Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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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! […]
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2018: A Year in 14 Festivals
2018 is the year that film festivals were challenged to answer the most basic question: What is cinema? The rise of VOD and streaming platforms have cinema owners worried that audiences will finally abandon theaters and the theatrical experience. The fear stems from the VOD market refusing to worship the primacy of cinema and the dictum that says all films should be played in theaters before arriving on another platform. And who can blame VOD providers for taking this stance, when they operate in a global market place, and when they are funding movies by auteurs themselves? If they fund […]
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Brown Girls Doc Mafia Announces Co-Directors, Advisory Board and $105,000 Grant From John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Brown Girls Doc Mafia, an organization advocating for women and non-binary people of color in the documentary industry, announced today the appointment of its board of directors as well as a two-year, $105,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The board, comprised of filmmaker Ursula Liang, Denae Peters of Film Sprout, and Nicole Tsien of American Documentary POV will work in conjunction with the organization’s Co-Directors, Iyabo Boyd and Tracy Nguyen-Chung. Brown Girls Doc Mafia was founded by Boyd in 2015 and has a global membership of over 2,400. From the press release: “Brown Girls Doc […]
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Talking Gender Parity in the Immersive World at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
No film fest is complete these days without an attempt to tackle the vast gender inequality that’s long afflicted the industry. So it comes as no surprise that the sixth edition of the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival devoted an entire panel to searching for remedies when it comes to immersive media. “Reaching True Gender Parity in Interactive Storytelling” proved to be a fascinating chat amongst four fervent ladies — Marie-Pier Gauthier of the National Film Board of Canada (who also served as panel moderator), HP’s Global Head of Virtual Reality Joanna Popper, Vivian Marthell, who leads local art house O […]
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“If the Content is Sh*t, It Will Still be Sh*t in VR and AR”: Virtual Reality and Hard Truth at the 2018 FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth’s “psychedelic documentary” Awavena, an inner trip that I’d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt’s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the […]
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“If You Want Something to Exist, Figure Out How to Do It”: Ian Clark on Eastern Oregon Film Festival and A Morning Light
As both a programmer and filmmaker, Ian Clark has had a long-standing relationship with Filmmaker. Named a 25 New Face in 2012, Clark is also a co-founder of the Eastern Oregon Film Festival (EOFF), which hosts its annual online program on this very website. I’ve attended EOFF for three years, and every time I am amazed by the sense of community Clark fosters and his prowess as a programmer, a curatorial mindset that feels like a direct extension of his person. Clark and I had a conversation about the festival’s origins, his relationship to his hometown of La Grande, and his […]
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Magic Leap, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Eminem and Traveling While Black: Sundance Announces 2019 New Frontier Slate
The Sundance Film Festival’s always-revelatory New Frontier section announced its 2019 lineup today. Dedicated to work sitting at the “dynamic crossroads of film, art and technology,” New Frontier typically explores various forms of new media, including VR, AR, mixed reality and work implementing artificial intelligence. Amongst the highlights are the first time, I believe, that the Magic Leap technology has appeared in a Sundance selection, here in a work co-created by the Royal Shakespeare Company; Eminem taking you on a nighttime Detroit ride in VR; the VR component of Roger Ross Williams’s multi-format Traveling While Black project; painter turned VR […]
