Indie Meme Archival Project
Preserving the culture and history of Indie Meme
The Indie Meme Archival Project is a collaboration between Indie Meme and the Austin History Center. Indie Meme received a generous Heritage Preservation grant from the City of Austin to launch the initiative in 2023. The project chronicles the story of the festival and the community around it through physical and digital materials, oral history interviews, & more.
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The materials will be stored in a permanent public collection at the Austin History Center. They include the voices of filmmakers, documentarians, programmers, & volunteers whose efforts have made an impact on the cinematic landscape of Texas & the world.
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The archival project will be used to promote tourism and engagement with Indie Meme, Austin History Center, and the City of Austin.
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Would you like to contribute your stories? Sign up for an oral history interview here.
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“I’ve pretty much done the gamut - I’ve been a clicker counting the audience, I’ve collected tickets, I have shown people into dark movie halls. Over time I began to get more involved in the administrative back end... I gained a lot of insight into how film festivals are run and I enjoyed it thoroughly”” - Ramdas Menon, Indie Meme volunteer, board member, & programming director
“Independent films, they talk about a particular culture, a particular language, the problems faced - so they have a unique voice. They are not bound to follow the typical filmmaking process. There are so many stories to tell - in every region, every small town - and mainstream cinema never picks up those stories.“ - Jayant Somalkar, filmmaker, director of Shthal - A Match (IMFF 2024 - Best Narrative Feature)
“To go back in time, my first year with Indie Meme was just as a member and a guest in 2016. I started out as an intern in 2022. At the time I was in my senior year of college and was looking to get into doing something with film. Being from a South Asian background it was a perfect fit for me - and this year in I’m a part of the programming team for the festival."- Uma Riddle, film programmer & volunteer
“It was something that had never been done before because there was no theater that was screening independent South Asian film (in Dallas). So I think getting people into the theater since the filmmaker was also present honestly was the biggest focus. And the film itself was so excellent that people had to come watch it. ”- Tripti Bhatnagar, Co-Founder, Indie Meme Film Festival
“They are a gathering point both for filmmakers as well as audiences to get films that are not necessarily in the mainstream… and that is a very important task.” - Anand Patwardhan, National Award winning filmmaker, director of The World is Family (IMFF 2024 - Audience Award - Best Documentary Feature)
