Sundance
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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 […]
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kink | Director Christina Voros
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 11:59pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] “ The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster” – Elizabeth Bishop The word “sacrifice” bears with it an inherent quality of loss. And the word “loss” carries an inherent quality of cost, or of damage. But sometimes we are lucky enough to lose things that we were better off without. In my case, with this film, that loss was fear. My first exposure to pornography was playing hide and seek […]
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The Lifeguard | Director Liz W. Garcia
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 5:30pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] In order to make The Lifeguard this summer, I had to sacrifice time with my son, nine months old when we began prep in Pittsburgh. He moved with us – me, my husband (a producer on the film) and his babysitter from LA, and we set up camp at a residence hotel. There were days when we barely saw him, because we shot all night and slept into the afternoon, only to leave again just as he was having his evening bath. What time we had together was […]
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It Felt Like Love | Writer/Director/Producer Eliza Hittman
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 6:00pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] It Felt Like Love is about a young girl struggling to form connections — with herself, her peers, and with an intriguing older guy she sees on Rockaway beach — and her willingness to degrade herself to experience intimacy. When I started writing, in 2011, I wanted to create an unsentimental coming-of-age film and show outtakes from childhood: the lonely moments, the surges of false confidence, and small humiliating details that are often buried in our memories. I wanted to explore taboos around female adolescent sexuality and identity. […]
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I Used to be Darker | Director Matt Porterfield
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 3:00pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] As far as I can tell, besides the obvious sacrifices of sleep and mental health, making a film is a series of sacrifices to the gods of fingers-crossed-there’s-something-real-here. Each vision must be sacrificed to practical reality (no way we can afford to light that field, no one here knows how to wrangle a calf), ego must be sacrificed in deference to other people’s genius or inclination or shortcomings. The first draft of the screenplay is sacrificed to the second, the film we shot is sacrificed to the edit. […]
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Sundance Institute Artist Services Program Expands Self-Distribution Opportunities
Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, announced today that the Institute’s Artist Services program – which provides Institute artists with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing solutions for their work –has expanded to include selected films supported by one foundation and five nonprofit organizations. Additionally, these organizations will join with Sundance Institute in continuing to shape the program and the services it offers. The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society will each select films that they have supported to receive access to best-in-class digital distribution arrangements that […]
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Toy’s House | Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 8:30pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] What did I sacrifice to make this film? Well for starters, I promise you I will die at least 10 years younger than my body had naturally intended because of this movie, but one of my producers keeps reassuring me that the last 10 years of your life are the least productive, so I guess it all works out in the end. That initially sounds like a bunch of tortured-artist-nonsense but this isn’t some woe-is-me ennui filled sob story. Making Toy’s House was the most gratifying and rewarding […]
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Valentine Road | Director Marta Cunningham
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, Noon — Temple Theatre, Park City] In the spring of 2008, I read about the murder of Lawrence “Larry” King, a multiracial 15-year-old student who was reported as being gay. It was a story I just couldn’t get out of my mind. I first imagined exploring the issues in a fictional film, but once I attended a pretrial hearing for Larry’s accused murderer, Brandon McInerney, just 14-years-old, I immediately realized that a bigger story was just developing. It needed to be a documentary. So began my education as a first-time director, flying by the seat […]
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What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love | Director Mouly Surya
[PREMIERE SCREENING; Saturday, Jan. 19, 11:30am — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Aside from the usual sacrifices of time and energy, in making this film I’ve lost friends. That’s the weirdest thing about producing or directing. When you make a film, it is different than when you write or paint. You surround yourself with a lot of people, but it still feels lonely. But at the end of the day, everything is for the film. Instead of the usual “art imitates life” maybe “art defeats life” is more befitting. Thinking back, when you do fall in love with a film […]
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Inequality for All | Director Jacob Kornbluth
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 2:30pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] As I was growing up, I was always told that anything worth doing would take sacrifice. As an independent narrative filmmaker, which was my background before making this documentary, I was accustomed to working from a script and shooting over an intense but short period. It’s an exhausting and unsustainable month or two where you sacrifice your life, but then it ends, and you sort of remake yourself from the rubble… go for a walk, read a book, and begin to feel like some version of yourself after […]
