Documentary
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“DIRT! THE MOVIE” co-director, Gene Rosow
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 19, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] We set out to make a feature-length documentary DIRT! The Movie inspired by the book Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth written by William Bryant Logan. When we started out on this project we were thinking of either a four-part television series or a feature-length documentary for theatrical release. We could either explore the subject as a topic as the book had done, or with a more traditional film narrative — in our case, telling the story of dirt and humans from dirt’s point of view. My […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2009 -
CROSSING OVER: LOUIS PSIHOYOS By Alicia Van Couvering
Unlike other films playing in our three-part look at crossover artists at Sundance, The Cove is not playing in New Frontier, but in the Documentary Competition, and that’s despite its director’s non-traditional background. Louie Psihoyos was one of the world’s top-ranked photographers, a staff member at National Geographic who had traveled the world taking portraits of the world’s most famous people and abstract concepts (you try photographing “science.”) He was also an avid diver who witnessed year by year the physical destruction of the world’s oceans. He and his friend Jim Clarke, founder of Netscape and WebMD, decided to form […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2009 -
“CRUDE” director, Joe Berlinger
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 18, 6:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] As someone who believes in making non-fiction feature films for the big screen, Crude is in many ways a reaction against some of the forces affecting cinema today. From a craft standpoint, Crude is steeped in the traditions of cinema vérité filmmaking that I have embraced throughout my career — it’s a film with a great deal of complexity and nuance, requiring a viewer’s full attention in order to appreciate all that I hope it has to offer. While new forms of distribution are important for independent filmmakers […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 18, 2009 -
“THE COVE” director, Louie Psihoyos
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 18, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The inventor and venture capitalist Jim Clark and I have been dive buddies for the last 10 years but over the last 35 years of diving we have been witnessing the catastrophic collapse of the reefs and sea-life abundance. Jim and I decided to do something about it by setting up a nonprofit foundation, the Oceanic Preservation Society, to make ocean-based films and photographs to create awareness and inspire change. I have been a photographer for decades, mostly for National Geographic magazine, but I had never made a […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 18, 2009 -
A QUICK TAKE ON BIG RIVER MAN
Before I head out to Strand Releasing’s 20th Anniversary dinner here at Sundance I want to quickly note John Maringouin’s eccentric and winning documentary Big River Man. It’s like an updated, black comic Aguirre, the Wrath of God with the quest for power and search for gold replaced by the subject’s environmental consciousness and love affair with both long distance swimming and the media. Briefly, it’s the tale of 52-year-old Slovenian swimmer Martin Strel, who, after swimming many of the world’s longest rivers, decides to swim the length of the Amazon to both complete his life goal but to also […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 17, 2009 -
“PAPER HEART” co-writer-director, Nicholas Jasenovec
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 8:00 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] One of our goals while making Paper Heart was to establish a consistent reality since we would be combining a documentary on love with a loosely scripted love story. [Yi] Charlyne and I felt that most modern romantic films were very formulaic and unrealistic, but hoped that if an audience believed in what they were watching, they would be more affected by it. And with audiences being more familiar than ever with reality-based programming, we knew we had to do a great job to convince them there was […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 -
That’s What Friends are For: Writer/Director Lynn Shelton on the Collaborative Process Behind Her Poignant Comedy, Humpday
Lynn Shelton has worked in a variety of creative forms for most of her life, but seems to have found her true voice in the role of writer-director. A Seattle native, Shelton spent her formative years immersed in painting, writing poetry, taking pictures and acting. She was a stage actress for ten years (and was told she was destined to work in film), and subsequently studied for an MFA in Photography at NYC’s School of Visual Arts. She then began working in film, both as an editor on movies such as The Outpatient (2002) and Hedda Gabler (2004) and as […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 17, 2009 -
“I SAW YOU CRYING” Frontier section artist spotlight: Maria Marshall
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 5:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City] As an artist I am at liberty to use everything as an influence to tell the story. I have made a three-minute wonder that was entirely filmed on a mobile phone. A series of three-minute films were commissioned by the British television stationChannel 4, and the films aired before the 7:00 p.m. news. I discovered early on how to be true to materials, and this awareness is reflected in my work. The Internet and YouTube are sources for information at our fingertips. I am, however, very […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 -
“THE QUEEN AND I” director, Nahid Persson Sarvestani
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 6:15 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] As a documentary filmmaker I am always telling a story, painting a picture of a reality that to some may be disturbing, to others offensive, but hopefully always eye-opening and informative. As such it will always be the content, the core and the soul of the film that is the driving force behind my creative process. The technological aspects and various formats are secondary. My latest doc The Queen and I is a simple story marked by extraordinary events. Whether my films are screened on iPods, […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009 -
“OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY” director, Michael O. Scott
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 17, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] Over the Hills and Far Away is a piece of true magical realism. A family struggles to cope with their son’s autism. In an act of inspiration and desperation combined, they travel to Mongolia and journey through the country on horseback in search of mysterious shamans who they believe can heal their son. It’s hard to believe that this is a documentary and not a dramatic narrative. It’s a filmmaker’s dream to be able to work with such material. So for me it wasn’t a question of finding […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 17, 2009
