Autumn Fest Politics & Press Coverage; Visions Sud Est & Singapore’s The Projector

Before we dig into this week’s stories, just a quick note to say that Streamlined’s upgrade is now complete. I’ve moved off Substack and both the newsletters and the website that was previously known as Streamlined Global (with an archive of ten years of industry news) are now available on a new platform at Streamlined.news. The new platform is connected to Stripe, just like Substack, so paying subscribers can be assured that their information is safe. However, they will no longer receive a bunch of dubious growth hack emails asking them to subscribe to other publications.
 
My reasons for moving off Substack are many – but probably the biggest is that Substack is pivoting into being a social media platform, rather than just a publishing tool, without having any real content moderation. So if you’ve signed up for a Substack publication, you may find yourself being pushed into signing up for other publications you have no interest in or even receive a push notification for a neo-Nazi newsletter. Streamlined’s new platform is also part of a community of independent publishers, but each publication remains part of its own distinct ecosystem and is not trying to drive you towards yet another social media website or app.
 
It's been a busy few weeks in the international film biz, so this week’s newsletter is looking at the politically charged autumn festival season (and some sad news from Switzerland and Singapore), while next week will focus on AI.

Autumn Film Festival Politics & Realities Of The Media

There’s a huge array of films from Asia, Africa and the Middle East being launched during this year’s autumn festival season (see here for Venice & Locarno line-ups and here for Toronto & San Sebastian) and not surprisingly, given what is going on in the world, many of these films deal with hard-hitting social and political issues.