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I JUST SUED THE GOTHAM FILM AND MEDIA INSTITUTE FOR AGE, RACE, AND DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION

I have one job left: to make a feature film supporting trans and LGBTQ youth in rural, small town and Middle America — and to help Keep Them Alive.

In doing that job, today I filed a lawsuit against the largest and oldest non-profit independent film organization: The Gotham Film and Media Institute (formerly known as IFP).

My lawsuit alleges that Gotham discriminated against me on the basis of my age, my race, and my disability. I applied to Gotham’s “Shorts to Features” Project Market with our film, A Still, Small Paw. I was rejected.

Now I wouldn’t have filed this lawsuit if I wasn’t confident of our project’s merit. You can explore it for yourself including the script, Lookbook, and video at www.astillsmallpaw.com.

Now to be clear, I’m not asking the court to decide if our project was better than the others. I’m saying Gotham barred me from this vital opportunity because of my age, race and disability. I submit: Gotham didn’t reject the project — Gotham rejected me. My identity.

The research, numbers, and facts that I’ve collected indicate that what Gotham’s reviewers saw in me was not their preferred demographic: A young person of color. Instead, what they saw in me was an “Old disabled white guy.”

Which is uncomfortable to talk about, right? Especially race — given our shared history of terrible and unacceptable discrimination in this country. The issue of non-profit film gatekeeping, based on identity, has been festering beneath the surface for indie filmmakers for years.

One anonymous filmmaker on Substack writes that, “decisions are now often being made — not based on artistic excellence and merit — but on the identity checkboxes of those [filmmakers] who are making the submissions.” The reason accusations like this have been anonymous is clear: any filmmaker who’d raise them publicly would be blacklisted (and not in a good way). Their future as a filmmaker would be over.

Now, since my future is, shall we say, limited — I’m 65 and have been battling cancer for 8 years. There’s not a lot these gatekeepers can do to me that cancer hasn’t already done. So I’m putting my face and name to this issue publicly with proof like this:

A screenshot of my actual application for Gotham, and right after my name — before my job even! — Gotham asked for my ethnicity.

Their priorities are further reflected by this graph showing Gotham’s preferred demographic for lead filmmakers in their Shorts to Features selections: 66% of people of color. Same thing with Age: Look at this graph: in the Shorts to Features program, Gotham has not selected a single lead filmmaker over the age of 50 in the last two years.

In fact, I challenge you: Look at all the hundreds of faces on Gotham’s website and find a single filmmaker who is over the age of 50. This research and other facts I’ve uncovered all point to: Something’s not right here. So what does Gotham have say about all this? Well, I’d like to know. I reached out to Gotham seven different times. Despite being a dues-paying member whose first membership dates back to the 1980s — my letters and emails to Tess Bartholomew, Project Market Manager; Kia Brooks, Managing Director; and Executive Director Jeffrey Sharp have all gotten no response. Zero.

What I did receive — fourteen days after my first outreach — was a legal letter from Gotham’s lawyer. Notably he didn’t say one word about my allegations that Gotham discriminated against me for age, race and disability. Instead, what he said was that their decisions are protected free speech, and if I followed up on my threat to sue them, they’d come after me for violating SLAPP law.

That’s sooo sad, right? The first communication I got back from a non-profit film org of which I’m a member — was a legal letter from their lawyer at a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-law-firm.

Now, if you’re interested, you can read all of my attempted correspondence with Gotham, the legal letter from their lawyer and my lawsuit at www.astillsmallpaw.com — just click on “About” and scroll down to Lantz v. Gotham.

There you’ll find much more information I uncovered during my research, including my allegation that that Gotham is really operating like an Elite Private Filmmaking Club. Now I don’t have any illusions here — the chance of me prevailing against a big law firm with hundreds of lawyers is miniscule.

But a wrong has been done — and I have to try and make it right. Right?

To be clear, Gotham is a public non-profit organization; it receives public support and is given tax exempt status by U.S. taxpayers. I think it’s reasonable for American taxpayers, who are important stakeholders here, to ask why Gotham selects projects for this year’s Shorts to Features market that originate in places like Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Iran — but completely ignored a story to protect LGBTQ youth in their own backyard in rural, Red-state America.

Hello, Gotham...?