Sundance Features
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“I Was Watching Midcentury Hollywood Biblical Epics, Anti-Communist Propaganda Films, and 1970s B-Movies about Devil Worshippers”: Penny Lane on Hail Satan?
“Blasphemy is not free speech” reads a protest banner on the Little Rock statehouse lawn in a scene from Hail Satan?, the latest from Sundance vet Penny Lane (Our Nixon, Nuts!). The sign is emblematic of the ludicrous (and too often unchallenged) falsehoods that The Satanic Temple — fighting to place an elaborate statue of goat-headed god Baphomet alongside a local legislator’s equally ostentatious Ten Commandments monument — is up against. Luckily Lane, never one to shy away from provocative subjects, is right there on the ground, providing an intimate look into the group’s wild rise. By seamlessly alternating interviews […]
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After “Losing” Emily Mortimer: Director A.M. Lukas on Her Sundance Short, One Cambodian Family Please For My Pleasure
A.M. Lukas’s short, One Cambodian Family Please For My Pleasure, based on a true story, was produced for Refinery29’s Shatterbox series and has won awards at Edmonton International Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival and SCAD Savannah Film Festival. It plays Sundance beginning January 24 in Shorts Program One. Here, writer/director Lukas tells the story of the perilous song-and-dance that occurred when her star, Emily Mortimer, had to bail out of the film at the last minute — and the lessons learned from the experience. After reading, check out the short itself below. It’s a sticky September day in […]
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Tips on Driving to Park City (Especially in a Government Shutdown)
With the government shutdown lingering indefinitely, there are some concerns that furloughed safety inspectors, moonlighting TSA agents and “sick” air traffic controllers are impacting the safety of air travel. If you’d been planning on flying to Park City in late January for Sundance, Slamdance or the Art House Convergence, and you’re concerned, you might want to think about driving there instead. If you live anywhere west of the Mississippi, driving is definitely a solid option. One advantage to driving is that when you get to Park City, you’ll have a car. Perfect for going to screenings, parties, Staples, Walmart, etc! […]
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“I Have No Idea How My Little Sony AS7 Camera Survived”: Director Cody Lucich | Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? I was at the complete mercy of the story. There was no planning or control. I couldn’t go out and plan a shoot, or figure out when the story was over. I had absolutely no idea how long “production” was going to go for. While we battled a pipeline at camp, I shot for eight months […]
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“The Bisbee Deportation Doesn’t Matter Unless it Relates to our Real Lives Today”: Robert Greene on Bisbee ’17
Sundance vet Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress) returns to Park City this year with a film quite unlike his previous features, at least in subject matter if not approach. For Bisbee ’17 Greene turns his trademark technique of fusing fiction and nonfiction elements on the story of a sordid anniversary, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, in which 1,200 immigrant miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, shipped out of the copper town on cattle cars and left to die in the desert. Through staged recreations developed and performed by local residents — including an actor whose mom was deported to […]
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Sundance Notes: RISE to RUMBLE, must-see TV… from Canada
Malcolm Forbes, of all people, once memorably said, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” I’d like to extend that principle: You can easily judge the character of a nation by how it treats the indigenous people from whom it took its territory. I’m from Chattanooga, near the Chickamauga battlefield, just east of the Ocoee and Hiwassee rivers, in the southeast corner of Tennessee. I grew up on an Appalachian mountain, dated a girl in nearby Ooltewah. I now live in Manhattan. All indigenous names. Where are […]
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Justin Chon’s Gook, and Why New, Diverse Voices are Still the Most Exciting Part of Sundance
“Investors said, ‘But what if one white cop stops by?’” “No man. That’s ridiculous,” said Chon. “Get a white famous friend as a day player?” ”It was intentional,” said Chon on his decision to have an entirely diverse cast. There’s always a film (or two) at Sundance that re-instills your faith in the festival as a whole. For me, that usually means the discovery of an electric new voice. This year in particular there were a lot of returning faces — Alex Ross Perry (Golden Exits), David Lowery (A Ghost Story), Ry Russo-Young (Before I Fall), Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats) […]
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Sundance: The Narrative Radicalism of Dee Rees’ Mudbound
I implore you to go into Dee Rees’ wonderful Mudbound with an open mind. Here’s a warning to help you do so: this film is more narratively radical than you might imagine. It starts quietly. It’s patient, a true slow burn. It’s well-aware of this fact, even proud of it. At times you might perceive the film to be unfocused or fractured. You might be put off by some of the narrative techniques on display — for instance, the film’s heavy reliance on expositional voice-over. Or its overabundance of subplots (many of which remain unrelated to the central story). Or the fact that […]
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Five Questions with Golden Exits Director Alex Ross Perry
The worlds of Alex Ross Perry tend to thrive on confrontation. In 2014, the writer/director arrived at Sundance with Listen Up Philip, an acerbic comedy that showcased his knack for characters at once repellent and compelling. He followed that film with Queen of Earth, a feverish two-hander that pitted Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston in a cage match of sniping and passive-aggression. For his fifth feature, Perry gave himself a challenge: To write a film with no outward hostility. That film is Golden Exits. Perry calls it his “mellow drama.” An NYC-set ensemble starring Emily Browning, Mary-Louise Parker and Jason Schwartzman, Golden Exits premieres this week in competition […]
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Five Questions with Crown Heights Director Matt Ruskin
Colin Warner spent 20 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. In 1980, police arrested Warner for the killing of a 16-year-old boy in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. His imprisonment, based solely on a mistaken eye witness, robbed him of his freedom from the years of Jimmy Carter all the way to George W. Bush. Warner’s story is the subject of Crown Heights, the second feature film from writer/director Matt Ruskin. The film stars Lakeith Stanfield (Short Term 12) as Warner and Nnamdi Asomugha (Hello, My Name Is Doris) as Carl King, Warner’s best friend who devotes years of his life […]
