The 2024 Slamdance Film Festival, which returned this year to its original home at the Doubletree Park City (i.e., the Yarrow), announced the winners of its Sparky Awards on Friday. Giuseppe Garau’s The Accident, a 16mm-shot film about a newly separated woman finding employment within the tow-truck industry, won the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize. The Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize went to Matt Moyer’s and Amy Toensing’s Inheritance, an Appalachia-set film dealing with the opioid epidemic. Kiarash Dadgar, whose short film The Steak played the festival, was awarded the AGBO Fellowship, which comes with $25,000 in prize money and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2024The Sundance Film Festival has announced the awards for this year’s edition. The list follows below, with links to our coverage of the films in question as available: GRAND JURY PRIZES The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented to In The Summers / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Alessandra Lacorazza, Producers: Alexander Dinelaris, Rob Quadrino, Fernando Rodriguez-Vila, Lynette Coll, Sergio Lira, Cristóbal Güell) — On a journey that spans the formative years of their lives, two sisters navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Cast: René Pérez Joglar, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2024Creative Capital, the granting and artist support organization, announced this week its 2024 awardees in the categories of Visual Arts and Film/Moving Image, totaling $2.5 million in grants to artists chosen from 5,600 applications. The Film/Moving Image recipients include 25 New Faces of Film Ephraim Asili and Marnie Ellen Hertzler. The full list follows below, and click here to learn more about the individual projects. VISUAL ARTS Jordan Ann Craig, Santa Fe, NM Brigit Johnson, Placerville, CA Emily Barker, Los Angeles, CA Andrea Carlson, Grand Marais, MN and Chicago, IL Nani Chacon, Albuquerque, NM Christy Chan, Richmond, CA william cordova, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2024Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? God Save Texas: La Frontera unfolds its narrative amidst the backdrop of El Paso, Texas—a sister city to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Within the embrace of the Border, a realm pulsating with political fervor, two cultures harmonize, forging the unique tapestry that defines this […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2024Inspired by God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s examination of the contradictions and history of Texas, God Save Texas is an anthology series in which three Texan directors offer their own perspective on the state. The second of these, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil, is Corman’s World director Alex Stapleton’s examination of the history of the country’s energy sector and its relationship to her own family history, who arrived as enslaved people in the 1830s. Below, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil editor Rosella Tursi discusses editing the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2024Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Texas is many things – a place, an identity, and an idea. It is a state, a state of being, and a state of mind. It holds itself apart and is held apart. It polarizes. And that makes for a good story. My […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2024Between the Temples, co-written by C. Mason Wells and director Nathan Silver, follows a spiritually conflicted cantor (Jason Schwartzman) who finds his faith somewhat revitalized when his grade school music teacher (Carol Kane) enrolls as his latest adult bat mitzvah student. Editor John Magary discusses how he approached cutting Between the Temples, particularly when it came to navigating the film’s heavy use of improv. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 24, 2024Archival footage and previously unseen home movies lend a new perspective of Christopher Reeve’s rise to stardom in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Editor Otto Burnham shares his approach to cutting Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s doc, which makes it Sundance 2024 debut in the festival’s Premieres section. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Burnham: I was rollerblading badly in East London on a bright, chilly January […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2024Mel Eslyn, the head of Duplass Brothers Productions and the director of TIFF 2022 premiere Biosphere, makes her first directorial foray into episodic television with Penelope. Penelope tells the story of an alienated 16-year-old girl who venture into the wilderness to escape from society. Nathan M. Miller, who served as cinematographer on Eslyn’s Biosphere and has worked on several other Duplass Brothers productions, took on the job again for Penelope. Below, he emphasizes the series’ naturalist aesthetic and no-frills approach to lighting. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2024Conbody VS Everybody sees Debra Granik (Stray Dog) returning to documentary after 2018’s Leave No Trace and also breaking into the world of episodic series. The film follows Coss Marte as he creates a gym inspired by his own prison work outs in hopes of breaking the cycle of recidivism. Two episodes of Conbody VS Everybody will premiere at Sundance 2024. Below, series cinematographers Sean Hanley, Kefentse Johnson and Eric Phillips-Horst share how they all got involved in the film, how their personal styles blended with Granik’s and the challenges of shooting a series over many years. See all responses to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2024