Their story begins in 1938. At the time, eight major film companies — including Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century-Fox — sought to control the film industry through their sole ownership of film distribution and exhibition. Ten years later, in 1948, after delays due to the outbreak of World War II, the Supreme Court ruled that these companies had conspired to illegally fix motion picture prices and monopolize both the film distribution and movie theatre markets.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., now considered a landmark antitrust case, introduced the “Paramount Decrees” which placed restrictions on the companies, such as prohibiting the defendants from both distributing movies and owning theatres without prior court approval. The decrees stood until 2020, when the Department of Justice terminated them as it worked to eliminate outdated antitrust policies, affectionately dubbed “horse and buggy” policies.
The outcome of this termination shook the film industry. Today, the industry has evolved from silver screens and Shirley Temple to at-home streaming services and movies with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But just like in Old Hollywood, the industry is increasingly in the palm of a few companies like Netflix and Amazon.
Enter: Brynne Norquist and Tyler Knohl.
Norquist, a fourth-year media arts product major at Emerson College, is no stranger to the world of film. She grew up performing and acting, but it wasn’t until she got to college that she took an interest in the business side of the industry.
In the fall of 2022, she launched Emerson’s first film distribution program within Frames Per Second — the college’s oldest film organization — where she served as head of distribution. The distribution program was successful and prompted Norquist to dig deeper into the independent film industry.
At the time, the industry was still reeling over the loss of the Paramount Decrees. Troubled by this, in October 2023, Norquist founded Hiike, a platform for independent filmmakers. With Hiike, filmmakers can submit their films, which are then analyzed using thousands of previous submissions. Then, recommendations are generated for filmmakers to inform them of the festivals to which they should submit their films.
“History is truly repeating itself, so I find that to be a major threat,” Norquist said of the termination of the Paramount Decrees. “That was one of the major things that really got me to want to start Hiike in the first place.”
By June 2024, Northeastern fourth-year data science and business administration combined major Tyler Knohl joined Hiike. Knohl had prior experience with film festivals, serving as assistant film festival director at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, the nation’s oldest genre film festival.
The two originally connected on LinkedIn. And what was supposed to be a 30-minute meeting over coffee turned into four hours of bonding over a shared sense of purpose, which bridged the gap between connecting on LinkedIn and becoming partners for Hiike.
“A differentiator of Hiike is we’re not just this platform or this product,” Norquist said. “We are a data source because we have manually collected thousands of lines of film festival data in order to make our recommendation system as specific as possible for our users.”
Norquist and Knohl individually research thousands of different film festival criteria, vet the requirements and add to their ever-growing data source. Yet, major production companies have the upper hand, as they have access to distribution systems that are out of reach for independent filmmakers, Knohl said.
“All these big studios and these big companies have access to them right on, on a scale of content generation and connecting users to the right platforms,” Knohl said. “And now we’re creating something that, although not as synonymous, it’s still giving filmmakers and people that don’t have that access a tool that they’re able to use.”
On campus, there is an increasing demand for spaces for filmmakers, highlighted by North by Northeastern — an annual film festival run solely by students. Lucy Perkins, a third-year business administration and communication studies combined major, and Rylie Hepp, a fourth-year business administration major, lead the film festival.
Last year, North By Northeastern hosted its biggest film festival yet, for which it sold upwards of 300 tickets, Perkins said. The festival highlighted several films by current students, faculty members and alumni of the university.
“The fact that we do have so many non-film students, I think it really speaks to the fact that there is a community at Northeastern that doesn’t necessarily want to make filmmaking their career, so they are not studying it at school, but are interested in it and want to engage with the topic,” Hepp said.
As college students across Boston like Norquist and Knohl work to ensure that independent films reach a wider audience, they said that their efforts and their company is rooted in the concept of grit. Norquist grew up ski racing and said it is not uncommon for racers to fall or miss a gate. Many would leave the course, but a select few skiers would try again.
“Most racers just get up and ski out of the course, disqualifying themselves from the whole competition,” Norquist wrote on her website. “But, if you have the ambition, you get up, hike back to the gate and finish the course. This spirit of resilience and determination is what drives Hiike.”
As Norquist put it: “It’s time to Hiike.”
News correspondent Tanvi Saxena contributed reporting.
