During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? While I was at Standing Rock I had the privilege to stay in the Oceti Sakowin camp and be part of a community aligned to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. And through it all there seemed to be an overarching narrative that the media hooked into. It usurped everything else. Wherever you turned you would hear about the violence and the chaos of state-led oppression against “protestors.” […]
Writer/director/actor Marianna Palka has appeared at Sundance to present a feature (2008’s Good Dick), a documentary short (2014’s The Lion’s Mouth Opens) and to serve as a Sloan Juror. She returns to Park City in 2017 with Bitch, her surreal new film on the crumbling of a nuclear family. Palka hired DP Armando Salas to shoot the film, which stars Jason Ritter, Jaime King and Palka herself. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Salas spoke with Filmmaker about the film’s seriocomic tone, visual influences and its toughest scene to shoot. The film will screen four times at Sundance this year. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind […]
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? The development of Fucking Bunnies took almost two years. In every step of the way we needed to assure the funders (Finnish Film Foundation and Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE) again and again that we’re doing something really worth doing and seeing. The theme of xenophobia had been there right from the start, but in the beginning the script had more emphasis on the sexual stuff – which […]
Five years ago, Michelle Morgan made her Sundance debut with the short film K.I.T. She returns to the festival in 2017 as the writer, director and star of her first feature, L.A. Times, a romantic comedy where she plays alongside Jorma Taccone of Lonely Island fame. Morgan hired Nicholas Wiesnet, a DP known primarily for documentary and short film work, to shoot the picture. Below, Wiesnet discusses how he got the job, why he shot the film in anamorphic widescreen and his approach to lighting and blocking comedy. L.A. Times will screen six times during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? For the past several years, while I worked to raise money for this film, it seemed like most folks in the documentary film world, the gatekeepers as they are, were not particularly interested in a sympathetic, even loving portrait of white male tobacco farmers from the rural south. I found a few lone advocates, and for those people, I am very grateful as they encouraged me more […]
Over the next ten days, the Sundance Film Festival will screen 113 feature films, and tens of thousands of people descend on the small town of Park City, Utah. Included in those crowds are the crewmembers from all over the world that made those 113 movies possible. While directors with projects premiering at Sundance are flown out to Utah by distributors or financiers, many crewmembers who worked tirelessly and often for very little money wind up paying their own way to the festival in order to support their own films. It’s an expensive trip, and they may wind up without […]
Three years ago, writer/director Gillian Robespierre premiered Obvious Child at Sundance to much acclaim. The film would go on to earn more than $3 million at the domestic box office, making it one of the bigger titles to emerge from Sundance 2014. Robespierre returns to the festival in 2017 with Landline, which reunites her with lead actor Jenny Slate and DP Chris Teague. Set in 1990s New York, Landline is a seriocomic portrait of a family in flux. Below, Teague discusses shooting in NYC apartments, the influence of ’70s American cinema on Landline and recreating the Village Halloween Parade on a small budget. Filmmaker: How and […]
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Green Berets refer to themselves as “The Quiet Professionals,” and see themselves as a breed apart from more boastful units of the Special Forces, like SEAL Team Six, with their lucrative book deals and pumped-up war stories. So the biggest challenge on this production was simply convincing these guys that now was the time to finally open and reveal themselves – and not as stereotypical super-human war […]
Each year Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see past years’ questions and responses, click here.) This year, our question involves an issue cutting across all the political drama of the last year: communication. How do we really communicate to one another, to converse despite our differences? How do we step outside of our echo chambers so we’re not just trading slogans among our friends? On a filmmaking level, how do we make sure that problems of communication don’t cripple our visions or limit their reach? This year’s question: During its development, production or eventual distribution, what […]
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? The original challenge of communicating in the development of the film was making the financiers understand what I was actually doing. There was a lot of talk about “refugee films” which my film is not. It seems that people, financiers and producers do have a tendency to “label” projects, and this can be challenging in the financing phase of a film. At least sometimes it slows things […]