[PREMIERE SCREENING; Saturday, Jan. 19, 11:30am — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Aside from the usual sacrifices of time and energy, in making this film I’ve lost friends. That’s the weirdest thing about producing or directing. When you make a film, it is different than when you write or paint. You surround yourself with a lot of people, but it still feels lonely. But at the end of the day, everything is for the film. Instead of the usual “art imitates life” maybe “art defeats life” is more befitting. Thinking back, when you do fall in love with a film […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 2:30pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] As I was growing up, I was always told that anything worth doing would take sacrifice. As an independent narrative filmmaker, which was my background before making this documentary, I was accustomed to working from a script and shooting over an intense but short period. It’s an exhausting and unsustainable month or two where you sacrifice your life, but then it ends, and you sort of remake yourself from the rubble… go for a walk, read a book, and begin to feel like some version of yourself after […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 3:00 — Sundance Resort Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Since the tragedy of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising, more than 60 years have been passed without any opportunity to reconsider due to the ignorance from Korea and the world. To bring the terrible memories up into the film caused huge pressure in regards to many things. As well as getting the financial support, the biggest pressure was that I had a duty to make a great enough film to satisfy the local residents in Jeju Island. This tragedy is still ineffaceable pain to them and the period […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 8:30pm — The MARC, Park City] When I first read this question I was immediately struck by how different my answers would be for each of the three films I’ve made. Each answer really shows where I was at in my life during these productions. For Mud, the biggest sacrifice I made was being away from my family. At the time, our son was one, and I missed roughly four months of his life. Despite a few occasional visits during production, I mostly had to block out the fact that I wasn’t getting to be […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2013Citadel New Video – January 29 A cousin of sorts to 2011’s Attack the Block, Irish writer/director Ciarán Foy’s Citadel ruminates on the sad lot of a new widower, caring for the prematurely born young child he lives with in a soon-to-be-demolished British suburban housing project. Little does he know that the hooded gangbangers who attacked his deceased wife with syringes and continue to hound him from afar are, in fact … wait for it … goblins! Skating around (or perhaps right through) some pretty ugly ethnopolitical undertones (the movie was clearly made pre-Trayvon), Citadel has the savage intensity and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 8:30pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] This past summer, I traveled to my hometown of Athens, Georgia, and shot a movie in the neighborhoods and streets of my childhood. Our film’s production office was the recently vacated office of Athens’ local heroes, R.E.M. On weekends the cast and crew partied in local bars and rock clubs (the Manhattan, the 40 Watt Club, the Georgia Theatre). I saw my parents all the time. It was a dream — a second childhood, balmy and green, somehow better than the first. I was so, so lucky. But […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013After collaborating with Cinereach for many years on films including Benh Zeitlin’s four time Academy Award-nominated film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Joshua Marston’s The Forgiveness of Blood, and Tom Gilroy’s The Cold Lands (premiering at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival), Paul Mezey has signed on as Producer in Residence at the not-for-profit production company and foundation. Mezey will support development, production and distribution of Cinereach’s films, as well as being involved in the organization’s grant-making activities and other key initiatives. Mezey is the founder of Journeyman Pictures, through which he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and award-winning […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 3:00pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] In making this film, I sacrificed time and plenty of sleep! The organizational nightmare that comes with working almost exclusively with archive has provided its own set of challenges. Creating a whole new working practice for myself and the team these past few films – and by that I mean the migration away from what we all as filmmakers would understand to be the daily routine, the broadly known elements of documentary making – has been tough. Watching thousands of hours or archive and selecting the material was […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 9:00pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] It’s independent thinking that makes filmmaking independent. Let me tell you a story. In the village there’s one inn. And the owner’s name is Jim. Jim’s surprised when someone comes in. ‘Cause usually no one comes in. But that day Ava came in, drank some gin, and asked Jim for a room to sleep in. “What does it cost?” Ava asked. “50 bucks,” Jim said, and she gave it to him. And Jim stared at the note which he hadn’t seen for a while at the inn. He went […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 3:00pm — Sundance Resort Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Metaphysically-speaking, there were many times during the more than five years it took to make this film when I felt like I had sacrificed my sanity and freedom… I suppose every documentary filmmaker experiences similar despondency at some point or other, but there were certainly long periods when it seemed like I was desperately trying to find my way through a labyrinth in the fog, and because I had no documentary community to look to for support and guidance here in Mumbai, it was often very lonely. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2013