Crowdfunding
Catalyst empowers storytellers by supporting, educating, and showcasing independent artists. We have created a page on our website to promote the crowdfunding of current institute members and current/former official festival selections. If you are a current institute member or a current/past official festival selection fill out our crowdfunding form to have your project featured on this page.
GOLD Comedy
New York, New York
Comedy
GOLD Comedy is a company dedicated to the success of women and other “others” in comedy-related professions and side hustles. (Fun fact: Rachel Dratch is an advisor!) Last year GOLD piloted—on a shoestring—10 all-women/non-binary teams making funny digital shorts (that’s 10 more than SNL has! AHEM). Now they’re recruiting more team members and raising resources to help build the most diverse possible new slate of teams and provide them the best experience, the most mentoring* and skill-building, the widest exposure, and the sweetest success. Not to mention—perhaps most important—the most generous scholarship fund. It’s a rewards-based crowdfunding campaign, and they’re a COMEDY COMPANY, so you can bet the rewards are VERY COOL. (Hint: Rachel Dratch, Bridget Everett, Ophira Eisenberg, Negin Farsad…plus a bunch of ways for you to up your skills and entertain your friends.) Of course, the REAL reward is knowing that you directly helped more funny women make more funny stuff! 🤘
The Cutting Room Floor
New York City, New York
Drama, Romance
The Cutting Room Floor is a feature film that explores a dilemma many women face: career vs. relationships. With themes of catharsis, fiction vs. reality, & coming of age from a new point of view: a female film editor. As Kate edits a romance movie, she imagines how she would recut her relationship. “Strong female protagonist” What does that mean anymore? Our film takes a realistic look into the story of an ambitious young woman faced with the choice between taking the next steps in her romantic life versus her career. But should she have to choose? Why do so many women feel that they must?
Treadmill
New York, New York
Horror
A short narrative first-person experience about the horrors of the digital tools we rely on. In TREADMILL, the viewer inhabits the body of our protagonist Morgan, a member of a small team of indie programmers forced to test the prototype for a revolutionary wellness app on themselves. When a bug in the program entraps them in a hellish augmented reality, we witness through Morgan's eyes as she and the team must navigate a labyrinth woven through the darkest corners of their minds, questioning their every sense as well as their sanity as they race to reach the server room and cut off the program's brain before they become lost forever.