Sundance Responses

“BARKING WATER” writer-director, Sterlin Harjo

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 2:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] I knew before we began making Barking Water that I wanted to try something different. The story is about an older couple who has had a very tumultuous relationship for the past 40 years. The woman, Irene, comes to the man, Frankie, on his deathbed and agrees to take him from the hospital and get him home. The problem, of course, is that Frankie is dying, so the film explores their relationship as she tries to get him home to see his daughter before he dies. Under the […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 Sundance Responses
“VICTORIA DAY” writer-director, David Bezmozgis

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 6:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] I wrote the first draft of Victoria Day in 2001 before the existence of YouTube or the invention of the iPod. So, Victoria Day in its conception and execution wasn’t influenced by these things. But even if I were to conceive of it anew today, the story would take the same shape, simply because I don’t believe that the effect I hope to achieve — namely an emotional effect — can be achieved any other way. In my experience, the kinds of stories that I’ve seen told on […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 Sundance Responses
“COLD SOULS” writer-director, Sophie Barthes

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 5:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I still believe that watching a film should be a collective experience in the darkness of a movie theater, with the viewer floating in a mental state somewhere between consciousness and sleep. I feel that filmmaking as a creative process and as a medium is very close to the process of dreaming. A film is an association of images outside of our control interacting with our memories and emotions. So by replacing the big screen with miniature devices, we’re losing an aspect of […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 Sundance Responses
“GRACE” writer-director, Paul Solet

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:59 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] The factor affecting cinema today most relevant to Grace is the prevalence of the filmmaking community’s faith in the shortcut. There’s an idea that we can make movies by checklist, that the way to write a successful script is by formula, and the way to make a successful film is by gimmickry or spectacle — that we just need to get in front of a camera and our computers will figure out the rest later. With Grace, we resisted that and put total faith in footwork. We just […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“REPORTER” director, Eric Metzgar

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 9:30 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] With Reporter (and my other films), I have done my best to ignore and avoid the modern forces that encourage the shrinking (and consequent speeding up) of cinematic storytelling. I just don’t see the good in trying to satiate the racing human mind and its desperate and diminishing attention span. I try instead to suffuse my films with the qualities of life and art that I most cherish but seem increasingly endangered: subtlety, silence, stillness, tenderness, sincerity and a spaciousness that allows the viewer (hopefully) to experience some […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“LYMELIFE” co-writer-director, Derick Martini

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 9:00 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Due to the daunting forces affecting independent cinema today, the tragedy that has become specialty distributors’ monumental struggle to find audiences, my instinct while directing Lymelife was to constantly push the envelope in every single scene we shot. If that meant tossing my written words out the window, so be it. I was determined to deliver a brutally honest and unsentimental depiction of an American family going through crisis in the late ’70s, a time of emotional and economic change which turns out to be relevant today. I […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“STAY THE SAME NEVER CHANGE” director, Laurel Nakadate

[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 […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“YOU WONT MISS ME” co-writer-director, Ry Russo-Young

[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 […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“CARMO, HIT THE ROAD” writer-director, Murilo Pasta

[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 […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses
“THE KILLING ROOM” director, Jonathan Liebesman

[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 […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009 Sundance Responses

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