[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Temple Theatre] Making Crime After Crime was full of surprises — which in a way is not so surprising because at least on the surface the film is a legal thriller, a genre that is built on suspense, intrigue and discovery. These aspects of the genre were made all the more unpredictable because the film is a vérité documentary: I was tracking the battle to free Deborah Peagler from prison as her case unfolded so no one knew exactly how it would turn out. Sure enough, clues, twists and turns emerged that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:45 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within was a very challenging project as it was coming two years after a very successful predecessor. The first movie (The Elite Squad) I had made about the Rio de Janeiro Elite Squad became very popular and won the Golden Bear Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. So everyone was thinking that following up on this film was a mistake. How could we possibly make a film about the same subject matter and have the same impact? My attitude was to forget about […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] My film is about 17 biracial Ukrainian orphans, mostly teenagers, and the woman who has been their foster mother for years despite all the hardships, be they financial or caused by the racist society that surrounds them. Before going on the first shoot, I had no doubts that Olga, the foster mother, can only be a saint. Unfortunately the biggest surprise was the realization that her need for power and control is really the foundation of the family and the motivation for her to become a legal guardian […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] The biggest puzzle to me was that the majority of Black Africa was celebrating 50 years of independence when we had the idea for the film An African Election and that nobody saw the potential of looking into where Africa stood after 50 years of its rebirth. The project was brushed aside as being interesting but unrealistic. Meanwhile people were talking about the silver bullet and all the failures associated with the Dark Continent. Nobody wanted to invest, and even cultural institutions whose mission statements were to preserve […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011Michael Tully began his career with a flurry, getting selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2006 on the back of his debut feature Cocaine Angel, and then following it up the next year with Silver Jew, a documentary about Silver Jews frontman David Berman. In the years since, Tully has stayed active, shooting Mary Bronstein’s Yeast, acting in a handful of movies by fellow Generation DIY peers, including Aaron Katz’s Quiet City and Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me, and editing the indie film website Hammer to Nail. But, in terms of new films, he has […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:45 pm — Library Center Theatre] I thought the hardest part, at least emotionally, would be bleeding it all out on paper when I wrote the script. Little did I know the truly raw part hadn’t even begun. Working with actors is like falling head over heels in love — a dizzying rush to learn everything there is about each other. Just a little window of time to build enough trust to take a gigantic leap of faith. Before making Little Birds I’d always thought it was an actor’s job to show up, turn on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre] Chaz [Bono] showed us that changing one’s gender is an extraordinary thing to do in the true sense of the word; it takes tremendous bravery and courage and a willingness to lose everything. If only we all possessed these qualities the world could be such a different place.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:00 pm — Temple Theatre] In April, I went to the newsroom at the Times with my camera, ready to film. This had been my routine for the past few months–I’d show up, not sure what story the reporters on the Media Desk would be covering that day, and attempt to be a fly on the wall. When I arrived, “a former hacker with a whistleblower website” –whom we now know as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks–had posted a [chilling] video of a U.S. military helicopter shooting down two journalists and several Iraqi civilians. Reuters had […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:30 pm — Eccles Theatre] When we unmasked the Bog Monster and it turned out to be old man Whithers, we were literally dumbfounded. Why? Because he OWNS the allegedly haunted amusement park. We should’ve seen it.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011In our first video interview from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival we sit down with Miranda July to talk about her latest film, The Future.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2011