Documentary

A SUNDANCE INDUCTION: PRODUCER RON SIMONS BLOGS FROM THE FESTIVAL

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 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2010
“HIS & HERS” | director, Ken Wardrop

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] I had many difficult decisions to make from the conceptual to the production stages of our documentary His & Hers. These decisions were primarily concerning our small budget of €100,000 and my choice to shoot on film. However I think the hardest decision of all was actually to make the film in the first place. In all honesty, the producer actually had to coax me into making it. Okay, I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming but I definitely needed the push. You see, up until now […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010
“FAMILY AFFAIR” | director, Chico Colvard

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision I made in making Family Affair was to ask my father the question, “Why?” When my father was arrested, I was 10 years old. It wouldn’t be until much later in life that I’d come to comprehend the full magnitude of the crimes he committed against my sisters. For reasons I once could not understand, my sisters had maintained a relationship with my father almost immediately following his release from prison. In November of 2002, my sisters invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them in […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010
“A SMALL ACT” | director, Jennifer Arnold

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The documentary project A Small Act follows five main characters through two interlocking storylines, but we only had one camera. We were constantly forced to decide which story, and which character within the story, to follow. There was one day in particular that we absolutely needed to be in three places at once, which was impossible of course. We were filming three Kenyan students as they competed for a life-changing scholarship. The students had taken a national exam and the exam score determined their scholarship eligibility. If they […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 22, 2010
“MY PERESTROIKA’”S ROBIN HESSMAN | By Alicia Van Couvering

Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika is a documentary that shows modern-day Russia from the inside out. Five Russian adults reveal their personal histories through interviews and home movies, talking us through their childhood in school together during the die-hard communist Brezhnev years of the 1970s, through Gorbachev, the collapse of the USSR, and, finally, the coups, oligarchs and wealth transfers that are shaping Russia today. Borya and Lyuba, a married couple, teach history at School #57, which their teenage son also attends, and the film begins in their modest apartment, the same one Borya grew up in. Olga, the prettiest girl […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 21, 2010
ASTRA TAYLOR ON INTERNET SERFDOM

Okay, I promised Sundance posts only for the duration of the festival… but that was before I got grounded in Phoenix. I hope to make it to Sundance tonight, but the weather is not being hospitable. In the meantime, I started reading on the plane the new issue of The Baffler, a beautifully produced journal of arts and ideas that is taking a valiant stand against the technocratic pressures that are dumbing down print journalism. In fact, that process is partially the subject of documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor’s “Serfing the Net,” an essay in which she argues that the ideologies […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 21, 2010
Jon Amiel, Creation

The first non-Canadian film to open the Toronto film festival in quite some time, Jon Amiel’s Creation seems to both embrace and shun the duties and limitations of the historical biopic. Paul Bettany stars as middle age naturalist Charles Darwin, well past his explorations on the HMS Beagle, who having settled into English country life with his children and wife Emma (Bettany’s real life spouse Jennifer Connelly), decides to finally tackle writing a book on his nascent theory of Evolution. Haunted by visions of his recently deceased daughter and the notion that he may permanently alter man’s conception of the […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 20, 2010
OUR 12 MOST ANTICIPATED FILMS AT SUNDANCE 2010

As we pack our bags for the Sundance Film Festival, all of our correspondents this year have weighed in on the premieres that we’re most excited to see. Check back daily throughout the festival for features, reviews and commentary. 3 Backyards, Eric Mendelsohn. (pictured) I’ve heard from crew who worked on this that it’s great, and I’m a Judy Berlin fan. It’s a domestic drama with Edie Falco and Elias Koteas, and I really hope this is a film that can get suburban-disconnectedness — the bread of butter of Sundance movies — right. — Alicia Van Couvering The Company Man, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2010
“LIFE 2.0? | director, Jason Spingarn-Koff

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 22, 2:30 pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] Do I need permission to film that person? In my previous documentaries, the answer was always clear: get a signed release form. But this film was set in a different world: a virtual world called Second Life, populated solely by digital avatars. Was this a game or a place governed by the laws of the real world? To make things more complicated, most “residents” (as the users call themselves) fiercely guard their real identities, adopting fanciful new names, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, even species. Asking for a resident’s […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2010
“RESTREPO” | directors, Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 21, 9:30 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] Our goal in making Restrepo, a documentary about soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, was to give viewers the experience of a 90-minute deployment. We had no difficult decisions, per se, but we did have important ones. First and foremost, we decided that our cameras would never leave the soldiers. We would not interview generals or diplomats; we would not return to the United States to talk to the families. We would limit ourselves to what the soldiers had access to and nothing more. Finally our film […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2010

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