[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision was whether to bring in a narrator or try and let Benazir tell the story through her own words. The easy way out would have been a narrator, but since Benazir was such a public figure from such an early age we decided to piece her life together in her own words, keeping her alive not only by virtue of the documentary but in the documentary itself. We had a stroke of good fortune when producer Mark Siegel remembered the existence of interview tapes from […]
“Independent filmmakers have always been very good about making their films, but they’ve had to rely on other outside advice [with regards to distribution],” said filmmaker and Slamdance founder Paul Rachman at the Filmmaker Summit, a Saturday-morning confab here at Park City hosted by Slamdance and the Open Video Alliance. Indeed, with the collapse of traditional acquisitions-based models for independents and the flourishing of DIY strategies and new platforms, perhaps the largest growth business in independent film right now is in seminars and conferences devoted to its future. This one condensed a lot of thought from some of the key […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 8:30 pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] The single biggest decision I was faced with during the making of Climate Refugees literally happened on the first day. Was it possible to make a documentary film about climate change that would be politically bipartisan? I wanted to create a film that would play to both sides of the aisle. To me, I saw climate change as a metaphor in which a woman is swimming in the ocean. She is attacked by a shark. She is barely able to swim to shore. Two men see the […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 6:30 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Women Without Men was my first feature-length film, so numerous challenges had to be faced throughout the process of its making. First of all I’m a visual artist — a photographer and a video artist — so I had never written a script or had worked with a producer, professional actors, or a large crew before. Also the film was based on a well-known novel by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur. This novel was written in a style of magic realism, an extremely difficult piece of literature to readapt […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 6:00 pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] There were a couple of reshoots during production, most of which were short and painless. But after we shot a pretty complicated scene at a time-sensitive location, I watched the footage on the camera in my car while the cast and crew went and got dinner, and I knew that the scene was unusable. So I had to go meet up with everyone, who were so relieved to be done with such a tricky scene, and tell them that we had to do it all over. The […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 5:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] The hardest decision I made on this film was mustering the courage to deconstruct my film completely in postproduction. I don’t know if other directors had similar experiences with their films, but when I first pieced Night Catches Us together, while I was pleased with it, it no longer felt as creative as I’d hoped. Something was missing — though I couldn’t determine what. At first I was too overwhelmed and exhausted to confront the problem, let alone address the ways I needed to fix it. But eventually, […]
New Frontier Performances and Installations [PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 6:30 pm — New Frontier on Main, Park City] One of the most difficult things that has come up in my projects over and over is the casting. For different reasons, many of my projects have never included the original intended cast I had in mind. I have learned to be open to this, but at the same time I have to wonder if I compromised my original vision or maybe the universe has a plan of its own. Either way I’ve learned from the experiences and hope that I […]
[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 […]
[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 […]
Here is the first of the New Breed video reports realized this year in collaboration with Filmmaker and The Workbook Project. This one’s an open discussion between Lance Weiler, Peter Baxter, Saskia Wilson-Brown, Brian Newman and Paul Rachman just prior to Slamdance and the Open Video Alliance’s Filmmaker Summit in Park City, which starts in just a little more than an hour. If you’re not in town you can stream the summit here. NEW BREED PARK CITY – AN OPEN DISCUSSION from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo. For Filmmaker‘s complete Sundance coverage, visit our special Sundance section.