Hope For The Future: Starting The List

What can I say?  I love lists.  I maintain many: My favorite things; Directors I want to work with; 100 Ways To Make A Million.  I am sure you've got own.

One of things on my List Of Why I Love Lists is that it is so easy to forget, and with forgetting can come despair, that is until we re-cognize what we already knew.  Lists lift us out of this swamp.  I don't despair. I HOPE.

If this was the year that everyone believed the sky fell (and it did in terms of the unregulated greed based economic system our world has embraced for far too long), it will hopefully be recognized as the moment when we really entered the Free Culture Era.  But the hard things, the bad things, still attract our attention.  We will remember that 2008 is the year no one could sell their film.  We will remember that 2008 is the year that labor strife and cooperate greed conspired for a work shutdown.  I will certainly remember that it is the year that I did not have a film in production for the first time in 20 years.

But that is not the memory I want to have.  I want to remember 2008 as the year that everything started to change for the better.  We need to look and recognize all the positive signs for change that are out there.  

Let's build the list of the reasons TFFilmmakers have HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.  Let's make the list at least 52 entries long so we can get through this next year.  

Share with me some of your ideas.  Here's my start (by no means in the order of importance):

1. It is so easy to blog that everyone could have their own page in a matter of minutes.  I thought about having a blog for several months before I made the leap and then I was up and on it a matter of minutes.
   
2. The more people are exposed to quality films (and culture in general) the more their tastes gravitate towards quality films.  I would love to see an actual study on this, but I was told it by one of the Netflix honchos in that their members gravitate to the "auteurs" the longer they've been a member.
   
3. Committed Leaders To A Open Source Film Culture have emerged.  I have been incredibly inspired by all the work that those I have labeled as Truly Free Film Heroes have done.  Even more so I am moved by their incredible generosity in their sharing of all they have learned.
   
4. The Tools To Take Personal Control are available, numerous, and fun.  There are more than I can list (but the TFF Tools List is a pretty good start).