Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Sundance: David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is a Major Achievement and A Curious NEXT Entry
It’s a rare privilege to see a contemporary American film as ambitious, emotionally honest, and just-plain-breathtaking as David Lowery’s Sundance entry A Ghost Story. Even from his microbudget beginnings, Lowery’s work has displayed a consistent fascination with American folklore and mythmaking. His films, whether big-budget Disney blockbusters like last year’s Pete’s Dragon, 2013’s love story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, or his masterful 2011 short Pioneer, concern themselves with the notion of storytelling, its allure and its limitations. With A Ghost Story, Lowery continues to explore this fascination, now through the lens of the haunting genre, a tradition that stretches from […]
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“The Challenge Is Balancing Tone”: Director Mark Pellington | The Last Word
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? The communication challenge in executing The Last Word was thematic. With issues of aging or mortality, the challenge is balancing tone. That is achieved by communicating to everyone (cast, crew and, in turn, the audience) the specific tone. We tried keeping the story human and offbeat, making it emotionally inclusive, and earning the emotional payoff via narrative investment in character. Thus you are letting the audience grow […]
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“We Are Living through a Very Divisive Time”: Director Barbara Kopple | This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous
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? Obviously we are living through a very divisive time, and transgender issues are among the most controversial of what people call “the culture wars.” That was something I was aware of while making this movie, and it’s something we are aware of as we release it. That said, every film I make involves going as deeply as I can inside the lives of the people whose stories […]
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“I Stopped Talking and Started Making the Film”: Director Pascale Lamche | Winnie
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? The first time I mentioned I was making a film about Winnie Mandela, it happened to be to a novelist in a bar in Amsterdam. He screwed up his face and said: “What? That murderer!” His response was echoed on numerous occasions around the world. Nelson Mandela was still perceived as a saint and his wife as the fallen woman, or worse. At the time, we were […]
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“We Don’t Use Words to Tell a Story”: Directors Lily Baldwin and Saschka Unseld | Through You
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? We don’t use words to tell a story. We use bodies, gestures, dance, color, music and sound as tools. Inherently with this, there is room for interpretation about what the work IS ABOUT. This is the beauty and of course the challenge around non-traditional narratives. Meaning its fluid. VR is perfect for this. In Through You we worked hard to anchor the viewer in a couple key […]
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“Communicating with Respect and Openness”: Director José María Cabral | Woodpeckers
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? Communication was the key for writing, shooting and making the movie, particularly this one. Woodpeckers explores communication and language in a very specific level. First of all the writing process was about making contact and understanding the prisoners, getting to create relationships, not only for the script but also because I wanted them as actors too. It was also kind of a social experiment, where I was […]
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“I Want the Viewer to Feel Totally Immersed in My World”: Director Francis Lee | God’s Own Country
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? For me God’s Own Country is an investigation into authenticity of emotion and landscape. Having grown up on the same hillside where the film is set, it was critically important to me to communicate what this very specific landscape not only looks like but how it feels, sounds, tastes, smells. The wind, the cold, the rain that gets into your bones when you work outside all day. […]
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Sundance Dispatch 3: Columbus, Golden Exits
Columbus certainly doesn’t look like a standard American independent film: even if you didn’t know debuting director kogonada’s background as a video essayist primarily concerned with High Art (Bresson, Tarkovsky et al.), it’s clear this is made by somebody who’s studied the framing of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang et al. quite closely. No matter how mundane the setting — average small downtown streets, a drab university library — kogonada and DP Elisha Christian stick to the visual philosophy espoused by architecture-obsessed protagonist Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) as she annotates one building’s properties, noting how it’s “asymmetrical but also still balanced.” I […]
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“Cate Outstripped Us All with Her Immeasurable Enthusiasm”: Director Julian Rosefeldt | Manifesto
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? Manifesto was originally planned as a 13-screen installation for the art context, so it is touring museums and art festivals now. But I also got some funding from a German TV channel and I needed to consider how to bring that multi-screen-concept later into a linear version. Given the fact that we only had 11 days to shoot with Cate, the entire project, running in my mind parallel […]
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“An Interactive and Realistic Amazon Environment”: Directors Milica Zec and Winslow Porter | Tree
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? Tree transports users into the body of a rainforest tree, where they can experience not only its splendor but also its untimely fate. One challenge we faced was how to communicate with our audience without using traditional dialogue – and to keep that message and execution organic while in a CGI landscape. Essentially, to “show,” via real-time experience and interactivity, rather than “tell.” In order to immerse users […]
