A Teacher, filmmaker Hannah Fidell’s feature debut, focuses on the increasingly unstable Diana (Lindsay Burge), a young teacher carrying on an affair with her underage student. But the film is not too concerned with the shocking or tawdry details of this central relationship. Instead, Fidell turns her focus inwards towards Diana’s subtly crumbling mental state, treating her gradual self-destruction as the focal point of tension. It’s a subtle and precise work, and surely one of the most unnerving selections of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Like your short The Gathering Squall, which was based on a Joyce Carol Oates […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, 2:30pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] I have a husband and two young children and they will tell you that I missed my share of birthdays and holidays over the three and half years we filmed. Those are sacrifices every filmmaker makes, but added to that for me was a real need to set aside my pride. Filmmaking is my second career and this is my first film – I ended up places I’d never thought I would be – I was traveling to prisons and hanging out in bad neighborhoods and seeing all […]
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.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, 6:00pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The art of filmmaking took a strange twist when we turned the camera on ourselves as well as on our loved ones. We found ourselves constantly questioning our observational and self-reflexive approach to the craft, particularly when it conflicted with our parenting ideals. As parents, we were concerned about our son’s socio-emotional development and, therefore, our impulse was to turn off the camera early and often. Yet, more often than not, the decision to turn off the camera clearly hampered the quality and emotional depth contained in the first […]
Downtown Manhattan, September 17, 2011—the first 1,000 protestors of the Occupy movement descend upon Wall Street and its neighboring Zucotti Park, pounding the cobblestones in the face of corporate neglect. Driven by the ever-expanding gulf within the socio-economic bracket, this modern day iteration of class warfare soon sparked a worldwide phenomenon. As fervent opinions batted about and media biases multiplied, documentary filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites sought to craft a holistic, honest portrait of the movement. Their resulting film, 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, utilizes footage from filmmakers—novice and professional alike—from across the nation, in order […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, Noon — Temple Theatre, Park City] Sacrifice is an interesting word when you think about it in context of our film, Life According to Sam, because one of the main themes of the film is sacrifice. Our film is about a mother and father, Dr. Leslie Gordon and Dr. Scott Berns, who are trying to find a cure for a fatal disease that is rapidly aging their son, Sam. Progeria is one of the rarest diseases in the world and children rarely live past their teenage years. The film picks up with Sam’s mom, who […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, 6:0pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] I had a vision for our film. I always refer to it as ‘cow time’, a unique perspective on the world from a chilled bovine point of view. My vision was ultimately sacrificed. Making The Moo Man taught me a lot about the humble cow. This docile, semi-domesticated farm animal is easy to take for granted. However in reality they’re so much more aware and connected to mother nature than we could ever hope to be. Cows are social, they have friends, they like pop music (although they’re […]
Texas-based filmmaker David Lowery has been at the center of the indie scene for some time now, and not just because of his excellent 2009 directorial debut St. Nick and that film’s much lauded follow-up, the 2011 short Pioneer. Check out Lowery’s IMDB page and you’ll discover that he has worked extensively on dozens of other projects over the past few years – as editor on Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine and Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever, as cinematographer on Frank Ross’ Audrey the Trainwreck, even as sound recordist for Kentucker Audley’s Open Five. With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lowery’s […]
In 2011, an Icelandic-British film called Either Way won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Torino Film Festival. Just over a year later, David Gordon Green, an American filmmaker whose own projects have debuted at Torino, has remade Either Way into the comedy Prince Avalanche starring Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild). The movie studies two men who leave their city lives to paint traffic lines down a wrecked highway. As they move through the hot summer and learn more about one another, an unexpected friendship develops. Much to everyone’s surprise, Green pulled off shooting this feature film in Texas over […]
Kyle Patrick Alvarez did something many, many writers and filmmakers have never been able to do. He attained the rights to a David Sedaris short story. Alvarez’s second feature film, C.O.G, is the first film adaptation of Sedaris’ work. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, C.O.G wanders from Sedaris’ narrative and is instead imbued with Alvarez’s own personal experiences, which is what attracted him to adapting the story in the first place. The movie follows David, Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening), as he spends the summer in Oregan on an apple farm. While David has high expectations for his time in this rural area, he ends up […]