Indie Kindred: A Short Review (Guys, You Need To Listen To This)

Just watched the 2015 documentary Indie Kindred tonight.

You’ll have to buy Indie Kindred or rent it on Vimeo.com, or through the indiekindred.com website. Neither Netflix or Amazon Prime carry it to stream, though they should.*

Coming from a guy who's typically a loner and recluse (I feel I work best when I work alone), I can’t thank enough or sufficiently praise producer/director Jen Lee and the kindred visual, musical and literary women artists who collaborated to make this thought-provoking work that stresses just the opposite practice.

Yes, it’s a film about the experience of women creatives. Yes, there’s surely a powerhouse of female energy being generated and felt here. If you simply dismiss it as a "girly" film, then that speaks to the problem that the mutual respect, collaboration, egalitarianism, vulnerability and love that's expressed in this documentary is so utterly alien to so many men.

Sadly, it’s totally predictable that many men just won't "get it". This is NOT because it's hard-wired into our biology. It’s NOT male "human nature", no matter what wrong-headed truisms say to the contrary.

But it is hard-wired into the male patriarchal, go-it-alone, better than / less than, cut-throat-competitive, dominate-and-conquer-at-all-costs culture into which we're born, indoctrinated and which continues to impact us well into adulthood.

I've made it my spiritual mission as an artist to subvert that culture -- and these women have inspired me to reach out to more collaborators – men and women -- to help me do so.

I strongly urge guys in the creative fields to spend an hour to witness what these women have created, and the benefits to individual creative work they all agree comes from that kind of synergy.

*UPDATE: I just discovered that Jen Lee Productions has recently released Indie Kindred on YouTube for easier viewing and sharing.