Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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A Love Letter from Park City
I’ve been out at the Sundance Film Fest since Monday. The Sundance Institute (bless them) put on a new thing this year — The Talent Forum — to hook up some of their supported projects, artists, and festival filmmakers with potential collaborators, producers, funding and such. And with each other. I was invited out with my narrative feature Adelyne. What did I find? Well. The meetings seem to have gone well for many folks. My meetings were quite wonderful. I have a lotta gratitude for those in the industry who take these meetings and give advice and support even when […]
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Wrapping Their 25th Year, Slamdance Co-Founders Discuss the Festival’s Past, Present and Future
“In a way, I see the festival as run like a punk rock label — a successful one!” says filmmaker and Slamdance “co-conspirator” Paul Rachman. With its award ceremony and final screenings, the Slamdance Film Festival concluded its 25th year last night (read the full list of winners here) — an astonishing fact of longevity that none of its founders could have predicted when they launched the outsider event in Park City back in 1995. “We were a wild bunch of filmmakers who got together to do something different,” says co-founder Peter Baxter. “And we’re realizing now how naive we […]
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Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity in American Popular Culture and Kifaru Win Top Prizes at Slamdance 2019
Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity in American Popular Culture, Nicole Brending’s puppet animation about the rise and fall of a female pop star, took home the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize and the George Sparks Spirit of Slamdance Award at the Slamdance Film Festival’s award ceremony at Treasure Mountain Inn in Park City Utah tonight. Kifaru, David Hambridge’s documentary about two young Kenyan men who join a rhino caretaking conservatory, won the Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize as well as a documentary Audience Award. “Dollhouse wasn’t like any other film at the festival or any festival,” said the jury […]
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True/False Film Fest Announces First Selections for 2019 Edition
Gearing up for its 16th edition, the True/False Film Fest has announced the first components of this year’s programming. Filmmaker Hassan Fazili, director of the just-premiered-at-Sundance Midnight Traveler, and his family, will receive the True Life Fund, awarded to documentary subjects. Click here to read our interview with Fazili. This year’s True Vision Award will be presented to Spain-born, Mexico-based filmmaker Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda. Following on the heels of past recipients such as Laura Poitras and Claire Simon, Ibáñez Castañeda—whose films include 2013’s excellent The Naked Room, a harrowing look inside a therapist’s office counseling abused children—will receive the award along with a retrospective […]
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Dispatches from Park City — Tuesday, Jan 29th: The Farewell, American Factory, Luce and More
Welcome to Day Six of Sundance. The $70 parking lot sign has been marked down to $50, the first-weekend scrum of parties is history and Main Street is emptier. Time to get down to serious viewing in the days that remain. Sundance routinely programs about 120 features. (112 this year.) My personal best—four screenings a day, seven or eight days straight—is about 30 films. The math tells me that I see a quarter of Sundance each year. In other words, no two people see the same Sundance. What follows are notes on films I feel are notable. Lulu Wang’s The […]
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Sundance Notebook: Sexuality on Screen, Herzog in the Snow and America’s Shameful Past… and Present
Lobbies and shuttles are the office water cooler of Sundance. 10:00 AM phone pitches for movies about baseball aren’t uncommon, and neither are frantic PR people. Yesterday someone on their phone was very much upset about the fireplace in their condo not working, while others I encountered were extremely concerned about how to get the Jewish community of Wichita to the movies. I also hear countless recommendations for how films should have ended, from critics and locals alike. *** Fuck You Short, Shorts Program 3 Anette Sidor / 2018, 15mins. / Sweden Young actors sharply take on the power dynamics […]
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20 Films and VR Works to Anticipate at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival
When I look back at last year’s version of this annual “Sundance films I’m looking forward to” list, I’m seeing that my selections were pretty dead on. Almost all of my favorite films of the year — Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy; Tamara Jenkins’s Private Life; Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace; Sam Green’s A Thousand Hours; Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline — I saw in Park City. Will I come anywhere near that high-water mark this year? I have no idea, but of course I’m hoping. Here are 20 films and VR pieces (the number limited by laptop battery life on my American […]
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If Stanley Kubrick Was a Young Filmmaker Today…. A Hypothetical Festival Journey
In celebrating 25 years of Slamdance, I’m reflecting on the journey of first-time filmmakers. Many have passed through the hallways and screening rooms of Slamdance’s long-standing headquarters at Treasure Mountain Inn, through Sundance’s theaters, and many other new festivals over the past couple of decades. Yet from Stanley Kubrick’s coming of age as a filmmaker in the 1950s to the new digital technologies of today, it’s been an endeavor “against all odds,” through hurdles of financing, casting, scheduling, production and distribution. I have always been fascinated by Stanley Kubrick’s early career, specifically his first three feature films: Fear and Desire, […]
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Made Visible: The 2018 Hawai’i International Film Festival
A question like whether a film festival should be considered “regional” or “international” in terms of outlook goes out the window when discussing the intriguing range of the Hawai’i International Film Festival Presented By Halekulani. Up until even a few years ago, the festival’s reputation was primarily that of a place to see the newest East Asian works; it offered a deep dive into established and emerging filmmakers, as well as various populist genres from China, Japan, and South Korea that tended to be overlooked Stateside. Works on Pacific Islander experiences and a few Asian-American independents rounded out the highlights, […]
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Tips on Driving to Park City (Especially in a Government Shutdown)
With the government shutdown lingering indefinitely, there are some concerns that furloughed safety inspectors, moonlighting TSA agents and “sick” air traffic controllers are impacting the safety of air travel. If you’d been planning on flying to Park City in late January for Sundance, Slamdance or the Art House Convergence, and you’re concerned, you might want to think about driving there instead. If you live anywhere west of the Mississippi, driving is definitely a solid option. One advantage to driving is that when you get to Park City, you’ll have a car. Perfect for going to screenings, parties, Staples, Walmart, etc! […]
