Sundance Responses
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“OLSO, AUGUST 31st ” | writer-director Joachim Trier
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] How can you express thought in film? How can we specifically show thoughts in a character? As a director, in my view, the most personal is how you see things. My co-writer Eskil Vogt and I wanted to explore how to create a story that focuses on the emotional, and almost physical, experience of an existential crisis. “I’m lost. How do I move forward?” So Oslo, August 31st is about the state of being lost and that particular loneliness that accompanies it. Cinema is a wonderful art form […]
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“THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID” | director, Carrie Preston
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 5:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Since I was a kid, I wanted to put on shows. I would make my little sister do skits with me that I had written, and I even started my own theater company in my neighborhood when I was 12, directing all the neighborhood kids in our front yards. I was dead serious about my make believe. When I was acting, I would disappear and get lost in someone else’s skin, yet at the same time, I never felt more present in my own. That’s the same way […]
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“THE LAW IN THESE PARTS” | director, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 3:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] My new film, The Law in These Parts chronicles the legal mechanism created around Israel’s 44-year military occupation of the Palestinian people. It is a film which explores something theoretically there for people to see, but that is completely hidden from society’s eye. The film’s raw materials are laws, verdicts, appeals – some of the driest and least appealing materials that exist. The effort to bring this material to life and create cinema around it was the most complicated task I have ever taken upon myself. When I discussed […]
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“THE D WORD: UNDERSTANDING DYSLEXIA” | director, James Redford
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] As a storyteller, I suppose I have that spark that makes me think that I might touch people, and the power of film is exponential in that regard. It is not just ideas, images, words and sound. It is all of these things simultaneously, and therefore the sum is much greater than the parts. I also happen to love production. Yes, it’s too rare. It’s chaotic and things go wrong. But it is exciting as hell to solve problems if you work with good people like I do. It […]
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Your Sister’s Sister | Writer/Director Lynn Shelton
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 8:30 am –Library Center Theatre, Park City] In 2005, on the set of We Go Way Back (my first feature film as writer/director), I remember having the distinct feeling that I’d finally found what I was always meant to do. It was an electrifying and completely transformative revelation. As far back as I can remember I always knew I wanted to be an artist. Finding myself smitten with nearly every creative medium in existence probably made the fact that I ended up deeply exploring a variety of them before settling on narrative filmmaking unavoidable. I […]
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“ESCAPE FIRE” | director, Matthew Heineman
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 11:30 am –Library Center Theatre, Park City] I believe that documentary film has the ability to motivate, to inspire, and to help bring clarity to complicated issues in a way that other media cannot. Much of the traditional media attention on healthcare has focused on the partisan politics in our nation’s Capitol—from the contentious passage of the Affordable Care Act to the ongoing polarized debate about its impact. There have been countless articles, news stories, blog posts, and tweets about this topic. And everybody in America, whether they like it or not, has been affected […]
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“ABOUT THE PINK SKY” | writer-director, Keiichi Kobayashi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 3:00 pm –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? I was working on a TV show in Japan and was busy working insane hours everyday, when one night Akira Kurosawa came to me in a dream. He said, “Is there a reason for that particular shot? You need to watch my films more!” The next day, I turned on the TV and they were announcing Kurosawa’s death. I thought it must be a sign from heaven. Since then, I’ve been storing up all the strength, will and energy I need to make films. And now that […]
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“FILLY BROWN” | directors, Michael Olmos & Youssef Delara
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] Michael Olmos: For me, being a filmmaker – an explorer of stories – is about discovery and finding connections. Of recreating that magical life altering feeling you get when something that you where never aware of, suddenly enters your conscious mind, and completely rewires you – it is an all encompassing experience. It can happen on an emotional level or intellectual level, and it often causes a physical response – you cry, laugh, bend over in pain, whatever. Sometimes these discoveries where right in front of you, but […]
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“BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS” | director, Fredrik Gertten
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 8:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? Do we really choose professions? I have done many different things in my life, from hard labor at a shipyard to starting up a musicians co-op record company. I worked as a journalist for years and had a weekly column in a daily in Southern Sweden/ I also worked as foreign correspondent for national radio, newspapers and magazines and hosted a TV show on the swedish king Charles XII and Tzar Peter the Great set in […]
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“ROBOT AND FRANK” | director, Jake Schreier
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:30 pm –Rose Wagner Performing Arts center, SLC] I got into film because I was spectacularly mediocre at everything else. I loved art and performance, but wasn’t much of an actor, was a pretty bad keyboard player and couldn’t draw at all. When I got to try out filmmaking at an NYU summer high school program, it was the first time where the things I made vaguely resembled the ideas I had in my head. That doesn’t really explain why Robot & Frank had to be a film, except that in my hands it would […]
