Sundance

“BOY INTERRUPTED” director, Dana Perry

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The story of my film, Boy Interrupted, was not affected much by recently changing digital technology. If anything, the film is a throwback to conventional documentary filmmaking; straightforward chronological storytelling – no tricks. Authenticity was our guide. The goal was to tell the story of my son Evan’s bipolar illness and suicide in as factual a manner as possible, with home movies and first-hand interviews bearing witness to our experience as a family. I love the self-contained and mostly humorous videos I see on YouTube and Facebook and […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2009 Sundance Responses
“IT MIGHT GET LOUD” director, David Guggenheim

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 9:00 am — Temple Theatre, Park City] The hardest thing about making documentaries is finding a story inside your material — it’s just so much harder than scripted material. And so what you find are a lot of documentaries that are written in advance; that is to say that the filmmaker knew what he or she wanted to say before beginning shooting. So you feel a kind of steering going on, and therefore a falseness. The other extreme is that you see documentaries that have no story at all. The filmmaker saw something interesting, they […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2009 Sundance Responses
“JOHNNY MAD DOG” writer-director, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 8:30 am — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Johnny Mad Dog is based on a novel by Emmanuel Dongala. At first, I wrote a faithful adaptation of the book following the same narrative construction, which was centered on two main characters: Johnny, a 15-year-old child soldier, and Laokolé, a 13-year-old girl who runs away with her family. They are in the same situation in the last days of a civil war in Africa. The same unit of time, place and space. Two roads which cross paths, two different points of view, two destinies. Once this […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2009 Sundance Responses
“MARY AND MAX” writer-director-designer, Adam Elliot

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 15, 6:00 & 9:30 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] My producer and I make clay-animated biographies (or “clayographies” as I like to call them). As with all my films, my latest stop-motion animation, Mary and Max, has a simple plot and the structure is nothing too elaborate or terribly clever. I used to shudder at the thought of calling them formulaic but in many ways they are. My aim as a writer-director is to create a rich and engaging story and then tell it well. I do not obsess over plot and structure and I […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2009 Sundance Responses
SUNDANCE DIRECTORS’ LAB, EPOCH TWO

Here’s writer/director John Magary’s (pictured here with Robert Redford and Vilmos Zsigmond) second dispatch from the Sundance Directors’ Lab: This is my first stab at blogging, okay? I’ve never been a self-starting chronicler, never had a personal essay phase, or a journal, or a sketchbook. I’m not wired that way. I don’t really know how to steal away time in bars or cafes, to reflect on my day in an endearingly scruffy little notebook—even a grocery list is a chore. Long story short, I’m finishing up my second week here, and I have no notes. It’s blurs on top of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2008 Sundance
MUSTACHES & PISTACHIOS

Any festival you go to there’s going to be one film that most people don’t get and just spend their time discussing why they didn’t like it and question why it was ever made. Chusy (Anthony Haney-Jardine)‘s Anywhere, USA has become that film at Sundance ’08… but I’m in the minority. I thought it was one of the most fun viewing experiences I had there. Now, I won’t say that I got what Chusy’s three-part so-called autobiography was about because I don’t know if there’s anything to get. All I know is he has a bizarre imagination, gets great performances […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 27, 2008 Sundance
SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES WINNERS

Below is the complete list of Sundance 2008 Winners: Grand Jury Prize: DocumentaryTrouble The Water — directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal Grand Jury Prize: DramaticFrozen River — directed by Courtney Hunt World Cinema Jury Prize: DocumentaryMan on Wire — directed by James Marsh World Cinema Jury Prize: DramaticKing of Ping Pong (Ping Pongkingen) — directed by Jens Jonsson Audience Award: DocumentaryFields of Fuel — directed by Josh Tickell Audience Award: DramaticThe Wackness — directed by Jonathan Levine World Cinema Audience Award: DocumentaryMan on Wire — directed by James Marsh World Cinema Audience Award: DramaticCaptain Abu Raed — directed […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 26, 2008 Sundance
SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED

Though documentaries are always what I’m most excited about when I go to festivals, none at Sundance really jumped out at me this year… except one. Brit filmmaker Chris Waitt came to Park City with a delicious doc that’s so funny and superbly structured it’s hard to believe that it’s non-fiction, but he insists that it’s all real. In A Complete History of My Sexual Failures Waitt has recently been dumped, and having never been good with women he takes the moment of emptiness to examine why his life has been full of failed relationships by deciding to look up […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 25, 2008 Sundance
DUTCH TREATS

I’ve still got most of my Sundance commentary to get up and I’m on my way to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where I’ll try to file some short reports on the fest and the concurrent Cinemart, which is a great financing conference that plans, this year, to begin a dialogue about how it can be reshaped for the future. (Full disclosure: I’m on the CineMart’s Advisory Board.) From the festival’s Tiger Daily: Eschewing conference and panel formats and instead deploying the tried and tested device of brainstorming towards a consensus, IFFR management and industry experts will sit down this […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2008 Sundance
CONSIDERING ALL THINGS JAMIE STUART

While Jamie Stuart has been here at Sundance shooting the goings on, NPR has been shooting him for a short video segment that’s now up on their website. We have no idea what Jamie will turn in this year, although we do know that it won’t be all shot in the Albertson’s parking lot.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2008 Sundance

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