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DGA QUARTERLY 31 of going to the movies," says director Nicole Holofcener, who recently wrapped production on The Land of Steady Habits, an original Netflix production. But Holofcener has been in the business long enough to know how hard it is to get an inde- pendent film off the ground—and how quickly they disappear from theaters. H A T S V O D C O M P A N I E S are now funding original fea- ture-length movies, particu- larly the types of films the stu- dios are making less of, is seen as a welcome opportunity by some directors. When Netflix expressed interest in Charlie McDowell's second feature, The Discovery, early in the production process, McDowell says it was an offer he couldn't refuse. "Initially, I saw this as a theat- rical release. But reality kicked in, and there's a certain amount of money that you need to pull off this type of independent film. I feel like I was able to make the movie I wanted to make, and ultimately, that's the most important thing to me." SVOD original features, like television itself, are becoming in- creasingly cinematic—moving in the direction HBO and other premium cable channels have been going for decades. But some directors feel that "theatrical" films created for home viewing represent a separate art form. Or, as Christopher Nolan puts it: "Cinema grammar, mise- en-scène and everything with it changes when it shows on TV. Extrapolate from this by watching something made for TV and then throw it up on a cinema screen—that's the real test. TV or movie? You'll know the format immediately within a few shots." For the DGA's senior advisor, Jay Roth, the filmmaker's vision is everything. "What was the original intent?" he asks rhetori- cally. "Was it intended for the big screen or not?" Film festivals around the world are wrestling with this is- sue of filmmaker intent and defining what is a feature film. Controversy over news that Netflix would release exclusively on its platform both Bong Joon-ho's Okja and Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories after their Cannes Film Festival compe- tition premieres spurred the festival to announce a new require- ment that, in the future, producers of all titles in the festival's official selection would ensure that their movies' French pre- mieres be theatrical and not on an ancillary platform. "We understand that the [law] in France—we call it media chronology—is a huge problem because [it prohibits] a film from showing on a VOD (or other) platform [within] 36 months of its theatrical run," says Christophe Tardieu, director of France's Centre National du Cinéma (CNC), which is a member of the Cannes Festival Association. "But for all of us (involved in French cinema), the theater is the first and irreplaceable place for presenting films." Negotiations between Cannes and Netflix before the start of the festival's 2017 edition—which included an offer for day-and-date alongside the festival screening—broke down, leading to the festival's decision. While Netflix and Amazon, the other dominant streaming service (with competitors Hulu, YouTube Red, Facebook and Apple trailing far behind at this point), are frequently men- tioned together as the juggernaut disruptors of the movie busi- ness, the two companies approach movies differently even as they share a subscription-based model. While the rare Netflix movie receives a brief theatrical re- lease mostly for awards qualification, such as director Rees' Mudbound, Amazon Studios' own movies are regularly released first theatrically, then via streaming. This is, in fact, a promi- nent selling point that Amazon pitches to potential filmmaking partners interested in guaranteeing their movies have at least a brief theatrical life. Walmart-like, Netflix relies on a massive stock of titles, but is increasingly developing work by name filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Errol Morris. Amazon has become a home for, among other directors, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Linklater and Luca Guadagnino, whose Suspiria is be- ing produced at Amazon. One of the concerns filmmakers have for movies intended for T CONTINUED ON PAGE 73