After almost 14 years, arthouse indie ‘Greys Inbetween’ finally debuts worldwide on five channels, including Vimeo, Tubi and Amazon Prime. A long labour of love, it feels good. Perhaps a lesson to myself in not giving up. I guess we all get into a rut of thinking something is so, is fixed when in fact, it’s in our own power to change that. To flip our thinking and reassess what we feel we know to be fact.
The real fact was that the world had changed in the interim. BLM, unlike all the false dawns that have gone before (and there were many) seemed to have truly moved the needle, in terms of what was possible and what might now be perceived as actually having weight and entertainment value, where before there was nothing but negativity and blocks.
The burgeoning online marketplace, both in terms of distribution outlets but also even specialist channels that simply didn’t exist before. Nuella, aimed squarely at and for Africa and the African Diaspora, for instance. It felt as though there had been a paradigm shift in terms of what was considered, that they now understood there was a huge appetite out there for stuff other than what was being churned out by a white-centric mindset.
Not only this, but the contract I’d entered into and was tied down by had long expired and the film now reverted back to me, to do with as I pleased. Lockdown also played its part, in offering downtime, room to contemplate how best to use all the time I now had on my hands with only a laptop for company. It made sense to at least see if there was a chance for Greys. To find out how the land lay, what might need to be done to get it up to spec and out there.
It was then so gratifying to have not only the aggregator FilmHub say yes, but then a whole slew of channels also.
The one fly in the ointment became not knowing exactly when the film was going to be live on any channel and the challenge that represented in terms of a marketing campaign, usually so tied in with a launch date. But all that said, as a filmmaker, it’s still a delicious problem to have.
Anyone in the UK with Amazon Prime can find the film here:
