Sundance
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“The Pandemic Sparked a Deeper Contemplation Into Our Creative Process” | Sara Dosa, Fire of Love
The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? Fire of Love is the first archival film I’ve ever directed—my previous two independent films I directed were primarily vérité. Fire of Love producer Shane Boris, assistant producer […]
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“It Was Really Important That I Was Able to Lean Into the Intimacy of Interviewing My Subjects and Not Just Rely on Archival Footage” | Eva Longoria Bastón, La Guerra Civil
The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? Given the nature of La Guerra Civil, it was really important that I was able to lean into the intimacy of interviewing my subjects and not […]
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“I Came Out of This Process With a Refreshed Perspective on Mortality”: Editors Erin Casper & Jocelyne Chaput on Fire of Love
Two of the best known volcanologists, Katia and Maurice Krafft—are arguably as well known for having died in an expedition on Japan’s Mount Unzen, but Fire of Love, a documentary by Sara Dosa that makes use of the footage shot by the couple, turns away from the easy tragic narrative to instead shine a light on the love they shared for their work as well as for each other. Editors Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput explain how they put together a film from footage that was often difficult to parse and why they took inspiration from the French New Wave. […]
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Trailer Watch: Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral
Following its premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival, The Cathedral, the sophomore feature by Ricky D’Ambrose (a 25 New Face of Film in 2017), makes its US premiere at this year’s Sundance. We’re pleased to share the first trailer for the film, an assured, highly compressed yet emotionally impactful portrait of a young man’s upbringing from early ‘80s childhood to late ‘10s college. D’Ambrose’s coming-of-age story boasts David Lowery as an executive producer. The film’s Sundance page is here, and D’Ambrose’s essay about acting as his own graphic designer is here.
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“Not Addressing the Core Exploitations of Capitalism is Essential to Capitalism’s Survival”: Theo Anthony on His Surveillance Doc, All Light, Everywhere
This interview with Theo Anthony about his documentary, All Light, Everywhere, was originally published alongside the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It is being reposted today as the film premieres in theaters, including, in New York, at the IFC Center, where Anthony will do Q&As moderated by Brenda Coughlin and Sierra Pettengill. In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony […]
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Virtual and Actual Realities: The Narrative VR and New Media Works in the Sundance 2021 New Frontier Section
A Remote Festival The Sundance Film Festival, which ended February 3, succeeded remarkably well despite the pandemic, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the New Frontier lineup of virtual/augmented reality and other new media. In fact, as has been commented throughout 2020, in many ways virtual reality was made for this moment. With VR headsets reaching ever further into the consumer population it was feasible for this year’s New Frontier lineup, including several 2D browser-based works, to be shown remotely with essentially no loss in quality, especially when compared with feature films being screened on a laptop or […]
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Sundance Hits and Misses, Pandemic Edition
Yes, 2020 sucked. The worst year of our lives finally came to an end, and most independent films and filmmakers, like just about everything and everyone else, suffered. Grand Jury Prize winners were delayed, critics’ favorites were lost and buzzworthy breakouts, briefly the talk of Park City, remained in limbo, waiting for some nebulous future release date when movie theaters might re-open and vaccinated audiences might attend them. Normally, you could look back at a year’s worth of top Sundance titles, examine what became of them in distribution—as Filmmaker usually does—and glean some takeaways about the state of the marketplace. […]
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The Filmic Equivalent of a Haiku: Erick Oh on his Sundance VR Film Namoo
One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]
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“Is There Too Much Reading on Screen?” Carey Williams on R#J, Virtual Sundance and Pre-Vis
It may still feature two households both alike in dignity, but in Carey Williams’s modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, R#J, the modes of communication look decidedly different. Set in California in the here and now, Williams’s film hones in on the title characters’ brief but intense romance via their messaging tool of choice: the smartphone. Back-and-forth texts and DMs, impromptu FaceTiming sessions, tagging each other in Instagram photos and sharing personally curated Spotify playlists add to the cumulative rise and potential fall of literature’s most infamously star-crossed lovers. Produced by Bazelevs Productions (founded by popular Russian filmmaker […]
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“Looking At Diversity Through A Different Lens”: Debbie Lum on Try Harder!
Lowell High School, whose student population is predominantly Asian American, is different from most US high schools portrayed on film. Director Debbie Lum came to the nationally ranked school to portray Lowell’s students, particularly so called “tiger cubs” in the heat of the college admissions process for her Sundance 2021 doc Try Harder!. Of course, not all of the Asian American students shown in the film have stereotypical “tiger moms,” and it’s refreshing to see an array of Asian American parents and students shown in communities where they feel comfortable, rather than shrinking in the minority. But the pressure on […]
