Sundance
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“Fate Managed to Bring Us Back Together”: Director Andrew Ahn | Spa Night
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? After two weeks of shooting with one week left to go, my lead actor Joe Seo injured […]
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“Swap Skywalker Out With a Black Kid”: Director JD Dillard | Sleight
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? Pushing for diversity in the movie wasn’t necessarily a mandate of ours, but when Alex and I […]
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Street Magic, Bad Robot and Crime: J.D. Dillard Talks His Sundance Debut, Sleight
Premiering in Sundance’s NEXT section is, Sleight, the debut feature of Los Angeles-based screenwriter and music video director J.D. Dillard. A street-wise crime caper about a bustling magician who moves from sleight-of-hand card magic to drug dealing on the boulevards of L.A., Sleight combines a raft of interests, including hip hop and sci-fi, from its young director and his writing partner Alex Theurer. The two have been kicking around the Los Angeles script development scene for several year, with Dillard working at production outfits like Bad Robot while keeping up with his passion for sleight-of-hand, which began as a teenager […]
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“A Film Reveals Itself As You Go Along”: Director Kelly Reichardt | Certain Women
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? I don’t exactly recall what film I thought I was going to make when I started on […]
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“Targeting Women of Color”: Director Dawn Porter | Trapped
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? I was very attracted to this story as not just a story about choice, but about political […]
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“To Portray Life as Joyful and Dynamic Amid the Horror”: Director Anna Rose Holmer | The Fits
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? One of the secrets I discovered while making The Fits was that it was a lot more […]
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“From the Other Side of Reality”: Director Ciro Guerra | Embrace of the Serpent
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? During the writing process, I dove deeply into Amazonian myth and narrative, looking for ways to infuse […]
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Sundance Dispatch 1: Morris From America, Operation Avalanche and NUTS!
Chad Hartigan’s Morris From America has an unpromising logline, but so did his previous feature, This is Martin Bonner (an unlikely friendship between two men looking for redemption etc. etc.), and that turned out pretty well, so I wasn’t worried. Morris is a coming-of-age crowdpleaser, in the vein of “it’s been 18 years since Rushmore, but this version is different because…” (Son of Rambow, Submarine, et al.). I know a lot of people (I’m one of them, no shade implied) who find a deep satisfaction in action movies novel only in their details and crispness of execution while placing no value upon originality per se. That’s a principle which, of […]
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Park City Critic’s Notebook: Mermaid Feelings
On the first day of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, before the Opening Night films — a seemingly lukewarm cancer movie and the newest from the ever-prolific Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing — Robert Redford couldn’t help himself. Although the 79-year-old actor offered boosterism for almost every aspect of the global brand that is Sundance, he was less rosy when discussing the business and culture of independent film itself, which his visionary endeavor has helped popularize for four decades. In 2007, when the specialty divisions of big studios had yet to collapse, or be folded into the larger corporate apparatus […]
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“A Secret World of Doppelgängers and Demons”: Director Stephen Kijak | We Are X
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? I had never heard of X Japan. When I came on board, there was a brief treatment […]
