Sundance Film Festival 2020
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Sundance Institute Announces Tabitha Jackson as New Festival Director
During the festival’s 2020 awards ceremony tonight, the Sundance Institute announced Tabitha Jackson, the Director since 2013 of the Institute’s Documentary Film Program, to be the new Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Jackson will succeed John Cooper, who, after 11 years as Director of the Festival, will move into a newly created Emeritus Director role. Said the Sundance Institute’s Executive Director, Keri Putnam, in a press release, “Tabitha is fiercely devoted to independent artists, has been a visionary member of the Sundance Institute’s leadership team for the last six years. Her authenticity, experience and perspective will serve her well […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2020 -
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 8: Time, The Nest
In 1999, Fox and Rob Rich, desperate to shore up the finances of their business (Shreveport’s first urban clothing store) robbed a bank; she got 12 years, he got 60. The throughline of Garrett Bradley’s Time—a compact epic spanning 21 years in 87 minutes—tracks Fox’s ceaseless efforts to get her husband home. Her website describes her as a “realist speaker”: a motivational lecturer transmuting her difficult experiences for higher ends than the usual conference room guest, as well as a “prospective Nobel Peace Prize winner” who “is both a teacher and servant, entrepreneur, business owner and most of all a humanitarian.” This […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 31, 2020 -
Sundance (and Slamdance) 2020 Dispatch #7: Dick Johnson is Dead, Kajillionaire The Glorias, Boy’s State and More
For the last several years, the very first film I’ve seen in Park City has been among the festival’s best, launching my Sundance with a bang. The lucky title this year is Dick Johnson is Dead, a documentary—whatever that label means in this case—directed and photographed by Dick’s daughter, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), whose cinematic imagination couldn’t be more alive and kicking. The imminent death, or what’s worse, the gradual ravaging by Alzheimer’s, of an aging parent is a personal and emotional minefield few are ever equipped to traverse, no less understand, when the time comes. Alzheimer’s is also a […]
by David Leitner on Jan 31, 2020 -
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 6: Yalda, a Night of Forgiveness; Time; Panels and Mixers
As I hinted at in my first dispatch, co-creation has been buzzy in documentary circles of late, with gatekeepers and filmmakers both interested in finding ways of working that challenge the decision-making processes of nonfiction filmmaking. This year’s Sundance was also chock full of filmmakers who started out in documentary and have recently moved into fiction; Canon even sponsored a panel featuring Matt Heineman on this very topic. One of these films was Yalda, a Night of Forgiveness, an ingeniously conceptualized, impeccably acted and tightly shot single location piece, it both buys into and subverts crucial elements of thriller, reality […]
by Abby Sun on Jan 30, 2020 -
And So We Do It: Laure Giappiconi on the Sundance Erotic Short While I’m Still Breathing
I’ve always liked female bodies. This is the first line of voice-over spoken in French across the opening seconds of black that launch While I’m Still Breathing (Tandis que je respire encore), a 12-minute short film playing in Sundance New Frontier by a creative collective that includes writer and actress Laure Giappiconi; sound and performance artist Elisa Monteil; and photographer and filmmaker La Fille Renne. The voice, a woman’s, speaks over a whirl of black and white grain in a medium shot showing a woman standing against a horizon of black tree trunks and blurred branches. The images are a […]
by Holly Willis on Jan 30, 2020 -
“I Believe That Stories Need to Try to Communicate Beyond Their Intended Audiences”: Sam Soko on His Sundance Doc Softie
Politics is a dirty business for sure. But too often we in America take for granted what younger democracies would view as unthinkable. That a strongman and his opponent might not broker a shared power arrangement behind closed doors. That police would not blithely shoot people who protest electoral outcomes in the streets. That one uncorrupt citizen determined to make change without paying constituents directly for their votes might be a viable candidate. These are the hopes and dreams embodied by Boniface “Softie” Mwangi, the grassroots activist turned politician star of Nairobi-based director Sam Soko’s intimate, Sundance (World Cinema Documentary […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 29, 2020 -
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 5: Shirley, The Mountains are a Dream That Calls to Me, małni – towards the ocean, towards the shore
In one of those freak festival viewing coincidences that don’t really mean anything, Sunday started with two movies in a row opening with the sound of a reiki bowl. The higher profile one, Shirley, marks multiple firsts for Josephine Decker: first directed from someone else’s screenplay (by Sarah Gubbins, adapted from Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel), first period piece and—most crucially to my mind—first without DP Ashley Connor. The subject is Shirley Jackson; I’ve read two of her short stories (I’m not proud of that) and would be curious to hear how this plays for knowledgeable admirers. Adaptation or no, visually this is […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 29, 2020 -
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 4: Summertime and This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Leaving Art House Convergence, I met up with some good folks from New Orleans (where I lived for three years), who were generously sharing their condo with me. We all got dropped off at the festival headquarters in Park City on “Day One” of the festival and headed in to pick up passes, though none of us walked away with one on Thursday. Industry passes issued through the Press & Inclusion Office program couldn’t be picked up until Friday, my housemates learned, while I spent my time in the line at the press office. On-site credential applications are subject to […]
by Abby Sun on Jan 28, 2020 -
“The Vibrant Color of the Spilled Ketchup on the White Floor With the Broken Bottle was the Best Way to Describe What the Movie was All About”: DP Jean-Philippe Bernier on Dinner in America
Punk rock and suburbia collide when Simon meets Peggy in Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Dinner in America. As the two traverse the Midwest, Peggy unwittingly assists the lead singer of her favorite band in evading the police, all the while uncovering the unforeseen connections between them. DP Jean-Philippe Bernier constructs two distinct cinematic styles that function in tandem with the film’s contrasting central characters. Drawing upon a background in film score composition, as well as an early career rooted in the punk scene, Bernier discusses the process of melding content and medium to create a distinct cinematographic look, drenched in the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2020 -
“As the Stories the Characters Tell Begin to Come to Life, the Camera and Lighting Begin Working in Tandem to Alter Reality”: DP Brendan H. Banks on Scare Me
When Fred settles into a secluded cabin intent on completing his first novel, a power outage prompts a horror storytelling competition between two strangers. Josh Ruben’s horror-comedy, Scare Me, delves into the artistic tensions between two writers and the insecurities they face on a greater social scale as the stories they tell begin to come to life. DP Brendan H. Banks breaks down the process of balancing two distinct genres while maintaining a sense of reality within the film’s photographic style. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2020
