Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Sundance Notes: Disarming a Film Festival
On Friday, January 27, as I attended the second half of Sundance, Trump signed an executive order barring Syrian refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States. “We’re not willing to be wrong on this subject,” said White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Face the Nation two days later. “President Trump is not willing to take chances on this subject.” The following Monday, The New York Times reported that senior White House officials “were proud of taking actions that they said would help protect Americans against threats from potential terrorists.” This year at Sundance […]
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Sundance Notes: RISE to RUMBLE, must-see TV… from Canada
Malcolm Forbes, of all people, once memorably said, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” I’d like to extend that principle: You can easily judge the character of a nation by how it treats the indigenous people from whom it took its territory. I’m from Chattanooga, near the Chickamauga battlefield, just east of the Ocoee and Hiwassee rivers, in the southeast corner of Tennessee. I grew up on an Appalachian mountain, dated a girl in nearby Ooltewah. I now live in Manhattan. All indigenous names. Where are […]
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Last Dance Before Trumpism: Eastern Oregon, Park City (Virtual) and Rotterdam
In retrospect, it seems like it was the last glimmer of something. We were all in Eastern Oregon again, the loose circuit of folks who gather annually for the tiny two-and-a-half day, two-venue film festival that takes cinephilia to the reddest corner of a blue state. The election was just a few weeks off. No one seemed particularly bothered about it, seeing as the weekend before all the talk had been about the #BillyBushTapes and how could an admitted sexual assailant become the President anyway, puhleeze? It wasn’t hard to encounter a Trump/Pence sign in La Grande, though. It’s a largely […]
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20 Honest Observations from the Sundance Film Festival
Twenty — It’s the first Friday of the Sundance Film Festival and I’m sitting in the lobby of the Park City Marriott. I’m making small talk with some friends about the festival and the election and the films we’re excited to see. There’s a TV mounted on the wall behind me live broadcasting Trump’s inaugural address. Someone makes a joke about how he’s doing everything he can to avoid looking up at the screen. I do the same, pivoting my body and adjusting my eyeline so as to avoid catching a glimpse of our new President’s grinning face. By being here, […]
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“Anthologies Are All about Communication”: Director Roxanne Benjamin | XX
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Anthologies are all about communication – you’re dealing with multiple productions in multiple states (if not countries) with quadruple the number of creatives and producers using different camera equipment, different lenses, with different visions, different styles. To that end, in my experience the biggest challenge for these types of productions usually lies in tying all of those disparate elements together into one cohesive whole that benefits and […]
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I don’t feel at home in this world anymore, Dina Top the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Awards
In a ceremony last night hosted by Jessica Williams — and one marked by presenters, winners and festival reps denouncing, in ways subtle and direct, the Trump administration’s immigration ban — the winners of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival were announced. First-time feature director Macon Blair’s character-based crime thriller I don’t feel at home in this world anymore won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, while Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini’s comedy-tinged doc about a romance between a couple living on the autism spectrum, Dina, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize. On the World Cinema side, Tarik Saleh’s The Nile Hilton […]
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“A Survival Thriller Set in the Remote Bush”: Director Damien Power | Killing Ground
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? As a director, there are many ways to communicate your vision for the film to cast and crew. In the lead-up to shooting my first feature, Killing Ground, I used them all: screening and talking about films that resonated, mood boards, sketches, diagrams, notes, long conversations – whatever helped whoever I was talking to best understand the film we were making. During the shoot I discovered it […]
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Watch the Sundance Awards Live
Jessica Williams, star of the Sundance film The Incredible Jessica James, is hosting tonight’s award ceremony, which you can watch live here at Filmmaker. Check back after the show for the complete list of awards.
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“We Reduce Entire Groups to Monoliths”: Screenwriter Damon Davis | Whose Streets?
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Perceptions and stereotypes about a certain demographic of people become barriers to character development. Meaning, after centuries of storytelling, people’s race, gender, age, orientation, whatever it might be, influences how we expect them to function in the story, and influences the depths to which we can relate to them on a human level. A major obstacle to telling unique stories is that people can’t see the uniqueness […]
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“Elegant, Meaningful and Fun”: Director Kriv Stenders | Red Dog: True Blue
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Since Red Dog: True Blue is a sequel, our main challenge in communication was telling our story in a fresh and unique way that wouldn’t disappoint audiences who loved the original, but that also spoke to and was relevant to new audiences. The solution came by way of the wonderful screenplay by Dan Taplitz and the clever concept on which it was based. Basically, by making the […]
