Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Critic’s Notebook: Slamdance 2013, Part Two
The Dirties may very well be some kind of terribly depressing cautionary tale or it may just be that the joke is on us, but this debut film from Matt Johnson, who also stars and co-wrote, couldn’t be more topical. It’s bound to cause much discussion should it find larger audiences, and perhaps even if it doesn’t, as the spectre of school shootings hangs heavy in many hearts this winter.The most talked about film at this year’s Slamdance even before winning the festival’s Grand Jury Prize at a ceremony last night at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, Johnson’s film is […]
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The Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces Lineup for 13th Edition of Film Comment Selects
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the lineup for the upcoming 13th edition of Film Comment Selects (February 18-28), Film Comment magazine’s eclectic film festival. The roster is hand-picked by the magazine’s editors and contributors from their travels around the international festival circuit. Highlights include 104-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira’s Gebo and the Shadow, Antonio Campos’s engrossing portrait of a serial killer-in-the-making Simon Killer, Marco Bellocchio’s compelling drama Dormant Beauty starring Isabelle Huppert, Sergei Loznitsa’s gritty World War II drama In the Fog and James Benning’s Stemple Pass, which contemplates the life of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Exciting new […]
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Slamdance Winners Announced
Last night, the winners of the Slamdance Film Festival were announced. The Grand Jury Prize on the narrative side was awarded to Matt Johnson’s The Dirties, arguably the buzz title of the festival, in which two teens set out to make a movie about the bullies who are making their lives a misery. In the doc section, the main award went to Nicole Teeny’s Bible Quiz, about a lovelorn teen hoping to win the National Bible Quiz Championship and the love of her team captain, which stood out to a jury which included Filmmaker‘s own Dan Schoenbrun. The audience awards for narrative and […]
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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 […]
