Sundance Responses

“MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT” | writer-director, Miguel Coyula

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 12:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] The hardest decision was to steer Memories of Overdevelopment into a new direction. The first version of the script was pretty much a synopsis of the novel Memorias del Desarrollo by Edmundo Desnoes. But as shooting and editing started, new ideas emerged. Slowly the film took on a life of its own, with the inclusion of new scenes, characters, sociopolitical angles, animation sequences, etc. The result is a hybrid of the visions of two different generations of Cubans: one born before the Revolution, Edmundo Desnoes, and […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“OBSELIDIA” | writer-director, Diane Bell

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 2:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] Without a doubt the most difficult decision I made was to trust my instincts. That might seem like an easy thing to do, but given I had never made a movie before (not even a short), it was truly a daily leap of faith. Along the path I encountered many people with years of movie-making experience telling me how I should do it, and if I had listened to them, I probably still wouldn’t have made a movie! In fact, I’d still be trying to raise a larger […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“ANIMAL KINGDOM” | writer-director, David Michod

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Casting 17-year-old James Frecheville in the lead role. He’d never done a movie before; he was just one of 500 kids who came to a massive open casting. He was bigger and tougher than I’d ever imagined the character being and he was going to have to sit at the center of a big ensemble cast of some of the best and most intimidating actors in Australia. If he didn’t work, the movie wouldn’t work. But something about the natural detail in his audition performances just made me […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“HIS & HERS” | director, Ken Wardrop

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] I had many difficult decisions to make from the conceptual to the production stages of our documentary His & Hers. These decisions were primarily concerning our small budget of €100,000 and my choice to shoot on film. However I think the hardest decision of all was actually to make the film in the first place. In all honesty, the producer actually had to coax me into making it. Okay, I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming but I definitely needed the push. You see, up until now […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“happythankyoumoreplease” | writer-director, Josh Radnor

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 12:15 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] Well my first impulse is to list the obvious: casting woes, scheduling conflicts, clashes over time and locations, cherished scenes that ended up getting cut in editing, and the like. But the overall feeling I’m left with on the other side of the freefall that was directing my first film is that the hard decisions weren’t all that hard. One hears so much about the rigors/horrors of filmmaking, and as a fairly suggestible person when facing the unknown, I was kind of prepared for the worst. But the […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“A SMALL ACT” | director, Jennifer Arnold

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The documentary project A Small Act follows five main characters through two interlocking storylines, but we only had one camera. We were constantly forced to decide which story, and which character within the story, to follow. There was one day in particular that we absolutely needed to be in three places at once, which was impossible of course. We were filming three Kenyan students as they competed for a life-changing scholarship. The students had taken a national exam and the exam score determined their scholarship eligibility. If they […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“TEENAGE PAPARAZZO” | director, Adrian Grenier

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 5:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] The hardest decision I had to make was to completely scrap the first cut of the film, start from scratch and completely redo a year and a half of work. After I turned in the film I was still not satisfied, but my investors didn’t want to give me more time or money. There were two choices: wash my hands of it or take drastic measures and defy the will of my investors to go over budget and over schedule. I had no idea if I would succeed […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS” | co-writer-director, Michael Mohan

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 6:00 pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision we had to make actually happened prior to shooting. During 2007, my team and I had been commissioned to write a horror-comedy script. We had been working on the script for many months and actually had the budget to make it. At this moment, we were on the verge of going to our bosses and trying to figure out how we could take leave of absences from our jobs to go film this movie in the late summer. At the time I was working […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“CATFISH” | co-directors, Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 11:30 am — Library Center Theatre, Park City] Our film was a slow burn. It took eight months for the true story to emerge. The last two-thirds of the film unfold over the course of one incredible week. Our toughest decisions came in the editing room, trying to distill the most exhilarating, unsettling and ultimately revelatory week of our lives into an hour and a half.

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“FAMILY AFFAIR” | director, Chico Colvard

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision I made in making Family Affair was to ask my father the question, “Why?” When my father was arrested, I was 10 years old. It wouldn’t be until much later in life that I’d come to comprehend the full magnitude of the crimes he committed against my sisters. For reasons I once could not understand, my sisters had maintained a relationship with my father almost immediately following his release from prison. In November of 2002, my sisters invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them in […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses

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