Filmmaker has partnered with Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco of the newly-founded and ambitiously-named National Film Society for a series of video interviews at Sundance. In this first video, Patrick and Stephen catch up with comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim on the red carpet before their Billion Dollar Movie premiere. Tim and Eric are their usual absurdest selves, and for their part, Patrick and Stephen turn in what just might be the most laid-back red carpet interview I’ve ever seen: Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is available on VOD starting January 27th. And for some bonus hilarity, check […]
“When we started Bloody Disgusting back in 2002, we were the only ones doing it daily,” says Bradley Miska about the origins of his all-horror site. Sites like Ain’t It Cool News, Dark Horizons and Jo Blo were around too, but as its name would suggest, Bloody Disgusting hammered a wooden stake in the burgeoning field of online horror coverage and now, 10 years later, it is reaping the rewards. Management company The Collective “bought into” Bloody Disgusting five years ago, says Miska, and today the co-owned website is just one part of a gory mini-empire that also includes a […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 8:00 pm –The MARC, Park City] I am as surprised as anyone that I have actually been able to raise a family by doing nonfiction work for the past 2 decades. In that time, I have witnessed a lot of change – in technology, in distribution, in audience appetites and in the maturation of nonfiction as an industry – and we can certainly have a healthy debate about whether it is easier or harder to make a living these days as a nonfiction film and television maker than it was 5, 10 or even 20 […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 12:15 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City] When I was a teenager I would wear sexy clothes to school that didn’t fit me. My mother would see me before I left the house and was horrified that her awkward, fourteen year old daughter was planning to walk the New York City streets in a tight pink baby tee shirt and red denim miniskirt. She said I looked like a hooker clown and she was probably right. But at the time, I was just beginning to understand that my body could communicate something sexual and powerful to […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Being a filmmaker just feels right to me. It flows without forcing it. It feels like the tool I was born to use to express myself. I once explained it as feeling like that first pair of Puma shoes, you know, like they were meant especially for you to sport around town. There’s so much about film that I respect. It’s a medium that demands the talents of others and I love collaborating. Film requires patience, persistence, and passion. These are all qualities I have developed through my experiences as […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? I love movies. Ever since I was a kid and my dad would set up his super-8 projector in the basement and rent black-and-white movies from the library, I have loved movies. Movies are visceral. They are cathartic. They are spiritual. I love the experience of going to watch movies in a dark theatre with a full audience. I love being emotionally moved, to be shaken alive, to feel a sense of the wider world and […]
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: For our segment of V/H/S (“10/31/98”), we spent an entire night searching for a train. After hours of driving around, we still couldn’t get what we needed, so we decided to park near some tracks and wait. It was a little after midnight on a Tuesday and there we were: four friends, grown men sitting in a parked car with lights off, down a dark alley somewhere in South Los Angeles, dressed up as a pirate, a Marine, a life-sized teddy bear & the Unabomber. A woman walking by caught a glimpse of us and quickly picked up her pace–and I’m sure our awkward attempts […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First of all, thanks for referring to me as an artist. It made me feel good. With Safety Not Guaranteed, Derek Connolly and I had the goals you might associate with art—to make something soulful, something that breaks rules, engages the heart. But beneath it all was a sincere want to entertain in a way that only movies can. There’s an element of showmanship in cinema that most other mediums don’t share. Yes, the characters in our film are honest and the emotions are true—good entertainment doesn’t have to […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 6:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] Kristi Jacobson: 49 million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from. It’s a shocking statistic, but how do you turn a stat into a story? My answer is deceivingly simple: you make a movie. No art form can truly make us feel another person’s pain, or joy, or hunger. It’s our own emotions and imaginations that bring any art form to life. But film, in my experience, is the most powerful conduit between one person’s experience and an audience. As a […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 Midnight –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] With this film we were presented with the opportunity to document a very specific moment in time, both musically and culturally—LCD Soundsystem’s final show ever, at Madison Square Garden. The idea of shooting the concert appealed to us as not only fans of the band, but as filmmakers. We love the classic experiential concert films of the past, such as The Last Waltz, and Stop Making Sense, and for us, the idea of documenting an event like that was something we had a very specific vision for. But we were also […]