Sundance
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Keep the Lights On | Co-writer/Director, Ira Sachs
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 8:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] It’s not for nothing that we watch films in dark rooms, without the lights on. It’s the most intimate of artistic mediums. When a film works, we feel a nearly physical connection to the actors we are watching, as if they are playing out our own lives on screen. I like films that are messy and imperfect, that are unable to fully contain all the life going on within them. Filmmakers like Cassavetes and Loach, Fassbinder and Pialat. The plot never rules the character. The actor might at […]
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“I AM NOT A HIPSTER” | writer-director, Destin Daniel Cretton
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] One of my favorite things about directing movies is getting to highlight other people’s talents. When I was ten, I was videotaping my brother’s magic tricks and sister’s one-handed cartwheels to show-off to my parents. With this film, I got to do the same thing with a new group of friends. Last year I saw Dominic Bogart on a Chicago stage in Jersey Boys and his singing blew my mind. I also knew he had a talent for subtle, character-driven performances, so I started to think of a role […]
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“MONSIEUR LAZHAR” WRITER/DIRECTOR PHILIPPE FALARDEAU
With its intensely concentrated industry buzz and high profile bidding wars, Sundance is one of the few places where filmmakers’ careers can be transformed overnight. But writer/director Philippe Falardeau says he’s not looking for a Cinderella moment when his French-language feature Monsieur Lazhar screens out of competition in Park City this week as part of the fest’s Spotlight program. The film — about a mild but mysterious Algerian immigrant to Montreal, Canada, (Mohamed Falleg) hired to replace a school teacher who has committed suicide — has already picked U.S. distribution through Music Box Films, a slot as Canada’s official submission […]
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“½ REVOLUTION” directors, Karim El Hakim & Omar Shargawi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 am –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Co-director Karim El Hakim: The challenge of capturing the spontaneity of life in all its hidden moments and glancing magic is why I am a filmmaker. What turns me on is exploring the time and space around me, following the individual threads of emotional energy in each of the characters I become invested in. The more intense and stressful a situation is, the more emotional the characters become. How will these emotional strings play out? How will they intertwine and conflict? How do they reflect the situation? What will […]
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Middle of Nowhere | Writer/Director Ava DuVernay
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 2:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First film I ever loved was West Side Story. My aunt Denise forced me to watch it one rainy afternoon. I had to be about 9-years-old. I was spellbound. The dancing. The romance. The brown people. I grew up in Compton, right where the city limits hug Lynwood. And for as long as I can remember, my school, my block, was predominately Latino. I remember watching that film and it changing the way I saw my schoolmates and neighbors. Seriously, I recall feeling something very specific about the […]
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Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present | Director Matthew Akers
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 9:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] I began making work as a painter and sculptor. It was not until I graduated from art school that I ventured into filmmaking. Though I’m glad I did, I sometimes lament that it has dominated most of my life for the past 12 years, as I have not been painting or sculpting much. On the other hand, it has taken me all over the world and been an expansive exercise which has broadened my mind and led me down paths I could have never imagined. I have found that […]
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“THE PACT” | writer-director, Nicholas McCarthy
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 Midnight –Egyptian Theatre] There is one thread in my movie The Pact that is inseparable from the medium of film: ghost photography. Google it, you’ll find hundreds of examples. Since the camera was invented, people have believed they could photograph spirits. I’ve always been fascinated with this, and my movie is filled with examples of it. When we made The Pact there was a particular shot we were filming involving a light flickering, an effect that had been written into the script that portrayed the story’s’ ghostly spirit invading an electrical socket. We set up […]
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“THE ORATOR” | director, Tusi Tamasese
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, Noon –Temple Theatre, Park City] When my shortlived attempts at pigfarming didn’t work out and my mum sent me to NZ, I accidentally found out that there were courses about film. This intruiged me because it made me realise just how much film is a construct in what is chosen to go in the frame and what doesn’t, the colour, sound, sequencing, etc etc. The power of this particular construct (and not that it’s the only one) is it can be like a mirror that reflects not only the reality of the storyteller but for […]
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“PAYBACK” | director, Jennifer Baichwal
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] I was on my way to a doctorate in philosophy/comparative religion when I realized that the academic approach was too narrow a form of enquiry for me. So I turned to documentary to explore the same issues that were interesting— identity, epistemology, ethics, etc.– in a more lateral medium. Our films are about questions I don’t have an answer to, and they are all in some way about why there is no simple answer. Film has a unique capacity to convey contingency and complexity, because it is able […]
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“THE AMBASSADOR” | director, Mads Brügger
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Well, first of all I don’t think of myself as an artist. I am a journalist, who happens to make films. I make these films because they allow me to connect with an audience which is much larger than the five million Danes who live in Denmark. If I had written my latest film The Ambassador as a book, and published it in Denmark, I would not be answering this question in English, because nobody would know about The Ambassador outside of Denmark.
