Kat Candler
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“Changing the Industry Game”: Queen Sugar Showrunner and Directors Talk Career Advancement at IFP Week
Filmmaker Elisabeth Subrin (A Woman, A Part) sends this short dispatch from IFP Week’s Screen Forward Talks: Notes to the Future Sunday program — specifically, the afternoon panel, “Through the Generations: Queen Sugar: Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey’s Queen Sugar.” The panel featured IFP alums Kat Candler (Hellion), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), DeMane Davis (Lift), Lauren Wolkstein (The Strange Ones). Beyond the brilliance of the series itself, Ava Duvernay’s production model for Queen Sugar, a cable series on the Oprah Winfrey Network, is visionary and proactive. By choosing to hire only women independent film directors who have never […]
by Elisabeth Subrin on Sep 19, 2018 -
“I’m Not Like Wes Anderson Designing His Own Clothes”: Trey Nelson on Lost in the Sun
It can be dangerous to make bold claims for a filmmaker on the basis of one feature, but then Lost in the Sun’s Trey Nelson is hardly a novice. While Lost in the Sun is his writer-director feature debut, Nelson has been working in television, documentaries, and commercials for years, racking up hundreds of credits for networks like A&E, National Geographic, and the History Channel. His experience is evident in every frame of Lost in the Sun, a remarkably assured sun-drenched noir that invites comparison with the early work of Malick and Bogdanovich but has a tone and sensibility all […]
by Jim Hemphill on Nov 4, 2015 -
Eight Sundance Veterans with Advice on Eating, Interview Technique and Hot Tubs
As part of our lead-up to the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, yesterday we published producer Mynette Louie’s advice for Sundance newcomers. Today we’re following up with eight suggestions from veterans of the ’14 and ’13 editions. Read on for advice, much of which you should take and some you will hope you don’t have to… — SM Ana Lily Amirpour (director, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night): The day I arrived at Sundance I got terrible news that my production designer Sergio De La Vega passed away in a sudden tragic accident. So that night we were drinking at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 21, 2015 -
“It’s Just a General”: How to Take a General Meeting
At some point in your career, things are going to break your way — you’ll be lucky enough to have your crowdfunded labor of love generate some heat at a big festival. Or your short film will go viral. Or maybe you’ll sell a hot spec or make the Black List. Whatever happens, you’ll land managers and agents, and people in L.A. will want to meet you — and not a minute too soon, because you’re four months behind on rent and need to pay for T-shirts for all your backers. It’s time to meet studio execs looking to hire […]
by Marc Maurino on Jul 17, 2014 -
Interview with Hellion Director Kat Candler
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Candler: Hellion started as a short film that played Sundance in 2012. The original story for the short came from a story my Uncle Frank would tell at family gatherings. When Frank was little, he and my two other Uncles set fire to my grandfather’s jeep. What happened when my grandfather came home to discover the destruction was the nugget of a story I fictionalized into Hellion. When we wrapped the short over the summer of 2011, I wanted to continue to live with these characters … a single blue-collar […]
by Danielle Lurie on Jan 19, 2014 -
Park City Critic’s Notes #2: How Should a Family Be?
Everybody has dreams at Sundance. Some dream of distribution deals, others of the respect and recognition that may come with them. The most exuberant dreamers conjure the high seven-figure sales of yesteryear, but the ranks of such folks are dying away, the reality of the new normal having long set in. Some just want to get laid or go skiing and dream accordingly. Lucky them. Still others can’t navigate Sundance without complaining about this or that. A lot of folks are upset by the shuttles this year, claiming they aren’t as efficient as years past. More pressing, some observers have […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 19, 2014 -
Five Questions with Hellion Director Kat Candler
Austin, TX-based filmmaker Kat Candler is no stranger to the Sundance Film Festival. In fact, this is her third straight year with a film at the festival. But unlike ‘12 and ’13 (during which she brought the acclaimed shorts Hellion and Black Metal, respectively), Candler will premiere her first feature since 2006, an expansion of her previous Hellion short. The story of 13-year-old Jacob (newcomer Josh Wiggins), a young man torn between an absent father (Aaron Paul) and the Aunt (Juliette Lewis) who has taken him in, Hellion premieres today in US Dramatic Competition. Filmmaker: The Hellion short was built […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 17, 2014 -
Hellion | Director Kat Candler
Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see our work to completion but fully discover the meanings within it. What role does attention play in your work? Can you discuss an instance where you thought about some aspect of attention when it came to your film? I’m the kind […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 16, 2014 -
Producing Shorts into Features: Three Producers and Their Films at Sundance
Curious about the physical process of turning a short into a feature, Filmmaker magazine interviewed the producers of three separate films about their experiences. Each film was originally a short that previously premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now a feature making its World Premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. Last year director Damien Chazelle’s short won the Jury Prize at Sundance. This year, his feature of the same name, Whiplash, is the festival’s Opening Night feature. Transformed from an intense 15-minute short into a 105-minute full-length film, Whiplash maintained the same producing team but had to […]
by Alexandra Byer on Jan 16, 2014 -
Rickey Henderson and 8 Tips for Pitching
Part of the No Borders orientation the first day is getting up in front of all the other participants in the program and pitching your project. I am very glad they made us do this–it prepared us for a week of meetings and pitching–but this was something Kat [Candler] and I were not exactly prepared for. To our credit, this fact was buried in a rather lengthy email (way to keep us on our toes, IFP). You could feel the collective nervousness from the group, but regardless, it was no big deal and it went great, no one fell off […]
by Kelly Williams on Sep 18, 2012
