Sundance Film Festival 2018
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“How Are American Men Being Made?”: Director Bing Liu | Minding the Gap
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? It’s difficult to describe any part of the filmmaking process as not chaotic – Minding the Gap was by far the most difficult task I’d ever tried to take on. I was working on all these other projects and writing grants to fund the film and all the while my mom was fighting through a violent […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
DP Kirsten Johnson on Filming the Kronos Quartet Documentary A Thousand Thoughts
Kirsten Johnson was among the most in-demand documentary DPs even before her much-celebrated 2016 film Cameraperson. Johnson has shot more than 50 films for such directors as Laura Poitras, Alex Gibney and Kirby Dick. Her latest film, A Thousand Thoughts, is a doc on the Kronos Quartet from directors Sam Green and Joe Bini. The film will be presented at Sundance as a “live documentary” with Green narrating live and the Quartet conducting the score in person. Before its premiere, Johnson spoke with Filmmaker about finding innovative ways to film a concert and how a shot from Cameraperson wound up in A […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“The Film Needs a Scene of the Justice Lifting Weights”: Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen | RBG
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? West: It’s always a chaotic year when you’re making a film, but the backdrop of a chaotic and divisive political year actually had the opposite effect on our film about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At a time when political institutions were being denigrated, it was reassuring to be telling the story of someone who has devoted […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“She Has Endured So Many Tough Situations”: Director Heather Lenz | Kusama – Infinity
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? In my experience, there will always be unexpected situations that arise and create chaos. That said, some people enjoy creating chaotic situations. Personally, I prefer to avoid such people. I see the job of a producer as being a job of clearing obstacles and making it as easy as possible to focus on the work that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“You Cannot be Objective When You’re Making a Film about the Peace Process between Israel and Palestine”: Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan on The Oslo Diaries
Receiving its world premiere at Sundance,The Oslo Diaries is the latest from Israeli filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, who last came to Park City with 2015’s Censored Voices, an exploration of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War through long-buried audiotape interviews with its on-the-ground soldiers. A similar reexamination of history, The Oslo Diaries combines unseen-until-now archival footage with the personal diaries of, and present-day interviews with, the handful of participants in the top secret, backchannel — and ultimately doomed — peacemaking process that took place in Norway in the early ’90s. Filmmaker spoke with the two directors prior to Sundance about […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 21, 2018 -
“The Bisbee Deportation Doesn’t Matter Unless it Relates to our Real Lives Today”: Robert Greene on Bisbee ’17
Sundance vet Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress) returns to Park City this year with a film quite unlike his previous features, at least in subject matter if not approach. For Bisbee ’17 Greene turns his trademark technique of fusing fiction and nonfiction elements on the story of a sordid anniversary, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, in which 1,200 immigrant miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, shipped out of the copper town on cattle cars and left to die in the desert. Through staged recreations developed and performed by local residents — including an actor whose mom was deported to […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 21, 2018 -
“How Are We Not Going Insane?”: Director Sandi Tan | Shirkers
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? It’s been my fortune to have been submerged in the sticky, sometimes pungent, always time-warping swamp of personal documentary filmmaking these past three years. My own narcissism (often in the form of horror at seeing/hearing myself on camera) has helped to blot out much of the real-life cataclysms the world has been experiencing since November 8, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“I Literally Shot the Whole Movie with Dolls on a Miniature Set”: Director Nicolas Pesce | Piercing
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? I’m too neurotic for chaos. But there’s always going to be some element of chaos in the process of making any movie. To me, it’s a matter of making sure you encounter as little chaos as possible. As such, I’m a voracious planner in an attempt to try to avoid that inevitable chaos. On my first […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
“I Am Not There to Call Attention to My Lighting:” DP Tom Hurwitz on Shooting Studio 54
Veteran cinematographer Tom Hurwitz has shot more than 100 documentary features and TV series since 1974, when he helped shoot The Grateful Dead, a concert film of the eponymous band live in San Francisco. Hurwitz has worked on such seminal series as Nova, Frontline and American Masters, while his feature doc work includes Wild Man Blues, The Queen of Versailles and last year’s Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. Having worked on Valentino: The Last Emperor in 2008, Hurwitz again teams up with director Matt Tyrnauer for Studio 54, a doc on the legendary New York nightclub. Studio 54 makes its debut […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
“More Used to Filming Drug Busts than Nerd Conventions”: Directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster | Science Fair
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Before making our first feature film, we were both investigative reporters. We’ve spent a dozen-plus combined years hanging out with drug dealers, pimps, warlords and cartel kingpins in some sketchy places, so we were pretty used to working in hard-to-predict environments. We naively thought that making a light hearted documentary about the science fair would be […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018
