Wideshot magazine and a chapter of the Film Finance Handbook.
Stephen has shot the breeze with everyone from Beyonce to Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Bill Murray, Terry Gilliam, Vidal Sassoon and Jesse Eisenberg. He's the author of The Wicker Man: Conversations with Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer & Edward Woodward – and published dozens of interviews on Netribution.
From reporter and editer for national newspapers and international news agencies, journalism and media trainer to presenting the Freelance Pod podcast – Suchandrika also wrote almost 100 articles for Netribution. Get her weekly newsletter here.
Laurence published 46 'Special Edition' DVD review columns on Netribution. He was the director of the Hull Short Film Festival, short programmer for the Leeds Film Festival and lives in Talinn, Estonia.
Parisian cartoonist Eric Dubois was resident with Netribution during its first few months relaunch in 2006, illustrating all 54 of the original Carnal Cinema series.
I'm desperate to launch in the twentieth century, and work night and day around Christmas to get 800 pages ready and uploaded New Years Eve. I'll never forget the bewilderment and shock when I realised that it had worked - that I had a site online. What I failed to do, however, was upload the images - here was a big sexy site with no pictures. But I had a train to catch - and hopped up to Edinburgh, partied in the millennium, watched the sun rise over Arthur's seat, got a train back to London, went to a screening of Fantasia 2000, went home, and uploaded the missing files.
We embarked on this lunacy with no experience, no parental consent and no degree - just an acute ache for success that only the young have the energy and innocence to jeopardise in their quest. On the other side we've understood that we are adults now (I'm almost sad to say it) and besides, success stories are so predictable.