Gotham Awards 2012
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Twice Removed: Your Sister’s Sister Director Lynn Shelton
by Ry Russo-Young on Apr 17, 2012Following her acclaimed bromantic comedy Humpday, LYNN SHELTON travels to a cabin on a secluded island to examine female relationships in the insightful Your Sister’s Sister. Writer/director RY RUSSO-YOUNG learns more from the Seattle-based filmmaker. -
Four Questions with Middle of Nowhere Director Ava DuVernay
Over the last decade, Ava Duvernay has established herself as something of an indie renaissance woman. An entrepreneur, distribution and marketing expert, and key player in the African American filmmaking landscape, Duvernay expanded her resume again in 2010 with her directorial debut I Will Follow, an intimate portrait of grief. Middle of Nowhere, Duvernay’s followup, centers on a woman (Emayatzy Corinealdi) forced to cope with the recent incarceration of her husband. Filmmaker: Like I Will Follow, Middle of Nowhere tells a very small-scale, very intimate story. What was it about these characters and this story that inspired you? Duvernay: The […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 23, 2012 -
Room 237 | Director, Rodney Ascher
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23, Noon – Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Growing up I had planned on being a comic book artist, but at some point decided it’d be a little lonely spending all day in front of a drawing board by myself while filmmaking seemed like going on an adventure with a crazy group of friends. But years later I found myself working on this film alone in front of the computer for weeks on end, so joke’s on me. Of course THIS story, about how one film has managed to inspire so much speculation and become so important […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2012 -
Kid-Thing | Writer/Director David Zellner
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23 2:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Nathan and I have always wanted to study and work in film. To me it’s the ultimate art form, in that it has infinite possibilities and the unique ability to encompass and incorporate all other art forms. Even if all art is derivative, it’s that challenge: attempt to make something new in film that’s exciting to us. This was made clear to us as teenagers in the late ’80s when we were the personal videographers for Chuck Berry. Although known first and foremost as a rock-and-roll legend, he […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2012 -
Sleepwalk With Me | Co-Writer/Director Mike Birbiglia
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23, 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, park City] I’m drawn to be an artist because when I watch successful art- whether it’s stand up comedy or plays or movies- it makes me feel a little bit less alone. And the idea that I could do that for someone else seems worthwhile. Sleepwalk With Me is a based on a true story that actually HAS been expressed in different media: it was a story on This American Life. It was a book, and it was a one-man play of the same name. But the reason I decided […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2012 -
Safety Not Guaranteed | Director Colin Trevorrow
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First of all, thanks for referring to me as an artist. It made me feel good. With Safety Not Guaranteed, Derek Connolly and I had the goals you might associate with art—to make something soulful, something that breaks rules, engages the heart. But beneath it all was a sincere want to entertain in a way that only movies can. There’s an element of showmanship in cinema that most other mediums don’t share. Yes, the characters in our film are honest and the emotions are true—good entertainment doesn’t have to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
How To Survive A Plague | Director, David France
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 3:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] It’s a quirky, but not inconsequential, fact about HIV that the virus made its hideous debut in medical journals just a few months before the first camcorders hit the stores. In the long years before the Internet, before cell-phone cameras or social networks, these low-cost marvels democratized the power of moving images and built the first bridge between mass media and previously hidden worlds. Thus was born the Sex Tape, of course. But the world where AIDS first struck was also a hidden world. It’s hard to fathom now, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
Detropia | Directors/Producers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21, Noon –Temple Theatre, Park City] Rachel Grady: I’m a documentary filmmaker because it’s basically like going to an amazing graduate school with each new project. And getting paid to do it. It gives you an excuse to learn, explore, hypothesize, get it wrong, change your mind, discover new ideas and then share your results with complete strangers. That’s extremely fun to me. Heidi Ewing: In our view, there is no other medium that is better suited for Detroit than the medium of documentary film. The slew of popular picture books about the city and its […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2012 -
Keep the Lights On | Co-writer/Director, Ira Sachs
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 8:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] It’s not for nothing that we watch films in dark rooms, without the lights on. It’s the most intimate of artistic mediums. When a film works, we feel a nearly physical connection to the actors we are watching, as if they are playing out our own lives on screen. I like films that are messy and imperfect, that are unable to fully contain all the life going on within them. Filmmakers like Cassavetes and Loach, Fassbinder and Pialat. The plot never rules the character. The actor might at […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
Middle of Nowhere | Writer/Director Ava DuVernay
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 2:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] First film I ever loved was West Side Story. My aunt Denise forced me to watch it one rainy afternoon. I had to be about 9-years-old. I was spellbound. The dancing. The romance. The brown people. I grew up in Compton, right where the city limits hug Lynwood. And for as long as I can remember, my school, my block, was predominately Latino. I remember watching that film and it changing the way I saw my schoolmates and neighbors. Seriously, I recall feeling something very specific about the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012
