Sundance Responses

“WELCOME TO THE RILEYS” | director, Jake Scott

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 2:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] Casting the film was probably the hardest series of decisions I had to make. I found that there was tremendous pressure to cast well known and very good actors who could potentially “mean more” in terms of getting the film made. You find yourself considering actors who are simply not right for the role and yet willing to risk the consequences. It was incredibly stressful but at the same time led me to consider the film in certain terms. If this was to be “my film” as director […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“THE TILLMAN STORY” | director, Amir Bar-Lev

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 3:00 pm – Temple Theatre, Park City] Here’s a challenge I faced making The Tillman Story: As a documentary filmmaker making a movie about Pat Tillman, I’m expected, of course, to get to bottom of who he really was and to leave no stone unturned in presenting his biography and character to my audience. Pat Tillman is synonymous with sacrifice and unflinching patriotic duty because it’s generally accepted that he was so moved by the events of 9/11 that he dropped everything, quit his football career, and enlisted in the Army Rangers. However the more […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“LIFECYCLES” | Matthew Moore

[New Frontier Performances and Installations] As a fourth-generation farmer, there seems to be an endless supply of crossroads while growing produce where, unlike in an editing program, you cannot undo the last 50 decisions you have made. What day to plant, how many seeds to place in a foot, how long to water, is that a weed, should I pull it? So here is a brilliant idea — how about I film that process? Hopefully the seed I placed in focus under the lens is the one that will emerge unscathed. That is how my project “lifecycles” began. Unfortunately all […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“MOTHER AND CHILD” | writer-director, Rodrigo Garcia

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 3:00 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] The hardest decision for me is offering the role to an actor. Even if it’s an actor that I admire, or have worked with before or dream of working with, or even if I’ve written the role with them in mind, the moment is traumatic. It’s the leap from the imagination to the concrete, from fantasy to reality. Plus I know that if you cast the wrong actor (and any great actor can potentially be wrong for a specific role), it’s a mistake that you never recuperate from. […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“NUUMMIOQ” | director, Otto Rosing & Torben Bech

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 11:30 am — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] There were so many factors that worked against us: the constant weather instability, sensitive technical equipment and working in a country without technical backup. This was compounded with the pressure of a constant lack of funds. At times it was like we were walking on unstable sheets of sea ice, and if we didn’t continue to go forward, we would fall through the ice sheets and drown. The next challenge was turning the material that we shot into a movie in the editing room. Listening to material and […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“LAST TRAIN HOME” | director, Lixin Fan

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 12:00 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] The most difficult decision I had in the making of Last Train Home is one that spans from shooting ground to editing room. It was at the painful moment when the crew and I witnessed the father become frustrated and hit his daughter right after they arrived at their village home before New Year’s Eve. To film or not to film? The ultimate question in documentary filmmaking was being put in front of me. In a filmmaking sense, this was a rarely intense moment, which revealed incredible personalities […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“WINTER’S BONE” | co-writer-director, Debra Granik

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 12:15 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] In Daniel Woodrell’s novel, the protagonist, Ree Dolly, has two younger brothers. We decided to cast these roles in Missouri and held auditions during preproduction. We were excited to find Isaiah Stone for the part of the older boy, Sonny, but we struggled to cast the younger boy. We auditioned a lot of boys, and then paired different boys with each other. We thought we were getting close, but something was holding me back. The boys we were moving toward were not from the rural areas in which […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010 Sundance Responses
“THE OATH” | director, Laura Poitras

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 9:30 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] There is a scene in The Oath when I ask Abu Jandal if he would have participated in the 9/11 attacks if Osama bin Laden had asked him to participate. He answered my question (I don’t want to reveal his response), and the next day he asked me to delete it. I decided to include both his answer and his request to delete it in the film. In the process of editing the film, we held work-in-progress screenings and some people questioned the ethics of including his answer […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“SPLICE” | co-writer-director, Vincenzo Natali

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 11:59 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] With any independent film there is a point where limited budget requires hacking off a limb or two to get to the finish line. But in the case of Splice, which stars a humanoid creature, there was a price tag associated with removing body parts (it was a costly special effect). Much of my time in post was spent deciding what visual effects shots could be deleted to lower the budget. At the time it felt like death from a thousand cuts, but as is often the case […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses
“SINS OF MY FATHER” | director, Nicolas Entel

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 9:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] My biggest challenge was daring to make this documentary, which from the very beginning was almost an impossible idea. On one hand, we set out to retell Pablo Escobar’s story, not as yet another gangster film, which it isn’t despite popular perception, but as an intricate political thriller. On the other hand, we challenged the longstanding belief in Colombia that violence and hate pass from generation to generation. The intellectual challenges behind these two ideas were actually more difficult than getting Escobar’s son back into Colombia […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010 Sundance Responses

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