Sundance Responses

“IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT | director, Marshall Curry

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre] The making of this film has been a series of surprises. The first surprise hit when my wife came home from work and said that four federal agents had come into her office that day and arrested one of her employees. He was accused of burning down two timber facilities in Oregon four years earlier when he was part of the Earth Liberation Front, and if found guilty, he would go to prison for the rest of his life with no chance of parole. That seemed like a surprising sentence […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“LOST KISSES” | co-writer-director, Robert Torre

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:00 pm — Broadway Centre Cinemas VI] Actually, a surprise occurred right after I finished shooting. Lost Kisses storyline is about a girl who can apparently speak to the Madonna, so I had been dealing with actors playing characters asking for miracles. Two or three weeks after we finished, a sort of a black liquid started to came out of the bark of a tree in Librino, the place we shot the film. People believed that it was Madonna’ s tear drops and started to go on pilgrimage to that tree. You can even watch […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“SENNA” | director, Asif Kapadia

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] The biggest surprise with Senna has been the reaction from audiences who have never heard of Ayrton Senna before: people who have no interest in sports, who literally run from the house if motor racing is on. I wanted our film to appeal to exactly those people, but to actually have them respond in such a positive way has been wonderful. Friends of mine, who detest sport of all kinds, who couldn’t understand why I wanted to make this film, have been in touch after seeing Senna and […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“HERE” | co-writer-director, Braden King

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 5:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] Looking back, the process of creating Here, which is ultimately a pretty romantic, landscape-obsessed road movie, was probably about as close you can get to some kind of Fitzcarraldo or Heart of Darkness experience anymore. I suppose I’m surprised that the finished film doesn’t seem to reflect that more. There are no massive battle sequences in the film; I didn’t get to play with any pyrotechnics (damn it), but Here was the first American feature film ever to shoot in Armenia. That provided fantastic advantages and disadvantages: unimaginable challenges, […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED” | director, Jim Kohlberg

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:30 pm — Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City] The most surprising thing for me about the film is the old cliché: that it got made at all. But not for the old clichéd reasons. When my friend sent me the script, and after I fell in love with it, I looked at it with my produceorial hat on and felt certain it would never get made. First, it was in a studio’s library and had been for more than 10 years, and most importantly, the incredible soundtrack from some of the best […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“THE TROLL HUNTER” | writer-director, Andre Ovredal

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 6:00 pm — Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City] I quit getting surprised at what happens during the making of a film a long time ago. On Troll Hunter, I cast well, so I knew the acting was going to be good. I chose the best d.p., so I knew it was going to look right. I had the right producers, so I knew we were going to make the right priorities. I trust my own and my team’s abilities to do good VFX work, so I knew the trolls were going to be cool. I […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“THE LAST MOUNTAIN” | co-writer-director, Bill Haney

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 5:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre] Almost 30 years ago I began my professional life as an inventor, and the first device I worked on was a system for reducing the air-pollution effects caused by burning coal. So when I began work on The Last Mountain, a tale about the struggles of a small community fighting against dominant power of a local coal-mining operation, I was sure I understood the dust-smeared consequences of burning coal. But at every turn I was surprised, at the scale and scope of the coal industry’s black smudged paw across […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“BUCK” | director, Cindy Meehl

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 2:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] What I have found most surprising about my film Buck is how it appears to affect people in so many different ways. As I started this journey to tell Buck’s story, I thought it would be about changing people’s perceptions about how they treat and train horses, as well as how to deal with life’s difficulties with a bit of cowboy wisdom. However as the film was completed and we started test screening it for a wide cross section of friends and associates, I was pleasantly surprised that we […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011 Sundance Responses
“The Green Wave” | writer-director, Ali Samadi Ahadi

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] Well the biggest surprise was, that it worked out! Really! Just imagine: Our goal was to make a film about a country we were not able to travel to anymore, about an event which had taken place in the past. Without having proper footage, we decided to produce 42 minutes of animation and mix them with real footage we got from 250 different cameras and cell phones. And all of that, from financing to finalizing the film within 10 months! That is a challenge I would say. And […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011 Sundance Responses
“THE SALESMAN” | writer-director, Sebastien Pilote

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Before I started to shoot my first feature, my experience had been working alone or with a very small crew, two or three people — that’s all. That was the key that gave me the versatility and more importantly, the freedom I need when I shoot, because I like to switch quickly to get the unknown, to go for the unscripted… to react fast for the bonus that cinema gives more often then we think. So I was worried and a little anxious about how I would react when working […]

By Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011 Sundance Responses

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