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[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:30 pm — Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City] The most surprising thing for me about the film is the old cliché: that it got made at all. But not for the old clichéd reasons. When my friend sent me the script, and after I fell in love with it, I looked at it with my produceorial hat on and felt certain it would never get made. First, it was in a studio’s library and had been for more than 10 years, and most importantly, the incredible soundtrack from some of the best […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:00 pm — Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City] I quit getting surprised at what happens during the making of a film a long time ago. On Troll Hunter, I cast well, so I knew the acting was going to be good. I chose the best d.p., so I knew it was going to look right. I had the right producers, so I knew we were going to make the right priorities. I trust my own and my team’s abilities to do good VFX work, so I knew the trolls were going to be cool. I […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 5:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre] Almost 30 years ago I began my professional life as an inventor, and the first device I worked on was a system for reducing the air-pollution effects caused by burning coal. So when I began work on The Last Mountain, a tale about the struggles of a small community fighting against dominant power of a local coal-mining operation, I was sure I understood the dust-smeared consequences of burning coal. But at every turn I was surprised, at the scale and scope of the coal industry’s black smudged paw across […]
For the lucky few who get in, Sundance isn’t just a festival — it’s a resource. Over the years, the festival has nurtured the careers of a number of documentary filmmakers who went on to become what senior programmer David Courier recently termed “master filmmakers” — filmmakers so good and so respected that the festival had to create the out-of-competition category, “Doc Premieres,” to make sure their work didn’t overshadow the greener directors. It should come as no surprise to anyone in the documentary community to find Liz Garbus’ name in a category reserved for such filmmakers. Garbus’ history with […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 2:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] What I have found most surprising about my film Buck is how it appears to affect people in so many different ways. As I started this journey to tell Buck’s story, I thought it would be about changing people’s perceptions about how they treat and train horses, as well as how to deal with life’s difficulties with a bit of cowboy wisdom. However as the film was completed and we started test screening it for a wide cross section of friends and associates, I was pleasantly surprised that we […]
Sundance programmer Shari Frilot watches all kinds of films for the festival each year, but she spends much of the her time smoking out the best, strangest, most relevant work for the New Frontiers section. Call it new media or transmedia or video-internet-3D film art; the best work in the section is indescribable. Until this year, New Frontiers was packed into a cavernous space inside the lower level of a shopping mall on Main Street. This year, they’re moving to the Miners Hospital, across from the Library. “Every year people would say, ‘Wait, where was New Frontiers?’ I missed that!’ […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] Well the biggest surprise was, that it worked out! Really! Just imagine: Our goal was to make a film about a country we were not able to travel to anymore, about an event which had taken place in the past. Without having proper footage, we decided to produce 42 minutes of animation and mix them with real footage we got from 250 different cameras and cell phones. And all of that, from financing to finalizing the film within 10 months! That is a challenge I would say. And […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Before I started to shoot my first feature, my experience had been working alone or with a very small crew, two or three people — that’s all. That was the key that gave me the versatility and more importantly, the freedom I need when I shoot, because I like to switch quickly to get the unknown, to go for the unscripted… to react fast for the bonus that cinema gives more often then we think. So I was worried and a little anxious about how I would react when working […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre] When I set out to make Connected, the original tagline was A Declaration of Interdependence. I set out to make an insightful/funny/provocative film that looks at what it means to be connected in the 21st century by exploring the history of interdependence and how it has changed over time. That was my pitch, that was our focus, that’s the film I thought I was going to make. At one point, we had an 80-minute rough cut and I watched it in one sitting (one rarely gets to do that on […]
Originally printed in our Fall 2010 issue, we asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space. Jay Van Hoy & Lars Knudsen’s latest film, Braden King’s Here, premieres at Sundance on Friday. For Parts and Labor’s Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen, independent film success is all about work. Very hard work. Midway through our conversation about their recent producing successes, Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen realized that they hadn’t had a day off in 18 months. “You did seven-day weeks for a year-and-a-half?” […]