Our History – 1990-Present
Independent Exposure
Independent Exposure was created by Joel Bachar in 1992 and before shutting down in 2012 screened over 2000 short films in hundreds of venues worldwide.
The screening series began in Seattle when Bachar and a group of artists friends started showing each other their videos. In a few years the meeting became a monthly affair and moved to the \”backroom\” of the Speakeasy Internet Cafe. Through email communication and the swapping of VHS tapes from all over the world Bachar built the program into a popular monthly event in Seattle and a touring program that screened in microcinemas worldwide including places such as McMurdo Sound Station in Antarctica and a base camp on Mt. Everest.
This section of our website currently being expanded. Watch this space for more details.
Microcinema International
Microcinema International was created in 2000 by Joel Bachar and Patrick Kwiatkowski to help many of the artists that appeared in Independent Exposure. At first the venture was designed to screen and distribute short films to microcinemas and alternative venues worldwide.
Bachar and Kwiatkowski discovered that there was a void in the film distribution world that needed filling: many independent artists and filmmakers were unable to get their films distributed to their natural audience – museums, universities, and other like-minded institutions. In 2004 Microcinema shifted gears to distribute DVDs about art and by artists and other cultural subjects.
Microcinema went on to become of one of the most influential independent cultural film distribution houses – servicing art museums worldwide – having a catalog of over 1000 titles with revenues going from zero to over 1.5 million – not bad for a 2 man operation in a niche arena.
Bachar and Kwiatkowski closed Microcinema in 2014.
This section of our website is being expanded with more information – watch this space….