Sundance Responses
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“FOR ELLEN” | writer-director, So Yung Kim
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21, 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] I was lucky enough to fall into filmmaking. I tried other art forms like painting and performance, but there was something lacking. Then I helped my husband Brad make his first feature film. I found the experience inspiring and so I began to make my own films. With each film I have been learning, not just about filmmaking, but also about life and myself. I started to write For Ellen when I was filled with anxiety and doubts about being a decent parent, a loving partner, and a […]
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“TWENTY-EIGHT HOTELS ROOMS” | writer-director, Matt Ross
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 5:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] The most truthful answer I can come up with as to why my story is told as a film (and not a novel or a play) is this: the most profound narrative experiences I have had have been in a dark movie theatre. One of the first films I can remember seeing was Jaws. I must have been about five. The experience was seared into my brain. It was horrifying, primal. Even now, as an adult, so many years later, every time I swim or surf in the […]
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“THE HOUSE I LIVE IN” | director, Eugene Jarecki
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 6:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] “Why am I a filmmaker?” I often ask myself the same question. I ask it because first and foremost I guess I am less an artist than simply a small-p-political person who is moved by human struggle anywhere around me and who, however naively or presumptuously, wants to do something about it. My new film, The House I Live In, examines the destructive impact of the War on Drugs on poor and minority Americans and what can be done to reform it. It is my most personal film to […]
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“ME AT THE ZOO” | directors, Chris Moukarbel & Valerie Veatch
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday , January 21 9:00 pm – Temple Theatre, Park City] Our film Me @ The Zoo began in another form entirely. We were making a long form art video for the NYC-based arts organization Rhizome. The artwork was about exploring the ways that technology mediates our lives as a generation comes of age watching reality television and using social media. It seemed like what is considered to be performance has shifted and “acting” was losing ground as a popular medium. Video technology enables us to turn the content of our lives into a kind of show. If you […]
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“THE END OF LOVE” | director, Mark Webber
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 2:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] My mom had me when she was 16. I lived with her in a car, then in shitty houses with an abusive father who was hooked on heroin, then in abandoned buildings we would takeover because we were homeless. I had an interesting childhood. So when I was lucky enough to see a film in a movie theater, I would immediately be transported to another world. A world of dreams, where everything seemed possible. What was once just a form of escapism, is now my greatest joy. It […]
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“MY BEST DAY” | Writer-director, Erin Greenwell
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] I can trace back wanting to make movies to my father and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Once in grade school, I had a history presentation due. While watching the above mentioned movie with homework-is-due dread, I was struck with inspiration. I asked my dad “Is this true?”. “Yeah” he remarked. My fact checking was pretty dodgy. Pulse racing, I made my father point out the name in the Encyclopedia Britannica and then based the rest of my research off the movie. The next day at school, […]
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Keep the Lights On | Co-writer/Director, Ira Sachs
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 8:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] It’s not for nothing that we watch films in dark rooms, without the lights on. It’s the most intimate of artistic mediums. When a film works, we feel a nearly physical connection to the actors we are watching, as if they are playing out our own lives on screen. I like films that are messy and imperfect, that are unable to fully contain all the life going on within them. Filmmakers like Cassavetes and Loach, Fassbinder and Pialat. The plot never rules the character. The actor might at […]
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“I AM NOT A HIPSTER” | writer-director, Destin Daniel Cretton
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] One of my favorite things about directing movies is getting to highlight other people’s talents. When I was ten, I was videotaping my brother’s magic tricks and sister’s one-handed cartwheels to show-off to my parents. With this film, I got to do the same thing with a new group of friends. Last year I saw Dominic Bogart on a Chicago stage in Jersey Boys and his singing blew my mind. I also knew he had a talent for subtle, character-driven performances, so I started to think of a role […]
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“½ REVOLUTION” directors, Karim El Hakim & Omar Shargawi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 am –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Co-director Karim El Hakim: The challenge of capturing the spontaneity of life in all its hidden moments and glancing magic is why I am a filmmaker. What turns me on is exploring the time and space around me, following the individual threads of emotional energy in each of the characters I become invested in. The more intense and stressful a situation is, the more emotional the characters become. How will these emotional strings play out? How will they intertwine and conflict? How do they reflect the situation? What will […]
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Middle of Nowhere | Writer/Director Ava DuVernay
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 2:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First film I ever loved was West Side Story. My aunt Denise forced me to watch it one rainy afternoon. I had to be about 9-years-old. I was spellbound. The dancing. The romance. The brown people. I grew up in Compton, right where the city limits hug Lynwood. And for as long as I can remember, my school, my block, was predominately Latino. I remember watching that film and it changing the way I saw my schoolmates and neighbors. Seriously, I recall feeling something very specific about the […]
