[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 9:15 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] I think a lot about the small, small screens getting attention these days: iPods, cell phones, YouTube and MySpace. I spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about the many strangers around the world, sitting in front of their Web cams, reaching out through their video yelps. I’m amazed by the matter-of-fact placement of their bodies in front of their computers, squarely there, waiting, presenting themselves, as if in front of a firing squad of voyeuristic strangers that may love them or shoot them. I obsess […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 6:45 pm — Broadway Centre Cinemas V, Salt Lake City] The conception and the structure of my story were not affected while the execution was. The script was considered a potential flop by all the producers who had read it, so I had to film it on my own, almost without money. Time was the first thing I had to give up. Cinema needs a certain time to be made, but time is money. I’m sure that if I’d had a little more, the execution would have been better.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:15 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] It would be great to make a film that would work great for an audience no matter how they saw it…be it on their iPod or laptop or on the big screen or whatever. Ultimately though, I’m pretty old-school. There’s nothing like that communal experience of sitting in a darkened theater with a group of strangers and going on a journey together…one that takes over your senses with its sheer scope and thereby pulls you — hook, line and sinker — into another world. That is an experience […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City] I think everything affected the film from Obama to YouTube to my hopes of making a movie without thinking too much. I tried to just run with ideas, people, locations and not be so self-conscious this time around. I was very proud of Orphans (my first film) but in a way You Wont Miss Me was a reaction to making such a restrained movie. This time I wanted to make a movie that could only be made RIGHT NOW. That would scream of the times that […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:00 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] My story was shaped by the only force affecting cinema today that really counts: the financing aspect. I’m a Third World filmmaker with no private income, no friends in high places and no godfathers in the filmmaking world. The three notions that have guided me in this five-year journey, from Carmo’s conception through to being selected for Sundance, are: strategy, strategy and strategy.What choice did I have? So before I could even consider desired visual approach, casting possibilities, prospective budgeting levels, etc., I decided that my debut feature […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 am — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] The Killing Room was never consciously shaped by any changes in the collective structures of other films today. However any filmmaker is influenced by what he or she sees around in film, movies, books and life. I do believe that there is a collective consciousness that breezes through many films as far as technique or structural choices are concerned. As for technique and execution, for a while now, the Hollywood films that have made the most impact on me have been those that attempt to make their […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 am — Library Center Theatre, Park City] As filmmakers interested in creating character-driven films about social issues, we saw the story of No Impact Man as a great opportunity. An intimate, cinema vérité look at a family trying to find their place in our culture of consumption and the affect that has on the environment. The idea of No Impact Man was that Colin Beavan, his wife and their daughter would remove themselves to the greatest extent possible from the various aspects of life that cause negative environmental impact while also increasing their positive […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] Our film is the story of a man born in 1919 as told by his daughters, who were born in the late 1970s. William Kunstler was a radical civil rights lawyer who took part in many of the major activist and social movements from 1960 to 1994. But we didn’t make this film for the people who lived through that history with him. We made it for younger generations. This is a film about legacy, about looking at your parents’ lives and deciding what to take from their […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 5:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] I went to school for two years at Temple University, studying story and structure with professors David Parry and Allen Barber. I was completely impatient (which has never gone away) and always wanted to go shoot, shoot, shoot. But David’s and Allen’s message, understood through studying all kinds of films, was always about story. No matter how ready I thought I was, they would always come back to “who is your audience,” “why are you telling this story,” and “the script isn’t ready.” They were right. Though I […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 6:00 pm — Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City] A year of significance for China is 1989 — a significant year for many Chinese of my age. It is the year when the Tiananmen Square incident shook the world. In that same year, I concluded my four years of study at Beijing Film Academy and made my debut film Mama. The making of Mama ended up not only holding significant meaning for me but for Chinese cinema in the broader context. Prior to 1989, Chinese film rigidly followed the ways of the Soviet big brother — […]