Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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The 2015 Slamdance Award Winners
Self-explanatory: here are this year’s Slamdance award winners, with descriptions provided by the festival and the respective juries for each category. Slamdance certainly wins some kind of prize for pragmatism in its awards; surely many films and filmmakers would love to receive $3,500 worth of legal services. AUDIENCE AWARDS Audience Award for Narrative Feature: Across the Sea, dir. by Nisan Dağ & Esra Saydam Damla is a Turkish immigrant estranged from her homeland; she lives in New York City with her husband, Kevin, and they’re expecting their first child. But Damla is still haunted by memories of her first love and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2015 -
“Ideas Just Disappeared”: Cloro | Director Lamberto Sanfelice
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? The day before the first day of shooting I went with part of the crew to the location were we would start shooting the following day. It was in a rather desolated area with just a few big old trees, which in normal circumstances I would find fascinating. But on that day as I was looking around all of a sudden I could find nothing interesting to shoot there. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2015 -
“Intimacy: I Do Everything I Can to Avoid It in my Personal Life”: Sleeping with Other People | Director Leslye Headland
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? My fear of intimacy. I do everything I can to avoid it in my personal life and here I was making a movie that required intense intimacy. Not just intimacy between characters who fall in love onscreen but between myself and the actors, the crew, the audience and the rest of the world. I was terrified of being that vulnerable and it got messy at times. But the end […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“Pressure’s a Choice”: I’ll See You In My Dreams | Director Brett Haley
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? Making a film – especially an independent film – is full of constant fear: the fear that you won’t have all the money you need, the fear that something beyond your control will go wrong, the fear of making wrong decisions. And once you’ve made what you hope is a good film, you then have to wait to see what other people think of it. What will critics say? […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“We Were Going to Climb on Top of a 300-Foot, High Voltage Pylon”: The Summer of Sangaile | Director Alanté Kavaïté
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I was waiting with apprehension for the day we were going to climb on top of a 300-foot, high voltage pylon. With the actress, the DP and a stunt specialist, I did not feel very brave when we were approaching the top. From there, I was watching some painters working on a much higher power plant chimney and I thought that I was not tailored for that. But once […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“Big Names Add Value. I Can Dig That”: Fresh Dressed | Director Sasha Jenkins
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? With Fresh Dressed, I had the opportunity to talk to a wide cross section of folks who are, or have been involved with, hip hop culture in one way or another. We were able to strike a serious balance between talking to the folks who are known by the masses and the lesser known folks who had a heavy hand when it comes to the development of hip hop […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“You Will Come Through This”: Dreamcatcher | Director Kim Longinotto
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I’m always terrified before making a new film because so much of it’s down to chance…will I find a story? Will I be able to film it? Will I be able to get a beginning, middle and end? It always suddenly feels really daunting. The worst time was before Salma, as most of her story had happened in the past and I wasn’t sure how to make her life […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“We Began Production with No Money in the Bank”: Knock Knock | Director Eli Roth
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I swore I would never do this again, but we began production of Knock Knock with no money in the bank. The last time I did this was on my first film, Cabin Fever, when an investor backed out 3 days before shooting and we made the first two weeks on credit cards, making phone calls to investors to beg for money between takes. This time, with no commitments, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“I Can’t Imagine Just Leaving Behind an Ugly Corpse and an Unpaid University Debt”: Sam Klemke’s Time Machine | Director Matthew Bate
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? Fear is my prime motivator, the force that scares me to make films in the first place. Maybe it’s egotistical but I can’t imagine just leaving behind an ugly corpse and an unpaid university debt. I was scared the entire time making this film, listening to that demonic, self-doubting, nagging Woody Allen voice in my head, telling me no one is going to want to see a film about […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015 -
“Trying to Play, More or Less, ‘By the Book'”: Results | Director Andrew Bujalski
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I confronted plenty of fears, don’t know that I *conquered* any of them per se. On this movie I was taking most of the ideas & philosophies I’d developed over the last 15 years of work and tossing them out, trying to play instead, more or less, “by the book.” Of course I still made plenty of unconventional decisions and I suspect the movie is as idiosyncratic as anything […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015
