Interviews
Interviews
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Five Questions with For Ellen Director So Yong Kim
After winning over half a dozen festival prizes for her first two feature films, So Yong Kim has spent the last few years producing for her husband, Bradley Rust Gray (The Exploding Girl), and developing and writing her newest movie, For Ellen. Similar to her previous films, For Ellen’s narrative derives from Kim’s own experiences growing up. Brought together through the character of a young man traveling to see his daughter for the first time, Kim’s personal style of filmmaking not only forces the audience to question their own decisions, but has also allowed the filmmaker a cathartic way […]
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Ira Glass On The Strange Life Of The Producer
When Mike Birbiglia asked This American Life‘s Ira Glass to produce his first feature, Sleepwalk with Me, premiering here at Sundance, Glass thought it sounded like it might be fun. “I’d read a couple of scripts, look at a couple of rough cuts,” he remembers thinking. Glass’s presumption was far from the truth… very far. In this short interview, shot before Sundance while Glass was in the sound studio with Birbiglia, he ponders — hilariously — the job of the producer.
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Five Questions with The Comedy Director Rick Alverson
Director Rick Alverson is nothing if not prolific. After putting out six albums over eight years with his band Spokane, Alverson turned his attention to film, directing The Builder in 2010 and New Jerusalem last year. Continuing this productive streak is The Comedy, a dark exploration into the insular, self-destructive lifestyle of the affluent white male. Set against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s ultra-hip Williamsburg, The Comedy stands in contrast to Alverson’s previous two films, films that focused mainly on the stories of working class immigrants. Starring comedian Tim Heidecker (in his first dramatic role) and a supporting cast that includes […]
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Five Questions with Simon Killer Director Antonio Campos
Indie sweetheart Antonio Campos debuts his newest feature film, Simon Killer, today at Sundance. After he and his partners made waves in Park City last year with Martha Marcy May Marlene (which won Sean Durkin the Best Director award, and introduced Lizzy Olsen to the world), critics and audiences have placed Borderline’s newest on their must-see list. But that hasn’t changed things for Campos. He comes to Park City as a director this year, prepared to experience the festival from a new perspective. — Filmmaker: You and your partners at Borderline Films are no strangers to Sundance and the festival marketplace. With three […]
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Five Questions with Beasts of the Southern Wild Director Behn Zeitlin
Pushing the boundaries of traditional filmmaking, Behn Zeitlin stands by his decision to make movies involving children, animals, and somewhat fantastical locations and environments. Lauded for his short, Glory at Sea, Zeitlin attends Sundance this year with his first feature-length film, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Like Zeitlin’s short, his feature debut takes place in Louisiana and aims to capture identifiable human emotions through the journey of a young girl. Beasts proves to be a seemingly mysterious narrative, unidentifiable from its abstract synopsis, but its premiere today in U.S. Dramatic Competition will soon shed more understanding on this highly anticipated […]
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Director Terence Nance on An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty
Watching Terence Nance’s Oversimplification Of Her Beauty is like being talked through the contents of a shoebox, each item another memento of The One That Got Away. Live action, animation, claymation reenactments, direct-to-camera address by him, on-camera interviews of her by him, blurry, amateur footage shot by her of him, all guided by a formally written voice over, delivered with somber, staccato clarity by an anonymous older man. Descriptions and depictions of other girls slide in and out of the narrative, intercut with shots of The One, whose name is Namik. One animation of a long-distance affair depicts a hand-drawn […]
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Five Questions with The First Time Director Jon Kasdan
Sundance has a rich tradition of premiering great on-screen romances, as far back as Linklater’s Before Sunrise in 1995, and more recently with Like Crazy, last year’s Grand Jury Prize winner. Carrying this torch into the 2012 Festival is The First Time, the sophomore effort from director Jonathan Kasdan (In the Land of Women). A meditation on the excitement, anticipation, and unavoidable angst of young love, First Time stars Dylan O’Brien and Britt Robertson as star-crossed high school students drawn together over a single weekend. Filmmaker: What were your creative goals when you first conceived of this project? Were there […]
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An Interview With Frederick Wiseman
The New Year can be as much a time to reflect as it can be to project into the future. Some see the act of looking back as an integral part of moving forward. But on a brisk afternoon in Cambridge the day before New Year’s Eve, Frederick Wiseman resists this notion. The legendary documentary filmmaker has been making roughly one film a year since 1967, only taking breaks when funding difficulties, or in this case critical recognition, require him to do so. Tomorrow night Wiseman is receiving the Legacy Award at the annual Cinema Eye Honors for his debut […]
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Director Bram Van Paesschen on Empire of Dust
The vast wilderness of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from the urban centers of China. Yet it is there that greater numbers of Chinese engineers are doing business. In the documentary Empire of Dust, featured in the “Panorama” section of this year’s International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), director Bram Van Paesschen explores the fraught relationship between the Congolese and the Chinese, as shown through their efforts to build a road between two major cities in the DRC. In 2007, China and Congo signed a massive resources-for-infrastructure deal with projected revenues of $40-$120 billion. China endeavors […]
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Director Marc Simon on Unraveled
Putting a human face on the criminality of the financial crisis, Unraveled explores the downfall of Marc Dreier, a prominent Manhattan attorney who was arrested in 2009 for embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from hedge funds. The documentary places us in the “guilded prison” of Dreier’s upper East Side apartment during his 60-day house arrest. In that time, he is interviewed by none other than one of his victims, Marc Simon, who, in addition to being an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, formerly worked as a lawyer at Dreier’s law firm, Dreier L.L.P. You wouldn’t know that from the film, however, as […]
