As Bloomington’s center for coworking and entrepreneurship, The Mill is teeming with inspiring people, projects, startups, and innovation. Our community helps realize potential, and you better believe we celebrate our wins. In fact, every quarter, our members gather to share their successes and learn from each other. We’re excited to share these success stories in this blog series! “Entrepreneurs & Innovators of The Mill” profiles local entrepreneurs and innovators who leverage The Mill as a launchpad for their ideas. Thomas DeCarlo is one of those local innovators. He’s an entrepreneurial filmmaker who realized a need within the local filmmaking scene: a way for filmmakers to connect with each other. He founded Hoosier Films to do just that. Thomas is on a mission to help build a strong, local filmmaking community and support Indiana-made films. And he’s made great strides in a short amount of time. But that’s enough from us. It’s time to hear from Thomas himself! Read on to hear his story behind Hoosier Films.

Hoosier Films: The Local Film Movement

by Thomas DeCarlo

I recently shared the exciting news that we officially launched a regional film distribution company called Hoosier Films. Exclusive to Indiana-based filmmakers, we are focused on community-building: growing awareness of the extensive and diverse local film scene, and fostering the relationship between audiences and filmmakers.  We’ve been rolling out new features each month. In September, we launched our streaming platform with both an annual subscription (just $12) and a marketplace for purchasing digital downloads of individual films. In October, we launched the Hoosier Mobile Cinema: a small theater built into a beautiful tiny home, in which we screen half-hour blocks of Indiana-made short films. In November, we announced that our first annual film festival is coming to the Buskirk-Chumley Theater this spring, March 19-22, 2020, and will be the largest screening of Indiana-made films!

How Hoosier Films is Doing Things Differently

It has been both exciting and daunting to roll out so many new features for the company, which I first conceived of less than a year and a half ago. We’re also forging new territory in the world of film distribution: we’re the first streaming platform to offer 50/50 profit share with filmmakers, the first to be exclusive to a small geographic region, the first to utilize grassroots marketing, the first mobile theater in the US, the first film festival to exclusively screen Indiana-based films, and the first festival that is run by a distribution company.

Why Hoosier Films Exists

But we knew going into this that the industry was failing independent filmmakers, and that things had to change at every level. By bringing local filmmakers together, we are leveraging our collective efforts to market an entire community and develop lasting relationships between local audiences and local artists. Supporting our local community goes far beyond just buying local produce (although that’s great, too! keep it up!). It’s about supporting our local artists and anyone who’s contributing to making Bloomington and all of Indiana a better place to live. Know of a cool local artist event happening? Spread the word and tell us about it in the comments below!