Sundance Responses
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“A Queer Punk at Heart”: Director Silas Howard | A Kid Like Jake
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’ve been making films for a long time now – mostly with friends, mostly on a shoe-string and sometimes renegade, so I’m no stranger to filmmaking chaos and incredible teams that find ways to rise above! One of the amazing things about making A Kid Like Jake was that we were all well-supported, and we assembled […]
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“The World’s Most Dangerous Myth – that we Need Meat to Be Strong”: Director Louie Psihoyos | The Game Changers
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? We were making a film about how a plant-based diet might improve performance in elite athletes by improving blood flow, reducing inflammation and decreasing recovery time. It turns out that these advantages in athletic performance are caused by the same mechanisms that affect our overall health. In the middle of filming, our main subject’s father had […]
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“A Tsunami of #metoo Accusations Ensued”: Directors Sophie Sartain and Roberta Grossman | Seeing Allred
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? Seeing Allred is a film with two threads: one biographical and the second a vérité unfolding of contemporary events, including the Cosby story and the Trump election. The biographical story, although complex and fascinating, was well behaved and stayed put. The contemporary thread was more chaotic and not neatly resolved. We thought we would be following […]
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“Documentary Is All about Trying to Divine Order from Chaos”: Director Tim Wardle | Three Identical Strangers
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? Documentary is all about trying to divine order from chaos – be it finding a coherent retrospective story within five conflicting accounts of the same event, or hoping that something (anything!) with emotional or narrative substance will happen on your vérité shoot. On this film the struggle between chaos and order was exacerbated by our physical […]
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“The Chaos Grew into Something So Beautiful”: Director Crystal Moselle | The Skate Kitchen
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? A year ago I was just trying to find the money to shoot this film. I had no script but a great idea. I knew the film had to be shot ASAP because my subjects were quickly growing up and that magical age from 17-19 was about to be lost. I was so determined to make […]
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“We Would Have Welcomed Some Chaos As Relief”: Director Tolga Karaçelik | Butterflies
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? “Chaos… I shot my film in 18 days, two different cities and two different countries. When I learned I was blacklisted in my home country and that I wouldn’t be getting any state funding, I didn’t realize it meant that I had to shoot this film – 90 something pages – in 18 days. So I […]
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“A Film that Tries to Understand Why Peace Failed”: Director Mor Loushy | The Oslo Diaries
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? To edit The Oslo Diaries in this crazy political period was not easy. In a period during which peace is so out of reach, that only to say the word “peace” makes you sound naive and out of touch with reality, a period in which a new war happens every two years, it felt very subversive […]
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“In Argentina We’re Always Under Some Kind of Crisis”: Director Valeria Bertuccelli | Queen of Fear
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? Order works as a placebo for me. I often try to establish it to remain calm and aware. But I am certain that things that turn out OK have usually little to do with order or plans. I’d say it’s closer to a state of mind we all need to eventually submit to. Speaking of shooting, […]
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“We Lost Hours from Our Shoot Day and Gained Years of Wisdom”: Director Josephine Decker | Madeline’s Madeline
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? Red. Blue. Green. Swim. Bathroom. Crying. Lifting. Exalted dance. Small inside. Melting personality. Melting fatigue. All night cigarette dance party. Fall asleep on the floor of the set. Messy reality. Inner turmoil. Beasts but good ones. Mask. Another mask. Masking tape on the mask. Tragedy but holding tragedy. A big hand holding it all together. Fond […]
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“Stories Make Order and Help Us Understand the Awful Noise”: Director Robert Greene | Bisbee ’17
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? The relationship between chaos and order is at the heart of all documentaries, especially films like ours that play with genre, performance and narrative. This means that we kind of need to do two kinds of films at once. It’s hard to make a good documentary and hard to make a good fiction film – but […]
