Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
Sundance 2024: Devo, War Game, Girls State
First you get radicalized, then you get professionalized—a familiar trajectory Chris Smith’s Devo retells in a familiar idiom. After sitting down with dour conspiracy theorist Michael Ruppert for 2009’s Collapse, the American Movie director didn’t make a feature for eight years. He returned to begin his populist doc era with 2017’s Jim & Andy, which made generous use of previously unseen videos of Jim Carrey acting like a maniac “in character” as Andy Kaufman on the set of 1999’s Man on the Moon. In present-day interviews, Carrey described his dilemma: having given a performance at a relatively young age that confirmed […]
-
Creative Capital Announces 2024 “Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact” Awards
Creative Capital, the granting and artist support organization, announced this week its 2024 awardees in the categories of Visual Arts and Film/Moving Image, totaling $2.5 million in grants to artists chosen from 5,600 applications. The Film/Moving Image recipients include 25 New Faces of Film Ephraim Asili and Marnie Ellen Hertzler. The full list follows below, and click here to learn more about the individual projects. VISUAL ARTS Jordan Ann Craig, Santa Fe, NM Brigit Johnson, Placerville, CA Emily Barker, Los Angeles, CA Andrea Carlson, Grand Marais, MN and Chicago, IL Nani Chacon, Albuquerque, NM Christy Chan, Richmond, CA william cordova, […]
-
“A Departure From Narratives of Division” | Iliana Sosa, God Save Texas: La Frontera
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? God Save Texas: La Frontera unfolds its narrative amidst the backdrop of El Paso, Texas—a sister city to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Within the embrace of the Border, a realm pulsating with political fervor, two cultures harmonize, forging the unique tapestry that defines this […]
-
“This is the Story of Environmental Racism”: Editor Rosella Tursi on God Save Texas: The Price of Oil
Inspired by God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s examination of the contradictions and history of Texas, God Save Texas is an anthology series in which three Texan directors offer their own perspective on the state. The second of these, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil, is Corman’s World director Alex Stapleton’s examination of the history of the country’s energy sector and its relationship to her own family history, who arrived as enslaved people in the 1830s. Below, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil editor Rosella Tursi discusses editing the […]
-
“Texas is a Mirror That Reflects Back What America Has Been” | Alexandria Stapleton, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Texas is many things – a place, an identity, and an idea. It is a state, a state of being, and a state of mind. It holds itself apart and is held apart. It polarizes. And that makes for a good story. My […]
-
Kindness, the Dark Arts and Viruses at Sundance: Taylor Hess’s Producer Diary #2
As I stand up to file out of a movie, a man shouts, “Hail Satan!” and I stand up a little straighter. There are bright blue spotlights and masks of ancient Egypt adorning the walls around me. It’s late Sunday night, the opening weekend of Sundance is coming to a close, and I’m feeling exhausted. A fresh-faced stranger strikes up a conversation, and I realize I can’t speak. Every time I try to talk, I start coughing. I’m offered an Altoid. It dawns on me that while watching a no-dialogue movie about Satanists, I’ve lost my voice. Dark magic…or something […]
-
“The Point Is to Struggle With What You’ve Been Given”: Editor John Magary on Between the Temples
Between the Temples, co-written by C. Mason Wells and director Nathan Silver, follows a spiritually conflicted cantor (Jason Schwartzman) who finds his faith somewhat revitalized when his grade school music teacher (Carol Kane) enrolls as his latest adult bat mitzvah student. Editor John Magary discusses how he approached cutting Between the Temples, particularly when it came to navigating the film’s heavy use of improv. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired […]
-
Sundance 2024: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Nocturnes
Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez’s first feature, 1997’s Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, intertwined news footage of plane hijackings with voiceover readings of passages from Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Mao II—he’s no stranger to rendering sweeping diagnoses within unorthodox historical frameworks. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat re-examines the assassination of Patrice Lumumba; the Soundtrack portion of the title points to the film’s other main strand, the political roles of American jazz musicians during the period, ranging from unwittingly complicit—Louis Armstrong performed a show in the Congo unaware that he was providing cover for CIA actions—to actively dissident, with the film bookended by vocalist […]
-
“How You Bring a Story to Life Is Just a Question of Your Imagination”: Editor Otto Burnham on Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Archival footage and previously unseen home movies lend a new perspective of Christopher Reeve’s rise to stardom in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Editor Otto Burnham shares his approach to cutting Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s doc, which makes it Sundance 2024 debut in the festival’s Premieres section. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Burnham: I was rollerblading badly in East London on a bright, chilly January […]
-
“Tell the Story That’s on the Page Thoughtfully and Compassionately”: DP Nathan M. Miller on Penelope
Mel Eslyn, the head of Duplass Brothers Productions and the director of TIFF 2022 premiere Biosphere, makes her first directorial foray into episodic television with Penelope. Penelope tells the story of an alienated 16-year-old girl who venture into the wilderness to escape from society. Nathan M. Miller, who served as cinematographer on Eslyn’s Biosphere and has worked on several other Duplass Brothers productions, took on the job again for Penelope. Below, he emphasizes the series’ naturalist aesthetic and no-frills approach to lighting. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
