Think of this post as a scrawled line on a notebook separating notes you made a year ago with notes you are making today… SXSW ’10 coverage starts here (i.e., look above). If you want to see what we posted about last year’s festival, scroll below.
When I taught the IFP Rough Cut Lab a while ago, one of the most intriguing projects was Chris Bower‘s Moon Europa, an idiosyncratic sci-fi drama with green overtones. Bower is still at work on the feature, which will shoot this summer, but for now check out Solatrium, which plays at Slamdance on the 22nd and the 28th. The filmmaker describes the film as the “story of Bria Living, a female astronaut who attempts to cure her regret and ennui by abusing her medication Solatrium. Little does she know she is a test subject for the Nevco Corporation who is […]
[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 […]
[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 […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 11:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] 7 Days (director, Daniel Grou) To show or not the murdered girl on screen. One of the reasons it was difficult was because in order to show her, I had to figure out how she would look. In other words, what the murderer/rapist had done to her. It troubled and pained me to go there. Also, I was concerned with the impact the image would have on the viewer. I wanted it to be a shocking, upsetting image. A disturbing one. I was worried that it might […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 9:00 pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] Finding locations with no budget was by far the hardest thing we had to do. There are two specific examples that I think are interesting: We had a one-page scene that took place in an operating room. Finding an actual operating room was impossible so the decision became do we change the scene or do we fake the location? In the end our brilliant production designers Ryan Kravetz and Eunice Bae dressed a corner of a room with a few boxes of medical-looking equipment, hung a curtain […]
[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 […]
The filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman work together in New York as Supermarche, and are prolific producers of music videos, commercials and feature films (Opus Jazz: NY Export, premiering on PBS this Spring, is their latest.) They also share an office with Schulman’s younger brother, Yaniv. One day Yaniv got an email from an eight-year-old girl who wanted to paint a picture of one of his photographs (a production still from Opus Jazz that had run in the newspaper.) Egged on by his brother and Henry, Yaniv said yes, and instigated an intense correspondence not only with the girl […]
Producer Ron Simons is blogging from Sundance with his first feature, Tanya Hamilton’s Competition title, Night Catches Us (pictured). Here’s his second post. Well I am here! The journey was not without its complications, but I’m here. While the flight to SLC was not delayed (actually arrived 15 minutes early), there were a number of disgruntled passengers sharing the flight with me. While I was uncomfortably sleeping (having slept only an hour and a half last night due to packing), another poor soul was suffering across the aisle from me. Apparently the gray haired gentleman boarded the non-stop from JFK […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] The summer decision to actually get started, to set the date for Homewrecker, was the most difficult on this project, so we did the only responsible thing: We had somebody else make it. Another project that seemed to be on the verge of total funding fell through for us in June. On June 25, we met and had the same conversation we’ve had each summer for years: Are we or are we not going to make a movie this summer? A childhood friend in Singapore, Todd McDonald, […]