Sundance Film Festival 2016
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5 Questions for Lovesong Writer/Director So Yong Kim
A 25 New Face from 2006, So Yong Kim’s Lovesong premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 and opens today in New York from Strand Releasing. The below interview was originally published during the film’s Sundance premiere. While continuing to make subtle, emotional, character-based stories, So Yong Kim’s cinema has been one of change and evolution. Her debut feature, 2006’s In Between Days, spent several days surveying the burgeoning first love of two Korean teenagers living in Toronto. Largely filmed in Korean, and shot on a micro budget with non actors, the film landed Kim on our 25 New […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2017 -
Hits & Misses: The Theatrical Performance of the Sundance Class of ’16
How do you measure success these days? When more than two million people vote for you over the other guy and you still lose? When you receive no endorsements from a single major newspaper, your party’s leadership practically ignores you, and you still win? Or, perhaps, when your heralded Sundance acquisition earns a whopping $15.8 million at the box office, but you spend more than twice that in acquisition fees and prints and advertising costs to release it? (i.e., The Birth of a Nation). How about if your film isn’t released in theaters at all, but Netflix paid $5 million […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jan 18, 2017 -
Watch: Jim Cummings’s Springsteen-Fueled Sundance Grand Prize-Winning Short, Thunder Road
Following a heartfelt public campaign to convince Bruce Springsteen — or, perhaps, his battery of lawyers, publishers and master owners — to let him affordably release his short film, Thunder Road, director Jim Cummings prevailed. The result is that this excellent short, fully deserving of Sundance’s Best Short prize, is now screening online, for free. Cummings himself stars as a young man who decides to evoke The Boss while eulogizing his mom at her funeral, and the short is an example of a game-changing work that can make a career. (Cummings is on every agent’s radar now as an actor […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2016 -
Upstream and Downstream: 5 Observations about Independent Film Distribution at the 2016 Midpoint
The following article appears in our Spring, 2016 print edition and is appearing from behind our paywall today for the first time. Will 2016 be remembered as the year that Amazon and Netflix gobbled up the indie film market? Probably. While the two online behemoths could always change their strategies in the next several months, the ramifications of their first quarter dominance stretched far and wide, sending shockwaves through the business. But there were other changes afoot, as well. Here are five industry trends that continue to linger long after Park City. 1. The Enduring Impact of Amazon and Netflix Okay, Amazon […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jun 16, 2016 -
“Crazy Women, the News, Florida, Guns”: Robert Greene on Kate Plays Christine
To lean on my Sundance write-up to summarize Kate Plays Christine: “Sarasota TV journalist Christine Chubbuck shot herself live on-air in 1974 and died 14 hours later. The suicide footage exists on one two-inch tape, which is inaccessibly locked up in the vault of the former president of the Florida station (now part of ABC) Chubbuck worked at, so there are shades of Grizzly Man in Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine. The premise is that Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparing to play Chubbuck in a movie that will conclude with a recreation of the suicide, and the climactic question is whether the actress can go through with it. Scenes from this ostensible […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 26, 2016 -
Dispatches from Sundance, Berlin, True/False and Rotterdam
Sundance Film Festival 2016 by Adam Cook Few film festivals carry inscribed connotations the way that Sundance does. For this newcomer to Park City, a visit to this beacon of American indie cinema came loaded with preconceptions about both the nature of the “Sundance film” (part myth, part truth) and the tendency for the collective critical response to hyperbolize and rush to proclaim the year’s early favorites. Given the calendar-based approach of looking at movies in the context of their year, Sundance emerges on the heels of last year’s best-of lists, nearly 12 months ahead of when its own lineup will […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 21, 2016 -
“A Poor African-American Woman in the Jim Crow South”: Maggie Greenwald |Sophie and the Rising Sun
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? As the screenwriter as well as director of Sophie and the Rising Run, I didn’t believe there […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 5, 2016 -
“Flop”: The Conclusion of Short Film Winner Jim Cummings’ Sundance Video Diary
“You won a trophy in a bowling alley — get it together!” Thunder Road short film award-winning director Jim Cummings deals with sudden success in this final installment of his video diary series from the Sundance Film Festival. There are parties and drugs, bad behavior in the snow, nods to Kanye and Birdman, and much more. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2016 -
Five Questions for Newtown Director Kim A. Snyder
Kim A. Snyder’s Newtown examines the current spate of gun violence by presenting the families who have been most affected by it. Three years removed from the horrific school shooting at Newtown Elementary School that took twenty-six casualties in Connecticut, Snyder’s film gives a much-needed face to the community. As discussions revolving around the accessibility of firearms seem to get obscured and buried by politicians with a not-so-secret agenda, Newtown seeks to make the political personal. Filmmaker: Your previous film, Welcome to Shelbyville, was also about the residents of a small town reacting to a major event in their community. What brings you to a location? Are you first […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 2, 2016 -
Five Questions for How to Tell You’re a Douchebag Writer/Director Tahir Jetter
Having made his Sundance debut with the short film Close. in 2011, filmmaker Tahir Jetter returned with his debut feature, How To Tell You’re A Douchebag — a film that, as he discusses below, he wasn’t sure would bring him back to Park City. After his web series Hard Times was picked up for distribution by Issa Rae Productions in 2014, Jetter set his sights on a feature film about dating in the modern world. To raise awareness of the project, Jetter published a blog, Occasionally Dating Black Women, written in a voice that would turn out to be his fictional main character. Inspired by films that handle […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 2, 2016
