When Danish Zentropa director Mads Brugger decided to take himself and two Korean-Danish comedians to North Korea under the guise of a fake comedy project, he employed what he thought might be the magic word for repressive regimes seeking international image burnishing: “cultural exchange.” The film opens with a shot of Brugger, lying on a hotel bed, calmly reading Kim Jong-Il’s official Instruction Manual for Film Directing. The secret police who watched this footage every night apparently had no objection. What they somehow did not expect or anticipate was that Brugger would one day turn this footage into a feature […]
This is the fifth of our posts from guest blogger Ron Simons, who produced Tanya Hamilton’s Sundance Competition film Night Catches Us. Scroll back through the blog for his earlier entries. I’ve finally transitioned into the cooler, calmer phase of the festival. The weather is warmer and the snow is starting to melt (including the gargantuan stalactites hanging from the roof edges of about town). No more press interviews in backrooms of galleries, TV studios or revamped office spaces. Gone are the paparazzi blocking traffic to get the best shot of Ben Affleck, Ryan Gosling or Paris Hilton. Exit the […]
When I was asked by The Huffington Post to comment on New York movies premiering in Sundance, the first film that popped into my mind was Josh and Bennie Safdie’s Daddy Longlegs. Now, as you may know, I’m a big fan of the Safdie brothers, selecting Josh for our 25 New Faces for the film he directed, The Pleasure of Being Robbed in 2008. That picture is a delightfully freewheeling romance of sorts involving a young woman, played with depth and originality by Eleonore Hendricks, who casually steals, not out of maliciousness or for greed but simply because of a […]
I took a break from Sundance coverage to follow the Apple iPad announcement on Twitter and to check out Engadget’s live stream. For all the talk about the iPad (which some consider to be an unfortunate name…) saving old media and print, the focus of Steve Jobs’s presentation was solidly on the device as a large-screen multi-media device. Games from Electronic Arts were unveiled, a YouTube HD native app was demo’d and new versions of iTunes and IWorks showed scaled-up, enhanced versions of those apps. (Filmmakers, take note of all of this…) And, yes, in the middle of the presentation […]
As a history lesson, Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s enthralling new documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, is as solid as a textbook, stitching together old broadcast footage, first-person testimony, tart excerpts from the Nixon White House tapes, and noirish recreations into riveting, revelatory political drama. The name “Daniel Ellsberg” probably doesn’t trigger the same flurry of associations as Deep Throat, the shadowy antihero of the Watergate scandal, but it should: An ex-Marine, former assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and highly respected analyst at the Rand Corporation, Ellsberg leaked a […]
Galt Niederhoffer is no stranger to Sundance, having produced films that won awards there beginning in 1997, when Morgan J. Freeman’s Hurricane Streets won the Audience Award. As a founding member of Plum Pictures, one of New York’s most active independent film production companies, she has produced over a dozen films, including Grace is Gone, Dedication, Prozac Nation, Lonesome Jim, The Winning Season, The Baxter and After.Life. Niederhoffer grew up in New York, one of six daughters of a squash champion-turned-hedge fund maverick, in a rambling, eccentrically decorated house. In her first novel, A Taxonomy of Barnacles, Niederhoffer may have […]
Here is Night Catches Us producer Ron Simons’ fourth post from Sundance. January 24th was a good day. I finally got to have in-person conversations with two of the powerhouses of the Sundance Institute: Michelle Satter and Anne Lai (both of whom have been crucial in making this film come into being). They’d both fielded worried, stressed, beseeching calls from Sean, Tanya and myself. They were ever supportive with sage advice administered with calming tones and gracious patience. I also got to meet a number of other filmmakers at the Producer’s Brunch. The key note speaker was Lynette Howell, who […]
Here’s the second of the New Breed videos discussing the current and future states of distribution. From the makers: Filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah of Sabi Pictures arrive at Park City with an intent to define the questions most relevant to independent distribution options. Insights from Brian Newman, Dan Mirvish, Jon Reiss and Ira Deutchman open a path toward discovering some real solutions. NEW BREED PARK CITY – Discovering the Questions from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo.
Producer Ron Simons has been blogging from Sundance about his trip there with his first film, Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us. Scroll back through the blog for his earlier posts. Night Catches Us has premiered! The last two days have been a symphony of interviews and press meetings. The day of the premiere our PR firm (Fatdot — a great PR firm by the way!) shuffled Tanya (our director) and me off to TV interviews, photo shoots and a taping for the Sundance Channel, among others. We’d wanted to include my producing partner Sean Costello in these activities but all […]
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.