Sundance Film Festival 2012
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“BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS” | director, Fredrik Gertten
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 8:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? Do we really choose professions? I have done many different things in my life, from hard labor at a shipyard to starting up a musicians co-op record company. I worked as a journalist for years and had a weekly column in a daily in Southern Sweden/ I also worked as foreign correspondent for national radio, newspapers and magazines and hosted a TV show on the swedish king Charles XII and Tzar Peter the Great set in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
SUNDANCE EXPECTATIONS: A PROGRAMMER’S PERSPECTIVE
This is my first year covering Sundance for Filmmaker Magazine, and the assignment has me thinking about things a little bit differently. As someone who has attended this festival in various capacities since 1998, I have a deep affection for the event itself, its geographic and organizational consistency and the persistence of its vision of a vital American independent filmmaking community. You’d be hard pressed to find a person who enjoys film who has never heard of Sundance; the festival’s identity is, for all intents and purposes, a brand, associated with certain types of films — low-budget American indies, socially conscious documentaries, formally […]
by Tom Hall on Jan 20, 2012 -
Director Terence Nance on An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty
Watching Terence Nance’s Oversimplification Of Her Beauty is like being talked through the contents of a shoebox, each item another memento of The One That Got Away. Live action, animation, claymation reenactments, direct-to-camera address by him, on-camera interviews of her by him, blurry, amateur footage shot by her of him, all guided by a formally written voice over, delivered with somber, staccato clarity by an anonymous older man. Descriptions and depictions of other girls slide in and out of the narrative, intercut with shots of The One, whose name is Namik. One animation of a long-distance affair depicts a hand-drawn […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 19, 2012 -
Five Questions with Safety Not Guaranteed Director Colin Trevorrow
Safety Not Guaranteed might be the first feature film based on an internet meme. In 2005, a newspaper classified ad from 1997 started to spread across the web, depicted a mulleted man who claimed to be seeking, “Somebody to go back in time with me.” The ad, which also specified, “this is not a joke” was eventually revealed to be exactly that, a fake listing published to fill out space in the paper. But that hasn’t stopped director Colin Trevorrow from crafting his first feature film around it. Produced by Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf of Big Beach (Little Miss […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 19, 2012 -
Five Questions with The First Time Director Jon Kasdan
Sundance has a rich tradition of premiering great on-screen romances, as far back as Linklater’s Before Sunrise in 1995, and more recently with Like Crazy, last year’s Grand Jury Prize winner. Carrying this torch into the 2012 Festival is The First Time, the sophomore effort from director Jonathan Kasdan (In the Land of Women). A meditation on the excitement, anticipation, and unavoidable angst of young love, First Time stars Dylan O’Brien and Britt Robertson as star-crossed high school students drawn together over a single weekend. Filmmaker: What were your creative goals when you first conceived of this project? Were there […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 19, 2012 -
PREPPING “MY BEST DAY” FOR SUNDANCE
If I had a child, I would name it Reel. Reel 2-pop Greenwell. Reel because breaking my movie in 15 minute reels has bought me time to work on one part the movie while the composer, sound mixer or color corrector is working on another. There is one more chance for every one to make it better before it goes off into the jaws of Sundance. 2-pop because if everyone gets the same reel with 2 frames of tone popping at the front of the reel and the back end of the reel– If those pops line up to the […]
by Erin Greenwell on Jan 19, 2012 -
“SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN” | director, Malik Bendjelloul
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, January 19 9:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] I’m a filmmaker because it’s one of very few activities I know of that can completely absorb me. Both when shooting and editing, it’s a pure creative state of mind where I can forget everything else—sometimes even that I’m hungry—because I’m so absorbed. That’s why I do this—it’s a job that you can never grew tired of. Every day there are new creative challenges to overcome and new ideas to come up with in order to do that. You’re constantly moving. I like that. The choice to use […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2012 -
AT SUNDANCE, YOU CAN TAKE THIS MAGAZINE AND…
After you get your condo keys, stock up at Albertson’s, and pick up your badge, you’ll also want to grab the new issue of Filmmaker Magazine once you get to Sundance. Oh, wait, you do that every year? Well, this year especially don’t forget to stuff that Filmmaker in your bag because you’ll need it to get the most out of Bear 71, a piece showing at the festival as part of its always-exciting New Frontiers section. About Bear 71 from the Sundance catalog: Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison’s poignant interactive documentary about a bear in the Canadian Rockies illuminates […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 19, 2012 -
12 SUNDANCE FILMS I’M EXCITED TO SEE
Five years after finishing his wonderfully wacked-out debut, The Guataealan Handshake, Todd Rohal, frustrated by the time it was taking to set up a new movie, jumpstarted a micro-budget comedy about a priest. Called The Catechism Cataclysm, the movie was made for $50,000, and it got into Sundance, playing in last year’s midnight section. IFC bought the film for its Midnight label, releasing it to a scant $897 on a single screen. Rohal didn’t sweat it; the movie did what it needed to do for him (read Megan Holloway’s consideration here), and he went on to his next film. And […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2012 -
SUNDANCE: MISTAKES WERE MADE
In the interest of community-building and vulnerability, I have decided to share some of my most humbling Sundance mistakes and the subsequent lessons learned in the five years I have attended the festival as an assistant, journalist, lab fellow and producer. 1. SNOW Through either sloth or lack of funds, I have always found myself on a connecting flight into Salt Lake City in the middle of winter. This has been a lucky break in some ways (the time I had to share that hotel room in Chicago with the nice lady who worked in biochemical fuel systems; the time […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 18, 2012
