Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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The Faces and Places of the Sundance Film Festival, Part One
“Sundance is our annual tradeshow,” a friend remarked to me at one of the very crowded parties this year. Indeed, it is a place to catch up, even if that short conversation is in line at a theater or at Starbucks instead of the kind of proper sit-down you’d have at Cannes or Berlin. Here are a few of the folks I bumped into at Sundance, beginning with, above, director Jehane Noujain, snapped on Heber Street just hours before the premiere of her latest documentary, The Square. I was knocked out by the film, which is a vivid and expertly […]
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A Young Producer’s Sundance Photo Diary, Day Five
I’m looking out my window right now and I don’t see mountains or snow. Miraculously, after 12 hours of traveling and functioning on about 15 hours of sleep over the last five days, I’m back in New York. Between packing up all my sweaters and saying goodbye to friends, I was still able to have a productive last day at Sundance though. I photographed a brunch the IFP and Sundance Institute hosted for film festival organizers, saw The Spectacular Now and Shane Carruth’s incredible Upstream Color, and made it up to Main Street only to be denied that free latte I […]
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The Crowded Stages of the Sundance Film Festival
When I published my piece, “How To Do a Festival Q&A,” there was one word of advice from Trevor Groth that I wondered about: “#5: Don’t bring too many people onstage”: “It slows everything down and tends not to work with the vibe of a good Q&A,” says Groth about long lines of cast and crew marching to the stage after a film’s premiere. “Just bring the key actors and someone who played a crucial role — maybe a production designer or editor.” Apparently many of the Sundance filmmakers didn’t read my article — or heed Groth’s advice — because […]
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Sundance: Death by Twitter, Computers vs. Brains
You are at the premiere of your own film. The screening is packed. The credits begin to roll…and 500 glowing screens appear in the darkness. You sit there, watching the phones, helpless as strangers and bloggers decide your fate 140 characters at a time. Perhaps the Variety critic delivers the first blow: a decisive mediocre. The indieWIRE stringer declares the audience underwhelmed, #sundance. At a party that night, people tell each other that they heard the movie was “only OK.” In the olden days, crowds of press and industry would gather outside the theatre to discuss their thoughts and settle on […]
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Sundance Shorts Winners Announced
Tonight the winners of the short film awards for the Sundance Film Festival were announced. The Grand Jury Prize went to Polish director Grzegorz Zariczny’s The Whistle, while two directors known for their feature-length work — Damien Chazelle and Michael Almereyda — also picked up awards. The full list of winners is below: The Short Film Grand Jury Prize was awarded to: The Whistle / Poland (Director: Grzegorz Zariczny) — Marcin, a lowest-leagues football referee who lives in a small town near Krakow, dreams of better times. At his mother’s urging, he decides to change his life and find himself a girlfriend and a better job. […]
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The Other Side of Sundance
I’m not in the Sundance rhythm yet. I’m still trying to work out out how to fit in enough writing, food and sleep into my jam-packed schedule. Before arriving, I’d decided I wouldn’t go to too many parties, but on a whim I RSVP’d to a “celebrity poker tournament,” which was to be held at the Everest Mansion, a big house up in the mountains above Park City. My rationale was that I would get to experience “the other side” of Sundance, and could maybe relax and play a little poker. The list of confirmed guests included some famous names, […]
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Critic’s Notebook: Slamdance 2013, Part One
It’s a tough thing, being a Slamdancer. One participant in this year’s 19th edition, an actor who headlines one of the dramatic competition entries, described it as the “little brother” festival, and that is clearly true. Still, Slamdance is a place for discovery each year. From Mark Ruffalo to Lena Dunham, Christopher Nolan to Josh Safdie, Slamdance offers a first taste of Park City to many significant voices whose initial works fall off of Sundance’s radar or are simply defeated by the daunting math of 12,000 submissions for 200 short and feature slots. Despite the perpetually dissatisfying screening venue of […]
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Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children Pt. 3
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a lover of science. Astronomy especially. I grew up watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and James Burke’s great series Connections. Even today, I am indebted to writers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Sean Carroll for writing about subjects like black holes and the nature of time in ways that a layman like me can understand. I think people like this are imperative to society because many of the subjects they study are critical to us as a race. Two of those subjects are NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and astrobiology. NEOs […]
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A Young Producer’s Sundance Photo Diary, Day Four
Day Four. Things began to slow down as it felt like a lot of Sundance goers boarded flights back to their real lives and work. It was a bit more manageable to walk down Main Street and restaurants didn’t all have 45-minute waits – though I still couldn’t get a free coffee at the Sundance Channel HQ. Sadly, it was a slower day for movies, but I was able to catch up with a lot of filmmakers and friends at the IFP’s Sundance party, which was a total success. Only one more day in Park City! I’ll be sad to […]
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Concussion Acquired by RADiUS-TWC
Tonight it was announced that The Weinstein Company’s offshoot RADiUS-TWC had bought U.S. rights to Stacie Passon’s Dramatic Competition title Concussion. The debut from writer/director Passon, the film is about a fortysomething lesbian housewife (Robin Wiegert) who secretly becomes a prostitute after sustaining a head injury. Passon is on quite a roll in the past few months, having won both the euphoria Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ grant at the Gotham Awards and the Adrienne Shelly Director’s Grant in late 2012. Concussion was also chosen to participate in the IFP Narrative Labs in 2012. Multi-platform outfit RADiUS — which puts […]
