Sundance Responses
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Sleepwalk With Me | Co-Writer/Director Mike Birbiglia
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23, 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, park City] I’m drawn to be an artist because when I watch successful art- whether it’s stand up comedy or plays or movies- it makes me feel a little bit less alone. And the idea that I could do that for someone else seems worthwhile. Sleepwalk With Me is a based on a true story that actually HAS been expressed in different media: it was a story on This American Life. It was a book, and it was a one-man play of the same name. But the reason I decided […]
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“LOVE FREE OR DIE” | director, Macky Alston
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23 6:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] Last night, I was at a holiday party and I saw my five year old daughter in a silver-sequined dress through the lens of someone else’s video camera. Christmas lights shone in the center of the frame and my daughter glistened to the right of the frame. For a second, as she danced in front of the camera, I saw her as I knew her most truly to be and had never seen her before. It is for such moments of revelation that I am addicted to documentary film. […]
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“THE ATOMIC STATES OF AMERICA” | directors, Don Argott and Sheena Joyce
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23, 9:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] In these days of 140 characters or less, filmmaking, and particularly documentary filmmaking, allows us the space and the time to explore a character or an issue with breadth and depth. Our goal with The Atomic States of America was to take the intimidating topic of nuclear power, and to make it accessible and personal by telling the individual stories of people living in reactor communities, working as Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors, and advocating on both sides of the issue. When you begin the journey of making a documentary, […]
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“UNDER AFRICAN SKIES” | director, Joe Berlinger
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 8:00 pm –The MARC, Park City] I am as surprised as anyone that I have actually been able to raise a family by doing nonfiction work for the past 2 decades. In that time, I have witnessed a lot of change – in technology, in distribution, in audience appetites and in the maturation of nonfiction as an industry – and we can certainly have a healthy debate about whether it is easier or harder to make a living these days as a nonfiction film and television maker than it was 5, 10 or even 20 […]
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“NOBODY WALKS” | director, Ry-Russo Young
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 12:15 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City] When I was a teenager I would wear sexy clothes to school that didn’t fit me. My mother would see me before I left the house and was horrified that her awkward, fourteen year old daughter was planning to walk the New York City streets in a tight pink baby tee shirt and red denim miniskirt. She said I looked like a hooker clown and she was probably right. But at the time, I was just beginning to understand that my body could communicate something sexual and powerful to […]
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“MOSTQUITA Y MARI” | writer-director, Aurora Guerrero
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Being a filmmaker just feels right to me. It flows without forcing it. It feels like the tool I was born to use to express myself. I once explained it as feeling like that first pair of Puma shoes, you know, like they were meant especially for you to sport around town. There’s so much about film that I respect. It’s a medium that demands the talents of others and I love collaborating. Film requires patience, persistence, and passion. These are all qualities I have developed through my experiences as […]
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“CHINA HEIVYWEIGHTS” | director, Yung Chang
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? I love movies. Ever since I was a kid and my dad would set up his super-8 projector in the basement and rent black-and-white movies from the library, I have loved movies. Movies are visceral. They are cathartic. They are spiritual. I love the experience of going to watch movies in a dark theatre with a full audience. I love being emotionally moved, to be shaken alive, to feel a sense of the wider world and […]
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“V/H/S”| Filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Chad Villella
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: For our segment of V/H/S (“10/31/98”), we spent an entire night searching for a train. After hours of driving around, we still couldn’t get what we needed, so we decided to park near some tracks and wait. It was a little after midnight on a Tuesday and there we were: four friends, grown men sitting in a parked car with lights off, down a dark alley somewhere in South Los Angeles, dressed up as a pirate, a Marine, a life-sized teddy bear & the Unabomber. A woman walking by caught a glimpse of us and quickly picked up her pace–and I’m sure our awkward attempts […]
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Safety Not Guaranteed | Director Colin Trevorrow
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First of all, thanks for referring to me as an artist. It made me feel good. With Safety Not Guaranteed, Derek Connolly and I had the goals you might associate with art—to make something soulful, something that breaks rules, engages the heart. But beneath it all was a sincere want to entertain in a way that only movies can. There’s an element of showmanship in cinema that most other mediums don’t share. Yes, the characters in our film are honest and the emotions are true—good entertainment doesn’t have to […]
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“FINDING NORTH” | directors, Kristi Jacobson & Lori Silverbush
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 6:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] Kristi Jacobson: 49 million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from. It’s a shocking statistic, but how do you turn a stat into a story? My answer is deceivingly simple: you make a movie. No art form can truly make us feel another person’s pain, or joy, or hunger. It’s our own emotions and imaginations that bring any art form to life. But film, in my experience, is the most powerful conduit between one person’s experience and an audience. As a […]
