It should be noted that this isn’t referring to any specific events at Sundance but is just a reflection of feelings on networking I’ve had in the past: The mind observes its own thoughts and draws conclusions, its observations as much stories as anything else. We come to meet others, to join in a collective,…

Two years ago, in a friend’s apartment and with almost no money, a small ragtag group of people shot a film I had written eight weeks earlier. Our small kickstarter campaign finished one day before the shooting began. It was only meant as a little dramatic piece for an application to film school, but it…

(Originally posted on May 7, 2013) Check out my interview with author Brandon Shire about my attempts to get Shabbat Dinner out to LGBT youth and its launch as a Pay-What-You-Want model. You can watch the movie at shabbatdinnerfilm.com. Article cross-posted from Brandon’s blog: Welcome Michael Morgenstern, Writer and Director of Shabbat Dinner, a short film about gay…

A bit of a critique of a Microsoft subway ad I should start by saying that I love Microsoft before I descend into what for some reason has become an intense and hate-filled rant. When I was 12 I would call their tech support hotline so often that one of the representatives offered me a…

Cross-posted from Huffington Post: One of the great casualties of modern viewing is the Wide Shot. Because many filmmakers expect viewers to be watching work on their laptops or (even… god forbid) cell phones, shooting stunning wide landscapes or shots that contain many people is avoided. Cinema has become tighter and more constrained, which also…

Cross-posted with Huffington Post Entertainment   I don’t usually post movie reviews, but this film was so spectacular and at the same time disturbing that I felt compelled to. tl;dr: You must see Gravity in IMAX 3D, but the script has flaws. (Warning: this post contains spoilers AND criticism. Don’t read it if you don’t…

Alexis Whitham, Director of Educational Programming & Acquisitions at the Frameline Film Festival, asked for 50-100 words about my process in creating a distribution portal for Shabbat Dinner, where you can pay what you want, and once I started I couldn’t stop until I had about 1,000. I thought it would be great to put some…

Hello friends, It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since we filmed Shabbat Dinner, especially because that small film that we shot for two days in November 2011 remains so present in my world. It has been shown in over 55 festivals and screening venues worldwide including Hong Kong, Indonesia (where it…

When I can’t find a word I’m looking for, I like to make one up. It’s kind of like turning a stick into a simple tool. If a new word is truly needed, it allows for greater ease of thought and communication. If it’s a truly useful new idea, it can change the way people…

So it turns out the NSA has been spying on everything we do. Some people seem to be shocked by this. Perhaps it makes me an untrusting person, but I think that when there is a means to do something, and enough entities that have a motivation to do it, it’s pretty much a sure…