Here’s the last of our profiles of volunteers at the Sundance Film Festival. Today, Utah local Christine Ioannides. Visit this spot next week for an interview between Robert Redford and Kenneth Cole discussing the relationship between volunteerism and film festivals.
Known for his stunning 1998 documentary, Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, as well as countless music videos for musicians including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Sonic Youth, and Dirty Three, director Braden King arrives at Sundance in Dramatic Competition with HERE. Set in Armenia — and in many ways starring Armenia — HERE is a love story camouflaged as a road movie, or perhaps it’s the other way around. The atmospheric film follows Gadarine and Will (played by Lubna Azabal and Ben Foster), an Armenian art photographer and an American satellite-mapping engineer, from the exact moment they notice each […]
While introducing a screening one afternoon this week in the Treasure Mountain Inn’s cramped banquet hall that the Slamdance Film Festival converts into its main cinema every year, Slamdance Co-Founder and expert hat-wearer Dan Mirvish remarked with a bit of awe that this was the 17th annual event, meaning that Slamdance, once referred to pejoratively as Sundance’s “parasite” by Robert Redford, had now been around for over half Sundance’s life span. Continuing, Mirvish claimed that “about a third” of the participants in Sundance’s 2011 lineup were Slamdance alumni. “The inmates have taken over the asylum,” Mirvish joked. Someone sitting behind me […]
As part of our spotlight on volunteerism with Kenneth Cole, here we profile Rhys Southan, who’s working this year to help the Sundance Film Festival’s jury members.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Wednesday, Jan. 26, 9:30 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest surprise was that I could pull it off, spend some of my own cash, raise the rest and fucking do it — under a million, 18 days, no compromise. I’ve never been happier.
Good things come to those who wait, as writer-director Megan Griffiths will attest. The debut feature from the Seattle-based filmmaker, The Off-Hours, was seven years in the making before it finally went into production last spring. Inspired by Griffiths’ own experiences working the night shift, this moody, atmospheric indie captures the lives of the people who frequent a diner in a nowhere truckstop town, including pretty young waitress Francine (Amy Seimetz), her foster brother Corey (Scoot McNairy), soft-spoken truck driver Oliver (Ross Partridge), and alcoholic diner owner Stu (Tony Doupe). There are also cameos from fellow directors Lynn Shelton (whose […]
Fresh off the whirlwind opening weekend of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, here are my admittedly skewed impressions of this year’s cinema extravaganza — which seemed queerer than ever despite (or perhaps because of) my being unable to see many of the LGBT films on view. Fear not. I have a well-developed facility for chiming in relevant commentary on films I’ve never seen, and at least one worthy observation on the presentation of the LGBT films at this notoriously queer “straight” festival. So here from the perch of January is a glimpse at the queer year in film ahead. On […]
Vilmos Zsigmond, the Oscar-winning cinematographer of such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Sugarland Express and The Long Goodbye, dropped by unexpectedly to discusses his work and a special screening of Summer Children at Slamdance. Here is the uncut footage. Shot by Jamie Stuart.
As part of our spotlight on volunteerism with Kenneth Cole, here we profile Brenda Berliner, who is volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival this year in the press office.
2010 was a big year for Michael Mohan. His first feature, One Too Many Mornings, premiered at Sundance (and can now be watched – in its entirety – on Hulu). He directed a music video for Fitz and the Tantrums that was blogged about by Justin Timberlake (no, really). And one year later he returns to Park City with a short film, Ex-Sex. Mohan’s short about ex’s hooking up is gorgeous to look at, totally relatable, and so pitch-perfect in its bitter-sweetness that the only logical question would be: Couldn’t you make it as a feature? Please? Characters […]