Long before John Singleton hit it big as a writer-director, he was an intern working on the Columbia Pictures lot in Culver City. As he recalled over the weekend at the 2012 Film Independent Forum, he could find no parties of interest for his script Boyz in the Hood until he finally connected with producer Stephanie Allain.

What’s cool about this particular keynote address is that among those in the audience listening to Singleton was – you guessed it – Allain:

During his remarks, Singleton suggested that Allain is the kind of Hollywood creative executive that no longer really exists because “she had an opinion and she put her nose to what was going on in the world.”

As part of this year’s Forum, Film Independent also hosted its first-ever Movie Hackathon. Held over the weekend at the Venice offices of ZEFR, Inc., the event encouraged participants to map out Apps for filmmakers and film fans. The three competition winners were:

1) Deutsch LA Junior Varsity with Pop Over, a virtual movie party application tied into Facebook;

2) Bio Digital Jazz for CinFest, a film festival tool that uses a movie’s poster as the key digital asset throughout;

3) Code Frat with Act Roulette, an inter-active game that enables connected users to compete around readings of favorite movie lines.