Sundance
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Interview with Watchers of the Sky D.P. Mai Iskander
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Iskander: Edet Belzberg’s film Children Underground was one of my favorite docs. When I went to meet her for the first time to talk about potentially working on her new film, I was simply excited to meet her and hear about her experiences as a documentary filmmaker. So I was thrilled to be have the opportunity to work with her on Watchers of the Sky. The prospect of traveling to Chad and working closely with Edet was very exciting. Filmmaker: Why do you think you were the right choice to D.P. each film? Iskander: […]
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Interview with Web Junkie Director Hilla Medalia
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Medalia: As boundaries between reality and the virtual become increasingly blurred, we are beginning to see how reality is compromised and people are losing their footing. When Shosh [Shlam, the other director of Web Junkie] told me about this story of China’s attempt to stem internet addiction among its youth, I was immediately captivated and felt that this it expressed a current and increasingly global dilemma. I began to wonder if I myself was an addict? Had I become overly dependent on technology? And would these techniques to break the addiction among […]
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Interview with Laggies Writer Andrea Seigel
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Seigel: I guess I first started thinking about writing this movie after a year of attending a bunch of wedding and baby showers and just feeling really confused by them, like, “Are people actually enjoying this?” Filmmaker: Do you think a male director might have handled the making of this film differently? How did being a female filmmaker effect how this film got made do you think? Seigel: I think it would depend on the person. But I do know it was a little tougher on Lynn, being a female filmmaker directing […]
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Sterlin Harjo on This May Be the Last Time
Though Sterlin Harjo is a familiar name in Park City – having premiered his narrative features Four Sheets to the Wind and Barking Water at Sundance in 2007 and 2008, and his short Goodnight, Irene in 2005 – this year’s visit marks the director’s documentary feature debut. This May Be the Last Time traces the events behind the never fully explained disappearance of the filmmaker’s grandfather in 1962, alongside the history of the Muscogee (Creek) hymns the Seminole community sang as it set out to find him. Filmmaker spoke with the Sundance vet about his very personal take on ethnomusicology […]
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Interview with Web Junkie Director Shosh Shlam
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Shlam: Internet addiction is both a personal and social phenomenon. It is a universal issue that is becoming progressively all encompassing as the boundaries between the real and the virtual become increasingly blurred. Through this process, we could not help but feel that something is lost in the physical, “real,” everyday lives of those living in the western world. This phenomenon, these feelings are what inspired us to take this journey. Filmmaker: How much of your crew was female? Was hiring women a consideration for you? Shlam: We were four women: two directors, one producer and one editor. Hiring […]
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Interview with Web Junkie Producer Neta Zwebner-Zaibert
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Zwebner-Zaibert: Now more than ever, we need films that investigate and expose the side-effects of our relationship with technology. Internet overuse is a social issue around the globe that has only emerged in the past few years; we have no idea what effects it may have on us or what we will know about the phenomenon in the future. As such, we need to exercise caution when creating policies around it. Also, as a young mother, I spend a lot of time thinking about my daughter’s future and how the Internet will impact her […]
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Interview with Listen Up Philip Producer Katie Stern
Katie Stern is that inexplicable combination of inviting, accessible, and tough as nails. When I went to photograph her at the color correction of the film she produced, Listen Up Philip, she was wearing all black, despite my suggesting filmmakers wear a splash of color. “It’s just what I’m used to wearing,” she says, a true New Yorker. “But I did wear lipstick – and that’s not normal for me.” In the color correction suite, Stern was the only woman in a small sea of men, including the film’s director, Alex Ross Perry. The film was on the big screen, […]
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Interview with Rich Hill Director Tracy Droz Tragos
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Tragos: I made my first documentary Be Good, Smile Pretty after discovering a picture of my father the day he was killed in Vietnam. The film was well received and won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2004. It was difficult to find another film project with such a deep connection – and then came motherhood. I wanted to give my daughters a different childhood than I had had – with a mom who was fully present. That was my choice then – but sometimes I wonder if I […]
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Interview with Watchers of the Sky Director Edet Belzberg
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Belzberg: I read Samantha Power’s book A Problem From Hell when it came out and was just pulled towards the story of Raphael Lemkin in it. It didn’t feel like a choice — I had to tell his story. Filmmaker: How much of your crew was female? Was hiring women a consideration for you? Belzberg: Most of my crew on this film were women. It wasn’t intentional, but that is how it worked out. There are a few notable exceptions, but the vast majority of the people who worked on the […]
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Interview with Love Child Director Valerie Veatch
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Veatch: I am drawn to stories or characters that I feel have been misrepresented and I like the task of creating a more challenging, complex, layered depiction of stories that causally circulate our media scape. Love Child is the story of an infant who died as a result of neglect due to “Internet Addiction” while her young parents were raising an online virtual child. Her name was Sarang, which means “love” in Korean. I heard the story on the Italian news media while staying in Rome. The ruling in the […]
