tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:55:15 +0000Sundance Film Festival as covered by Filmmaker Magazinehttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/index.phpnoreply@blogger.com (Webmaster)Blogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-8404626271353938481Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:51:00 +00002010-02-01T10:49:43.703-05:00When Danish Zentropa director Mads Brugger decided to take himself and two Korean-Danish comedians to North Korea under the guise of a fake comedy project, he employed what he thought might be the magic word for repressive regimes seeking international image burnishing: “cultural exchange.” The film opens with a shot of Brugger, lying on a hotel bed, calmly reading Kim Jong-Il’s official http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/02/red-chapel-s-mads-brugger-by-alicia-van.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-3895473115085530899Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:30:00 +00002010-01-28T13:45:23.198-05:00When I was asked by The Huffington Post to comment on New York movies premiering in Sundance, the first film that popped into my mind was Josh and Bennie Safdie's Daddy Longlegs. Now, as you may know, I'm a big fan of the Safdie brothers, selecting Josh for our 25 New Faces for the film he directed, The Pleasure of Being Robbed in 2008. That picture is a delightfully freewheeling romance of sortshttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/daddy-long-legs-josh-and-bennie-safdie.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-7218956812554097810Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:12:00 +00002010-01-27T15:34:41.766-05:00Ken Waldrop’s His & Hers is a documentary focusing on 70 women from the Irish Midlands, arranged chronologically from age 0 to 90, telling small stories about their lives. Irish Midlands women, being funny, sarcastic, charming and warm, are good subjects; Waldrop knew that because he grew up the son of one of very funny and sarcastic Irish Midlands mother. He constructed the film to mirror his http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/his-and-hers-ken-waldrop-by-alicia-van.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-2749654637315018988Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:31:00 +00002010-01-27T00:57:28.767-05:00Galt Niederhoffer is no stranger to Sundance, having produced films that won awards there beginning in 1997, when Morgan J. Freeman’s Hurricane Streets won the Audience Award. As a founding member of Plum Pictures, one of New York’s most active independent film production companies, she has produced over a dozen films, including Grace is Gone, Dedication, Prozac Nation, Lonesome Jim, The Winning http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/romantics-galt-niederhoffer-by-alicia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-5297384421482749496Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:17:00 +00002010-01-25T16:30:18.382-05:00Tasked with “celebrating experimentation and the convergence of art and film,” the New Frontier section at Sundance has been exhibiting feature films and installations for the last four years. Shari Frilot is the programmer, and spent the entire year reviewing work from new artists, figuring out which part of the ground being broken she wants to put in front of the Sundance audience.How to show http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/sundance-senior-programmer-shari-frilot.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-8485875019623151776Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-01-24T09:00:03.892-05:00This piece was originally printed in our 2009 Fall issue.As a filmmaker, British writer-director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, In This World, A Mighty Heart) doesn’t linger long in one place. Just consider the globe-hopping locations he shoots in (Scotland, Pakistan, Iran, Shanghai), the hyperkinetic pace at which he works (there have been 18 features since 1995), and the http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/smooth-criminal-look-inside-michael.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-7458448231695115301Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:22:00 +00002010-01-24T12:09:02.802-05:00Playing in competition this year is Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate, starring Alex Karpovsky and Chris Doubek as brothers, Paul and Rudy, vying for the attention of Rudys’ soon-to-be ex-wife, Heather (Heather Kafka.) Paul is enjoying wild success as the author of a Harry Potter-like series of children’s books, which are based on stories that Rudy used to make up for Paul when they http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/lovers-of-hate-s-brian-poyser-by-alicia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-6782605153281768283Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-02-05T00:00:11.221-05:00UNTITLED (WOMEN OF ALLAH). PHOTO COURTESY OF GLADSTONE GALLERY, NEW YORK."It’s very flattering to be interviewed by a film magazine as opposed to an art publication," said Shirin Neshat. "I am very flattered anybody would think it’s worth talking to me." Widely-acknowledged as one of the most influential contemporary Middle-Eastern artists (and apparently one of the most modest), Neshat and her http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/women-without-men-s-shirin-neshat-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-7005128272241232337Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-01-23T09:00:02.082-05:00This piece was originally printed in our 2010 Winter issue.Hell can be many things — being buried alive in the Iraqi desert, for example, or perhaps just watching your screenplay slowly disintegrate on the shelf during never-ending studio “development.” The opposite of most screenwriters, Chris Sparling knows the former but not the latter. He went directly from struggling indie director to http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/running-out-of-air-penning-midnight.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-2197859672019271775Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:55:00 +00002010-01-22T15:06:04.529-05:00The filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman work together in New York as Supermarche, and are prolific producers of music videos, commercials and feature films (Opus Jazz: NY Export, premiering on PBS this Spring, is their latest.) They also share an office with Schulman’s younger brother, Yaniv. One day Yaniv got an email from an eight-year-old girl who wanted to paint a picture of one of hishttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/catfish-s-henry-joost-and-ariel.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-6224117311530139816Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-01-22T09:00:05.828-05:00This piece was originally printed in our 2010 Winter issue.In a New York Times piece written last month on the commercial success in 2009 of films aimed at female audiences (Twilight: New Moon, Julie & Julia, The Proposal), critic Manohla Dargis also took note of the relative paucity of female directors in Hollywood. Sure, there’s Kathryn Bigelow, who won many critic’s Best Director awards with http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/please-give-s-nicole-holofcener-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-7610585096012649669Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:45:00 +00002010-01-22T00:34:20.598-05:00Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika is a documentary that shows modern-day Russia from the inside out. Five Russian adults reveal their personal histories through interviews and home movies, talking us through their childhood in school together during the die-hard communist Brezhnev years of the 1970s, through Gorbachev, the collapse of the USSR, and, finally, the coups, oligarchs and wealth transfershttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/my-perestroika-s-robin-hessman-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-6273521283652748169Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:40:00 +00002010-01-20T01:47:03.658-05:00When filmmakers heard that the Sundance Film Festival’s longstanding Director, Geoffrey Gilmore, was leaving, they wondered if his departure would signify a major change in direction at an institution that more than any other has defined the world of American independent film. When, a couple of weeks later, John Cooper, Sundance’s Director of Programming, was elevated to the Director position, http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/sundance-director-john-cooper-talks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-1819652304618566172Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:02:00 +00002010-01-19T17:13:03.515-05:00One of the biggest premieres at Sundance this year doesn’t involve a star-studded premiere party or the unspooling of a glossy 35mm print: it’s an entirely new section of programming: <=>, pronounced “Next” by those not brave enough to type or say the symbol. Director of programming Trevor Groth has been involved with the festival for 25 years, and points out that the symbol actually means “Less http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/program-director-trevor-groth.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-1550345416797527277Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:01:00 +00002010-01-21T11:12:20.913-05:00This is Anthony Kaufman's Industry Beat column from our 2010 Winter issue.Old distribution models die hard.Everyone knows about the passing of that once-established indie film paradigm: Make a movie, show it at a festival, sell it to a distributor, get it booked in theaters, watch it find a home on DVD and cable — and then somewhere down the line, after all the release expenses are recovered, http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2010/01/when-does-plan-b-become-plan-by-anthony.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-1908222020834066332Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:18:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.525-05:00Documentarian Doug Pray has made films about grafitti artists (Infamy), an iterant surfing family (Surfwise), Seattle punk scene (Hype!) Hip Hop DJ’s (Scratch) and truckers (Big Rig), and now, with Art & Copy, he profiles the living legends of corporate advertising. Advertising has a complicated relationship to filmmaking — for one thing, many feature and documentary directors make a living doinghttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/art-and-copy-s-doug-pray-by-alicia-van.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-3465077628782557634Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:22:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.525-05:00Peter Callahan’s Againt the Current is road movie that takes place in a vehicle that “couldn’t out-run a turtle.” It’s a story about Paul Thompson (Joseph Fiennes), a man in his mid-30’s who is still grieving for his wife five years after her death. Emotionally adrift, Thompson decides to make it literal by enlisting his best friend (Justin Kirk) to man a boat as he swims the entire length of thehttp://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/against-current-s-peter-callahan-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-2634207227080575866Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:08:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.525-05:00 Up there with Snakes On A Plane in the pantheon of catchy titles, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is a horror-comedy about Hamlet and the Holy Grail premiering in Slamdance this year. The movie stars Jake Hoffman, Devon Aoki, Jeremy Sisto, John Ventimiglia, Ralph Maccio and Waris Ahluwalia and was only the second East Coast feature film to use the Red camera. The film’s director, http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/slamdance-rosencrantz-and-guildenstern.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-485313481921129588Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:37:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.525-05:00Noah Buschel’s The Missing Person stars Michael Shannon, last seen as the asylum-bound neighbor in Revolutionary Road, and if Sam Mendes had directed this film, he might have played it straight, disregarding the minefield of clichés to pay reverent homage to The Long Goodbye; Buschel knows what a bold move it is to make a noir in 2007, so he subverts the genre with un-ironic simplicity and a few http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/crossing-over-louis-psihoyos-by-alicia_19.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-3664680524649990479Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.526-05:00Greg Mottola's Adventureland screened in the Premieres section of this year's Sundance Film Festival. You can read our story on the film in the Winter issue section.http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/some-kind-of-love-by-nick-dawson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-929438390264609395Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.526-05:00Unlike other films playing in our three-part look at crossover artists at Sundance, The Cove is not playing in New Frontier, but in the Documentary Competition, and that’s despite its director’s non-traditional background. Louie Psihoyos was one of the world’s top-ranked photographers, a staff member at National Geographic who had traveled the world taking portraits of the world’s most famous http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/crossing-over-louis-psihoyos-by-alicia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-4829606825751497852Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:00:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.526-05:00James Toback's Tyson screened in the Premieres section of this year's Sundance Film Festival. You can read our story on the film in the Winter issue section.http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/off-ropes-by-jason-guerrasio.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-1073817281396213608Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:06:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.526-05:00Lynn Shelton has worked in a variety of creative forms for most of her life, but seems to have found her true voice in the role of writer-director. A Seattle native, Shelton spent her formative years immersed in painting, writing poetry, taking pictures and acting. She was a stage actress for ten years (and was told she was destined to work in film), and subsequently studied for an MFA in http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/lynn-shelton-humpday.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nick Dawson)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-6500083465656735498Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.526-05:00California-based artist Charlie White has made his mark with highly produced, carefully-staged photographs that construct scenes both disturbing and familiar, work that aims to dissect the violence, desires, and social anxieties that trouble the American collective unconscious. From his Understanding Joshua Series (2001), which offered an adorable/repulsive monster character as surrogate for http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/crossing-over-charlie-white-by-alicia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Scott Macaulay)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429157055020516436.post-378140560218693350Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:00:00 +00002010-02-20T21:12:18.527-05:00Mike Plante wrote about the DVD release of Chameleon Street in our Load & Play section in 2007. The film will screen at this year's Sundance Film Festival in its Sundance Collection section.In Chameleon Street, the enigmatic Doug Street goes through a series of cons, sometimes to make money, sometimes to prove he can do more than what the world expects of him. In short time he goes from a simple http://filmmakermagazine.com/sundance_features/2009/01/chameleon-street-by-mike-plante.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jason Guerrasio)0