It ain't Hollywood. And that's just fine.

Mass Appeal
What do "The Manchurian Candidate" and John Waters' movies have in common? The same thing as Western Mass. and Cape Cod. This summer's Massachusetts film festivals offer something for everyone, from the cutting edge to the classic.

Casting Top Talent Without Breaking the Bank
It's easy and cheap for low-budget filmmakers to cast their friends and families. It's expensive to get top acting talent by using a casting agency or the Screen Actor's Guild. Right? Wrong.

The 1998 Boston Film Festival
The Boston Film Festival can be hard to pin down. It screens independent films, but mostly wide-release independent films. It’s called the Boston Film Festival, but viewers can be hard-pressed to find much Boston in it. There aren’t any locally filmed and produced "North End" equivalents this year, but take heart -- with some probing, we can find some New England roots in this year’s festival.

Vermont International Film Festival
The goal of the Vermont International Film Festival is "to inform and motivate people, through film and video, to learn to work for peace, justice, and respect for the natural world." That sounds like a tall order for four days of movies, but a look at this year's lineup shows that this is no ordinary film festival.

Smash: Gaining Momentum in Boston
How do you make an innovative commercial when you're given the same footage as four other companies? SMASH, a Boston-based ad agency, faced just this situation at the Battle of the Promo Cutters in Toronto this July.

"Taxachusetts" loses film biz to Rhode Island
What's wrong with this picture: Massachusetts filmmakers must charge their clients five percent tax on the overall cost of each film, and pay five percent sales tax on their filmmaking equipment every year. Sound like double jeopardy? According to many Massachusetts filmmakers and media workers, it is.