NEWS FOR NOW: SEPTEMBER 2026

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hi, friends!

I hate to break it to you, but summer is officially over.

On Friday I celebrated the four-year anniversary of filming Berlin Loop by getting back on set with Berlin Loop's producer Dominik -- except this time we were both supporting my friend Lili Koss, who was directing her second short film, ANNABELLA.

We were shooting on an island with only one automobile, no electricity, and about 2km of forest. The dude who drove the automobile (a pickup) was also the ferryman, and he spent the day popping some of us back and forth to the mainland while helping the rest of us ferry equipment back and forth across the island, while most of us hiked. Due to the lack of electricity on the island, we could only make coffee by boiling a kettle of water on his gas camping-style stove (enough for 2 French press' worth of coffee, which does not cut it for a cast/crew of 23). The set-perfect clouds darkened in the late afternoon and poured down a torrential rain, complemented by gusting winds that threatened to topple the trees next to which we were shooting. You'll be happy to know, we all made it out alive and well, covered most of our shotlist, and even assistant director J's shooting schedule survived the rain (sort of).

Despite all of that (maybe because of it?!) it felt really good to be on set with a crew of really lovely and mostly easy-going people and especially to support someone else in their creative vision by taking on logistical challenges and solving problems so she could focus on her vision. (In fact, I still have one equipment return challenge to solve tomorrow, but we'll worry about that after I finish this newsletter!)

Lately, this topic -- the importance of "paying it forward" -- has come up quite a lot for me. In fact, it was a main subject of a recent interview I did with The Reel Women. The creative ecosystem requires this kind of collaboration, knowledge-sharing, signal boosting, and investing in the success of others in such a massive way, and it has become core to my creative philosophy. IT. IS. MASSIVELY. IMPORTANT!!

!!!

And there is no denying that you gain something out of it, too: it makes you feel really good!

The basic premise here is that we're all interconnected. Our outcomes are tied to our inputs, personally, socially, societally, globally. No success or failure happens in a vacuum.

COLLECTIVE WEITERBILDUNG IS THE NEW WEALTH

There's nowhere online that collective knowledge-sharing in the creative community happens more right now than Substack. For my new film, Los Ageless, we've been sharing and learning from the FilmStack community, which is basically a film school made by and for indie filmmakers who are not waiting for studios, festivals, or distributors to say "yes" to their movies. As we're trying stuff, making stuff, and releasing stuff, we have all been sharing with each other best practices, experiments (successful as well as failed), and lessons learned along the way. (Basically, what I'm doing here in this newsletter, but on a much wider scale.) On our Los Ageless team, Jenny shared some of our insights from our summer Aging Wildly campaign. If you're working on your own film, social impact campaign, or social media strategy, check us out (click on the photo) and follow our Substack. Jenny is really killing it at writing Substack posts, by the way!

Speaking of experiments, I've got a new release experiment for Berlin Loop, too: I've invested in a new physical/digital media that's not tied to any subscription platform or aggregator. Basically, I've printed a 21st-century-style DVD of the film, called a Film Trade card. You can tap it to your phone, and the film appears on your screen, to watch directly or screen-cast to your TV. You don't have to log in to a platform or buy a subscription service, and you can watch as many times as you want. However, if you give the Film Trade card to someone else and they tap it on their phone, your access on your phone will disappear. So, it can be shared (if you don't want to watch the film more than once), or it can be saved, collected, and re-watched as many times as you want.

I plan to sell these cards at creative markets in Berlin this year - or, if you want to buy one, just let me know. (And if you worked on the movie, I already have one reserved to give to you when I see you next!)

NOW & FINALLY

So, if you haven't had enough of my soapbox about how important it is to give and get support, I think this is the perfect moment to announce that YOU ALREADY KNOW, the documentary I've been stewing on for more than SEVEN YEARS is finally having its world premiere at Tag der Clubkultur in Berlin on October 5!

This is a film I made with absolutely no plan, but I did have a vision: to co-create a piece of art, experiment, and advice in the style of, and in collaboration with, performance artists Lucie Wilke and Julia Albrecht, aka DIE RATGEBER. Die Rageber (which means "The Counselor" in German) is (was) a dance- and music-based experimental performance group that performed at clubs and techno festivals back when I found them. Their performance is meant to give "advice" to those who ask for it through abstract dance. But what it really did was help "advice-seekers" think more deeply about their own internal conflicts, and visualize them through dance. What my film hopes to do is show that, in essence, we all share the same conflicts. And we can't solve them without each other, because often the best way to see our own reflection is through others.

The film would not ever have seen the light of day without my main collaborator, Lucie Wilke, who became a very good friend along the way. She's not only one of the film's protagonists (despite her embarrassment at seeing the Lucie of seven years ago onscreen), she also composed the completely bonkers and spectacular experimental music throughout the film. The third addition to our team, rather unexpectedly, was the sound designer I asked for help back in late 2019 when I was first in the edit. Gabriel Reyna took the completely mangled sound I recorded and made it legible, added some sound design, and mixed the entire movie -- before I decided to re-cut it. Through the years that the project lay fallow, he continued to encourage me to finish it, cheerleading and reminding me that it really was good. "Emily, I still have the entire project on my hard drive. Just waiting!" he told me more than once. When a sound guy keeps your project files in reserve for more than half a decade, it's serious! And then he did the same magic for Berlin Loop, and seven years later, we are great friends and will be lifetime collaborators. Even the smallest, tiniest, most self-propelled projects are impossible without collaborators constantly feeding back and cheering you on. I'm so humbled by this crazy level of support and enthusiasm and I hope the audience can feel all of that passion when they see the film.

Soooo...

It leaves me bursting with excitement to announce that the very special, one-of-a-kind Berlin nightlife that birthed Die Ratgeber and the film will actually be the scene of its premiere! The Club Culture Festival is a celebration of what makes Berlin's club culture special, and to be included in its program among DJs and performance artists and all of the rest of club culture is such a singular honor, and really was my highest hope for this film from the very beginning.

So I just want to leave you with the spirit of passion and clarity I always feel after completing a film shoot, finishing a project, or starting something new: none of us can do it alone, and we weren't meant to. We're all in this together.

Until next time,

Emily