Sundance Film Festival 2012
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Learning from Your Peers at the Sundance Producers Brunch
“Work from your most generous place,” producer and keynote speaker Sarah Green advised during today’s annual Sundance Producers Brunch at the Sundance Film Festival. Green has had an amazing year, producing the works of masters old and young (Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter), but her speech focused not on her accomplishments but on the sustenance provided by her web of professional associates and collaborators. She laughingly described her own beginnings, watching “Maggie Renzi get City of Hope financed over lunch. I thought it was easy.” She talked about mentoring the producer Georgia Kacandes from APOC […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2012 -
VIDEO: TIM HEIDECKER AND ERIC WAREHEIM OF “TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE”
Filmmaker has partnered with Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco of the newly-founded and ambitiously-named National Film Society for a series of video interviews at Sundance. In this first video, Patrick and Stephen catch up with comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim on the red carpet before their Billion Dollar Movie premiere. Tim and Eric are their usual absurdest selves, and for their part, Patrick and Stephen turn in what just might be the most laid-back red carpet interview I’ve ever seen: Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is available on VOD starting January 27th. And for some bonus hilarity, check […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 22, 2012 -
Sundance 2012: Sex, Drugs and Falling Apart
Snow is pounding Park City; people are hidden under hoods and hats, the snow burying everything under a deep pile of grey and white. This is perfect weather for introspection and so far, the narrative films at Sundance have done little to break the mood. I couldn’t be happier. Early on, Sundance has featured films united by loss, by the end of relationships, by heartbreak and the assertion of possibility. I am no glutton for sadness, but there is something about the dark skies and looming mountains that make the melancholy almost comforting. If you look hard enough, every festival unveils a thematic strain, and […]
by Tom Hall on Jan 22, 2012 -
SUNDANCE VIDEO: MIKE BIRBIGLIA ON “SLEEPWALK WITH ME”
Yesterday I posted Ira Glass’s amazing rant about producing Mike Birbiglia’s debut feature, Sleepwalk with Me, premiering here at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Now, here’s Birbiglia himself discussing the medical condition that prompted the film, the challenges of transferring material from his comedic monologues to film, and pizza…
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2012 -
SLAMDANCE VIDEO: KEITH MILLER ON “WELCOME TO PINE HILL”
I was riveted by Keith Miller’s Welcome to Pine Hill when I first encountered it last year in the IFP’s Narrative Lab. The story of former drug dealer attempting to go straight while battling health challenges, it features a scene that is among the most gripping I’ve seen in any film recently. A man, played by Miller, walks his dog late at night and… well, I’ll let Miller explain. Here, Miller discusses the origins of that scene, working with the man he met that night, Shannon Harper, and the influences on the film, who include Andrei Tarkovsky. (I’d also throw […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2012 -
“UNDER AFRICAN SKIES” | director, Joe Berlinger
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 8:00 pm –The MARC, Park City] I am as surprised as anyone that I have actually been able to raise a family by doing nonfiction work for the past 2 decades. In that time, I have witnessed a lot of change – in technology, in distribution, in audience appetites and in the maturation of nonfiction as an industry – and we can certainly have a healthy debate about whether it is easier or harder to make a living these days as a nonfiction film and television maker than it was 5, 10 or even 20 […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
“NOBODY WALKS” | director, Ry-Russo Young
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 12:15 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City] When I was a teenager I would wear sexy clothes to school that didn’t fit me. My mother would see me before I left the house and was horrified that her awkward, fourteen year old daughter was planning to walk the New York City streets in a tight pink baby tee shirt and red denim miniskirt. She said I looked like a hooker clown and she was probably right. But at the time, I was just beginning to understand that my body could communicate something sexual and powerful to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
“CHINA HEIVYWEIGHTS” | director, Yung Chang
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? I love movies. Ever since I was a kid and my dad would set up his super-8 projector in the basement and rent black-and-white movies from the library, I have loved movies. Movies are visceral. They are cathartic. They are spiritual. I love the experience of going to watch movies in a dark theatre with a full audience. I love being emotionally moved, to be shaken alive, to feel a sense of the wider world and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
“FINDING NORTH” | directors, Kristi Jacobson & Lori Silverbush
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 6:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] Kristi Jacobson: 49 million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from. It’s a shocking statistic, but how do you turn a stat into a story? My answer is deceivingly simple: you make a movie. No art form can truly make us feel another person’s pain, or joy, or hunger. It’s our own emotions and imaginations that bring any art form to life. But film, in my experience, is the most powerful conduit between one person’s experience and an audience. As a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012 -
“CORPO CELESTE” | director, Alice Rohrwacher
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 9:00 pm –Broadway Center Cinema 6, SLC] When we see something perfectly intact in nature, like a wonderful butterfly, with its incredible composition of shape and colors, in Italian we immediately say “look, it seems fake!” On the other hand, when we contemplate an object, skillfully crafted by human hands, like a butterfly put together through hours of patient work by a talented artisan, we say “wow, it looks real!” There is a strange area where the perfectly natural and the perfectly artificial collide. This point of contact needs to be investigated: I sense something […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012
