Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
Sundance is the World, and the World Speaks English
When I was buying groceries on my first night in Park City, throughout the supermarket were out-of-towners with red lanyards around their neck stocking up on food, hoping to eat well enough not to get sick. Ahead of me at the checkout was Focus boss James Schamus, who told me he already had the flu. While I was in line, the cashier remarked how Park City was being taken over by people from New York and California. “And Belgium. There was a guy from there in here earlier in my shift. And also one from West Africa.” At Sundance, you […]
-
A Young Producer’s Sundance Photo Diary, Day Three
Day Three was a bit of whirlwind and I’ll admit I wasn’t as quick on my camera skills as I should have been. But, then again, it’s sort of awkward to photograph “meetings” that take place on shuttles in between a screening and a dinner, and while running from event to event. But I have two more days to perfect the casual “can-I-take-your-photo” question when running into industry friends and acquaintances on Main Street. Still reporting sunny skies for Day Three, a bit more hostility over seat saving in Eccles, but generally the energy remains high.
-
A Young Producer’s Sundance Photo Diary, Day Two
Here’s Day Two of my photo diary from the Sundance Film Festival! The quietness of Day One was gone as crowds took over Park City and Main Street, but there was something invigorating about the bustle and with the gorgeous sunny weather there were really no complaints.
-
The Outlaw Pleasures of Escape from Tomorrow
Children have no conception of copyright. The words “intellectual property” mean nothing to them. There is just the world, the people and places and things in front of them, and the imprint these things make on their young minds. But as adults, we realize that we don’t own these things that have imprinted themselves on our brains. That’s okay, though. When it comes to the totems of childhood fantasy, we can pay to experience them again — or, more accurately, pay to experience them vicariously through our children. The Walt Disney Corporation has made such a cross-generational feedback loop into […]
-
A Young Producer’s Sundance Photo Diary, Day One
I don’t have a film premiering at Sundance this year, though not for the lack of trying. I don’t have an awesome, all inclusive ticket package or badge, and my name doesn’t pop up on guest lists at premiere parties. I am a young producer hustling my way through the arduous independent film landscape and lucky to be at the Sundance Film Festival. I’m here with my film collective, The Spirit Farm, and with a few projects on my slate. I’ve decided to catalog my time at Sundance bouncing between movies and meetings, cocktail parties (that I can squeeze my way […]
-
Gay Film Auteur Travis Mathews Talks Interior. Leather Bar.
San Francisco-based gay filmmaker Travis Mathews built his reputation as one of the leading figures in the latest new wave of gay independent cinema on the back of a series of award-winning intimate, confessional documentary films about young homosexual men, In their Room. His first narrative feature, I Want Your Love, explored gay friends negotiating their way towards and through sexual relationships and featured unsimulated sex. His new film, Interior. Leather Bar, co-directed with the actor James Franco, is just as honest in its depictions. This film within a film begins with a re-imagining of the lost 40 minutes of […]
-
Five Questions with The Spectacular Now Director James Ponsoldt
James Ponsoldt is no stranger to the Sundance Film Festival. His last two feature films, Smashed and Off the Black, both premiered in Park City, with Smashed winning a Special Jury Prize in 2012. The Spectacular Now, Ponsoldt’s third film, premieres today. Working from the novel by Tim Tharp of the same name, (500) Days of Summer‘s screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber adapted the story about a popular high school boy with an emerging drinking problem who finds himself drawn to a girl of a lesser social status. Miles Teller (Project X) and Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) star […]
