[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 12:15 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest surprise is how the movie began, and how it ended. We started with no money, a basic treatment and a Sony EX3. I didn’t really care about getting all my ducks in a row before starting. We just started. Brit Marling, Morgan Marling (her sister), Liang (my friend from China) and I went to Connecticut where I grew up and we set out to make this epic indie minimalist science fiction drama. On the first day, Brit came back from a run in the morning and told us […]
Michael Tully began his career with a flurry, getting selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2006 on the back of his debut feature Cocaine Angel, and then following it up the next year with Silver Jew, a documentary about Silver Jews frontman David Berman. In the years since, Tully has stayed active, shooting Mary Bronstein’s Yeast, acting in a handful of movies by fellow Generation DIY peers, including Aaron Katz’s Quiet City and Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me, and editing the indie film website Hammer to Nail. But, in terms of new films, he has […]
Since Joe Swanberg’s first feature film, Kissing on the Mouth, premiered at SXSW in 2005, he’s managed to make at least a feature a year, multiple web-series, and found regular launch-pads at SXSW and IFC Films. When Swanberg directs a film, he really functions as a craftsman of the entire work: while he eschews screenplays in favor of improvisation, he works as cinematographer, editor, and usually acts in the film. As the nexus of a low-budget film movement stressing honesty, stories chronicling the lives of people in their twenties, and improvisation (this movement begins with an “M,” ends with “core,” […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 11:30 am — Library Center Theatre] The biggest surprise for me as I made this movie was how satisfying an experience it was working with my cast. I was very happy about who we had cast, but I didn’t know them beyond their previous work, and in some cases a meeting or two. As the production started coming together I was comfortable with how most aspects of the movie were shaping up: I knew what the challenges were going to be, and I had a firm grasp of what I was going for. The great […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 12:00 pm — Eccles Theatre] There was a steady drumbeat of “gotchas” on the Higher Ground adventure. From my Clearblue Easy stick test reading “positive” at the same time as financing magically appeared, and then hurdling through preproduction before my baby bump emerged, to our first day when the catering guy stole our craft-service food. He just didn’t company move when we did. Or rather he did, but in the opposite direction. Higher Ground was infested with shockers. However, I’d have to say the biggest startle in all the process for me personally… was editing. […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 22, 11:59 pm — Egyptian Theatre] I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but our cast and crew threw themselves into the idea about making a movie with Satanic elements and potentially dangerous situations — there was sheer joy in the faces of crew members when they were asked to go into a parking lot, draw a pentagram with gasoline and light it on fire. Throwing risk factors into the production only seemed to make everyone anticipate the days with more enthusiasm: “Let’s take all of your borrowed expensive electronic equipment, put it in a boat […]
For many people, making a film seems like an impossibility. However, for those who do get their first feature in the bag, there’s no guarantee that making a second will be any easier. Todd Rohal is a case in point. He attracted buzz for his debut, The Guatemalan Handshake, which won Best Film at Slamdance in 2006 and earned him a spot on Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces list that same year. However the success of Handshake, a beautiful and stunningly original cinematic vision which Rohal describes as a hybrid of Kentucky Fried Movie and Days of Heaven, did not directly […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 22, 8:30 pm — Library Centre Theatre] “Surprises,” wow. There were many in developing the story. Discovering this unique sport of women’s powerlifting and how big it is in South Texas was a wonderful surprise for us. We also had no idea that Texas had a mandatory and competitive “One Act” theater arts program. That program gave us an opportunity to survey a broad range of teenager talent, but more importantly, it is turning out graduates who are truly interested in storytelling and were eager to get involved in either script workshops or actual production. As […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] Making The Bengali Detective was an incredibly intense period of filmmaking. I and my small team had no idea where our detective and his investigations would lead us. Each client brought their own revelations and twisting storyline. We had a central character die during the production, a subject who discovered her husband was sleeping with her brother’s wife. There was a poor grieving mother who then became a suspect in a triple murder case. And our hero detective turned up one day to greet us in a silver-and-gold […]
I was about half way through my monster preview of this year’s Sundance Film Festival when I stopped. There’s just an awful lot I’m looking forward to this year — way more than I’m able practically to see and perhaps more than you want to read about. Also, I was having a hard time writing about the individual films because, in many cases, I know too much about them. There are a ton of “25 New Faces” in the fest, people we’ve been following for years. Several filmmakers who went through the IFP’s Narrative Lab, of which I’m a part, […]