Texas-based filmmaker David Lowery has been at the center of the indie scene for some time now, and not just because of his excellent 2009 directorial debut St. Nick and that film’s much lauded follow-up, the 2011 short Pioneer. Check out Lowery’s IMDB page and you’ll discover that he has worked extensively on dozens of other projects over the past few years – as editor on Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine and Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever, as cinematographer on Frank Ross’ Audrey the Trainwreck, even as sound recordist for Kentucker Audley’s Open Five. With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lowery’s […]
Though it only arrived three years ago, Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill, with its unique blend of fiction and documentary and its crisp, patient filmmaking, has already become quite an influential and well-loved piece of the micro-budget cannon. Now Porterfield has returned with I Used to Be Darker, a more formally scripted work that follows a troubled young woman (Deragh Campbell) who moves in with her aunt (Kim Taylor), uncle (Ned Oldham), and cousin (Hannah Gross) in Maryland. The film premieres today in US Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Tell me a bit about the development process for […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 20, 9:00pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] Our film wasn’t planned. As the events of Occupy Wall Street began to unfold, and Audrey [Ewell] and I decided to make a film around it, we basically went from working on other projects (our own follow-up film to Until The Light Takes Us, as well as the paying freelance work that pays our rent) to instantly being in production on an unbudgeted and risky film project that used an untested methodology to bring it to life, and that relied on the abilities and collaboration of people we’d never […]
There’s something the Sundance Film Guide didn’t tell you about Escape from Tomorrow, the first narrative feature from director Randy Moore – the film was shot guerilla style, on location, at Disney World. Seriously. A debut for the ages, Escape from Tomorrow takes viewers on a surreal journey into the mind of family man Jim Walsh on the last day of his vacation at the park. After finding out that he has been unexpectedly laid off from work, Jim’s day derails until he’s bordering on a complete mental break. This is deranged, imaginative, destabilizing filmmaking – a magical film about […]
I am continuing my quest to better understand the wild new world of films that aren’t just on your TV or in your movie theater — but those that tell stories interactively, that are native to the web, that you can carry around on your phone, and whatever else clever storytellers are dreaming up (lest we be restricted to calling it all the ugly word transmedia). So, I share with you today the stories of the POV Hackathon. POV, the incredible PBS documentary series, hosts this event for documentary filmmakers to connect with designers and developers in the tech community, […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, 11:59pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] “ The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster” – Elizabeth Bishop The word “sacrifice” bears with it an inherent quality of loss. And the word “loss” carries an inherent quality of cost, or of damage. But sometimes we are lucky enough to lose things that we were better off without. In my case, with this film, that loss was fear. My first exposure to pornography was playing hide and seek […]
The Roma, more commonly known by the derogatory term “Gypsies,” are Europe’s largest and most oppressed ethic minority. Despite being enslaved in some regions into the 19th century, Western literature, art and culture has long masked the ugly truths with the romanticized notion of the Roma as a free-spirited, nomadic people. Unfortunately these people are subjected to much crueler stereotypes in their day-to-day lives: that they are lazy, dirty, diseased and violent, uninterested in education or holding a job. Far from the truth, the Roma hope for betterment and claw desperately to break free from the cycle of poverty and […]
Palm Springs, California blossomed in the 1930s when Hollywood royalty started calling this Coachella Valley city, a couple hours drive from L.A., (second) home. It still has a sort of old-timey vibe, evidenced by the hundreds of names engraved in its downtown Walk of Stars, the majority of which faded from the collective celebrity conscious decades ago. And though the Palm Springs International Film Festival has only been around for 24 years – actually a ripe old age for an American film fest – it too feels like a throwback to another era, one in which the term “kick starter” […]
Ten minutes before Yin Mei’s “Dis/Oriented: Antonioni In China” kicked off at New York’s Asia Society on Sunday, a woman two seats to the right of me pulled out a hard-boiled egg and ate it as sustenance for the long journey ahead. “I wanted to see the film,” the egg eater complained to her friend, explaining why she’d bought a confused ticket without realizing the nature of the event, “but now it’s too late.” I had to wonder how many people had shown up thinking they were going to see the film rather than “a dance theater ‘conversation’ with the […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 19, Noon — Temple Theatre, Park City] In the spring of 2008, I read about the murder of Lawrence “Larry” King, a multiracial 15-year-old student who was reported as being gay. It was a story I just couldn’t get out of my mind. I first imagined exploring the issues in a fictional film, but once I attended a pretrial hearing for Larry’s accused murderer, Brandon McInerney, just 14-years-old, I immediately realized that a bigger story was just developing. It needed to be a documentary. So began my education as a first-time director, flying by the seat […]