Sundance Responses
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Newlyweeds | Director Shaka King
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 11:30am — Prospector Square Theatre] Making a movie, you’re expected to sacrifice sleep and if you’re fortunate enough to have one, a life…for a time. Even sanity, some say. But in the context of making this film, I prefer to think of sacrifice in the vein of sacrificing a chicken or a goat to a spirit. Sacrificial sacrifice. For something magical you could never understand. Because making this film was that for me. There were no “Damn, I wish I was doing something else” days. I didn’t get sick. I wasn’t at war with a lover. It […]
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Austenland | Director Jerusha Hess
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 12:15pm — Eccles Theatre] It’s funny, just getting a moment to address this interview question is a small sacrifice. It’s Christmastime, my kids are out of school and wild beyond reason, my husband just got back from a long work trip (making said kids wild), there are neighborhood Christmas gifts piled all over the house, a birthday party to throw together tonight, a possible baby to adopt, and a dog to bathe….sacrifice….isn’t that a synonym with motherhood already. So when asked what I sacrificed to make Austenland — it’s obvious to everyone who saw my kids that […]
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Escape From Tomorrow | Director Randy Moore
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 5:30pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Being a first time filmmaker is a strange labor. You don’t know anything, but you need to act like you do. In order for this to work, you really have to sacrifice that rational part of your thinking and lie, like Demi Moore’s character in the movie Indecent Proposal. You might even say, “It’s just my body… it’s not my mind,” but you know that that’s not true! The whole world thinks you’re completely insane, and it’s nearly impossible to convince them otherwise. After our first preview screening, […]
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God Loves Uganda | Director Roger Ross Williams
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 11:30am — Library Center Theatre, Park City] Films don’t compromise. They don’t sacrifice. Directors do. That’s something I’ve always believed — but it was only on God Loves Uganda that I’ve had to confront that conviction, and act on it in a way that put my life in danger. While shooting in Uganda in 2010, the conservative evangelical pastors I was filming — the most ardent supporters of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill — discovered that I myself am gay. One began circulating emails suggesting that I be killed. I left the country immediately, and hoped […]
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Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes | Director Francesca Gregorini
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 5:30pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] Film is a child; full of potential and yet utterly helpless and destined to die without your intimate care, vigilant eye, and tireless guidance. It just doesn’t end. Even when you think it has, it just plain hasn’t. It’s hungry all the time. Crying, seemingly for no good reason and often for very good reasons. Its needs are boundless, in both a rudimentary and an existential way. Even when it’s fully grown, you’ve done your job, it’s out the door, found a home of it’s own… it still knows […]
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Pandora’s Promise | Director Robert Stone
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 2:30pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Any sacrifice here has been borne entirely by my wife and kids for tolerating my long hours and frequent absences. I think anybody who’s fortunate enough to get to make a movie, let alone get that movie into Sundance, would be hard pressed to frame that as a sacrifice — unless of course someone was harmed in the process. Sundance Responses 2013
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The Summit | Producer/Director Nick Ryan
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 9:00am — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] It is sometimes all too easy to forget the reality when you spend so long examining the facts and details of a story. We can become immune to the horrific truth of the events. So it is important to remember that in telling this story, 11 people died, leaving behind families and friends, and perhaps that is the greatest sacrifice in telling this complex and compelling narrative. For those who had to relive the memories of the traumatic events, there is a huge element of sacrifice, in giving their […]
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The Sundance Question: What Did You Sacrifice to Make Your Film?
Each year, Filmmaker asks the Sundance Film Festival feature directors a question about their filmmaking process. We then compile any and all of the directors’ feedback and bring it to our readers courtesy of our “Sundance Responses.” This year we asked: “What did you sacrifice to make your film? Or, did your film itself have to make a significant sacrifice in order to be produced? And, looking back, how do you value that sacrifice now?” We’ll upload the responses individually, the day of each film’s premiere. So, as the festival progresses, click the links below. The Sundance Film Festival is being […]
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“THE WORDS” | directors Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 27 6:30 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City] There are so many reasons why we chose film as our medium to tell stories. The fact is we’re children of our culture (how could we not be?) a culture of the mash up: of so many forms of expression constantly mixing and intertwining in all of our daily lives. Well, film is the only medium where you get to combine so many of these forms of expression simultaneously: literature, music, photography, visual art and theater, all in your own unique way to create a singular vision that can […]
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“CALIFORNIA SOLO” | director, Marshall Lewy
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Wednesday, January 25 9:45 pm –EcclesTheatre, Park City] I remember watching the end of Hannah and her Sisters as a teenager, when Woody Allen finds out he’s not going to die from a terminal illness and then fails at a suicide attempt. How does he find the will to live again? He walks past a theater where a Marx Brothers comedy is playing, he slips in and loses himself in the magic of Duck Soup, and all his problems melt away. Of course, right? I mean, what better way for a person to celebrate life than to go […]
