Ron Eyal and Eleanor Burke’s elegant and evocative Stranger Things, which won Slamdance’s Narrative Competition Grand Jury Prize in 2011 is a moody and clear-eyed drama from a pair of our 25 New Faces in Independent Film, as tranquil and refreshing as an autumn afternoon along the rural British coast, where much of its story is set. A young, lonely woman named Oona (Bridget Collins), coping with the recent death of her mother (with whom she was clearly not close) and hoping to sell the house the deceased woman spent her last years making art in, returns to the home’s seaside village to […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 5, 2013We’re halfway through Independent Film Week, and time has started to play tricks. Days seem to stretch on forever, but at the same time, hours go by like minutes. Today I accidentally said to someone, “I’ll see you yesterday.” Here are some more snapshots of Film Week in action: The creative forces behind IFP’s 2011 Narrative and Documentary Lab projects share the stage at the end of Tuesday night’s Lab Showcase at the Walter Reade Theater. Writer/Director Gillian Robespierre discusses her screenplay Obvious Child with the Sundance Institute’s Rachel Chanoff. Writer/Director Harrison Witt (Sister Sarah) helps actor […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Sep 21, 2011While introducing a screening one afternoon this week in the Treasure Mountain Inn’s cramped banquet hall that the Slamdance Film Festival converts into its main cinema every year, Slamdance Co-Founder and expert hat-wearer Dan Mirvish remarked with a bit of awe that this was the 17th annual event, meaning that Slamdance, once referred to pejoratively as Sundance’s “parasite” by Robert Redford, had now been around for over half Sundance’s life span. Continuing, Mirvish claimed that “about a third” of the participants in Sundance’s 2011 lineup were Slamdance alumni. “The inmates have taken over the asylum,” Mirvish joked. Someone sitting behind me […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 28, 2011