Screenmancer was founded in 1997 by UCLA Film School graduates Quendrith Johnson and Robinson Rea as one of the internet’s earliest digital film portals, built around a simple but ambitious idea: “A gathering place for people who make movies.”
At a time when Hollywood still revolved around physical studio lots, fax machines, and industry gatekeepers, Screenmancer imagined a virtual creative campus where writers, directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, editors, composers, journalists, students, and audiences could meet, collaborate, exchange ideas, discover new work, and celebrate the art of filmmaking without regard to geography.
Screenmancer fever dream (based on screen + Neuromancer inspired hybrid name) emerged during the earliest generation of digital culture, when the commercial web was still finding its identity.
Long before any social media connected creative communities, before video streaming became commonplace, before studios embraced digital-first audiences, before online creator ecosystems reshaped entertainment, Screenmancer explored what a connected Hollywood might become. It was conceived less as a magazine than as a destination—a virtual filmmakers’ commons built on the belief that the future of cinema would extend beyond studio gates into a permanent online community.
Screenmancer evolved independently, no funds from any VC (who famously said to Quendrith “we don’t fund women” and “come back when you need $20 million”) and adapted through every major transformation of the digital era while remaining committed to its original mission.
Our Story
We are STEM women and men, but mostly female-founded since 1997. (Our original logo below was hand-drawn.) Our kids are now tech geniuses with real jobs, lolz. 🙂
Our first logo was literally hand-drawn on a kitchen table in Venice, Calif. Venice Beach will always be our spiritual home. We are MADE IN LA.
Quendrith Johnson – Founder, Exec. Prod.
Quendrith Johnson is the now the remaining Founder and Exec. Prod. of Screenmancer, an independent film publication established in 1997 following her studies at UCLA Film School. For decades she wrote about cinema, interviewed filmmakers and performers, covered the evolving entertainment industry. All the while having graduated from UCLA Film School, but on the wrong side of the velvet rope. Yet, the bills had to be paid, so she kept the learning STEM journey going. Quendrith spend years thinking about tech and entertainment; even explored the collision of conventional storytelling vs invading technology, that is even now fragmenting pop culture.
CONTACT: news@screenmancer.tv