This report was compiled and written by Courtney Romano and Taylor Lewis with contributions from Elizabeth Joyce.

Welcome to the ND50 Real Time Report

In 1969, the American public was transfixed by the moon landing and believed anything was possible.

In the 1970s, they were captivated by New Hollywood and enriched by what they saw on the big screen.

This was an era of innovation, ambition, truth-telling, and cultural potency.

And while few people would describe our current era the same way, the NonDē 50 Films Project aims to change that.

We believe in ambitiously-authored cinema, centering the art-artist-audience in a symbiotic, healthy relationship, and developing economic sustainability by redistributing power back to artists.

We believe the era where anything is possible is here again if we work together.

But we can’t just hope it into existence. We must collectively act. And as we act, we must record what we do and how we do it. We don’t want this era to just spark and fade out, but rather be the rich soil of a community garden that blooms continuously, well on into the future. It’s not just about us and our movies, it’s bigger than that.

That’s one reason why we record, document, and archive our current work. It matters.

What’s in the Report?

This report will be released quarterly and takes a look at the work happening in real time during the NonDē 50 Films Project in 2026.

It will reflect the cultural and collective narratives built through data, recommended best practices, anecdotal evidence, shared institutional knowledge, and forecasting theories.

It blends the future (what we hope for) and the present (what we’ve accomplished so far) in an attempt to:

1. Extrapolate data collection & forecasting predictions that filmmakers can use for future projects (funding, audience-building, marketing, etc.)
2. Establish recommended best practices from each other’s work during the current cinematic landscape
3. Identify the holes of the ecosystem so we can fill them with new projects and initiatives
4. Prove there is a robust non-dependent film market, audience, and sustainable creative life awaiting us all

Non-dependence is a response to the “times.”