A Remote Festival The Sundance Film Festival, which ended February 3, succeeded remarkably well despite the pandemic, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the New Frontier lineup of virtual/augmented reality and other new media. In fact, as has been commented throughout 2020, in many ways virtual reality was made for this moment. With VR headsets reaching ever further into the consumer population it was feasible for this year’s New Frontier lineup, including several 2D browser-based works, to be shown remotely with essentially no loss in quality, especially when compared with feature films being screened on a laptop or […]

In 1977, a characteristically fervid Philip K. Dick arrived to lecture at a science fiction convention and share his experiences from three years earlier, when he became convinced that the world was a simulation, one of many (“there may be 30 or 3,000 of them”) operating simultaneously, glimpses of which he’d seen. Clips from this speech (“If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”) and the Q&A that followed frame Rodney Ascher’s A Glitch in the Matrix. In the five-chapter (plus an epilogue) dive into the world of “simulation theory,” Ascher focuses on five subjects […]

In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony suggests, we fill with our own biases. Literally baring his blindspot on screen, Anthony concedes to the viewer that All Light, Everywhere is limited by his own subjective framework. His latest visceral essay film (following Rat Film and ESPN “30 for Short” short Subject to Review) follows Axon (formerly Taser) spokesman Steve Tuttle and Persistent Surveillance […]

One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]

The persistence of COVID-19 disrupted the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in many ways; no blizzard-clogged traffic-jams or overstuffed parties; no late-night negotiations in the Eccles lobby; no standing in lines next to fellow film travelers, giving or getting recommendations of what to see and what to miss. But even without the high altitude buzz of Park City, the pandemic did not stop Sundance’s record for deals! deals! deals! for the festival’s most commercial titles, with industry players saying the virtual event was even more competitive than previous years—“without a doubt,” said one distribution company chief. But what about those dozens […]

It may still feature two households both alike in dignity, but in Carey Williams’s modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, R#J, the modes of communication look decidedly different. Set in California in the here and now, Williams’s film hones in on the title characters’ brief but intense romance via their messaging tool of choice: the smartphone. Back-and-forth texts and DMs, impromptu FaceTiming sessions, tagging each other in Instagram photos and sharing personally curated Spotify playlists add to the cumulative rise and potential fall of literature’s most infamously star-crossed lovers. Produced by Bazelevs Productions (founded by popular Russian filmmaker […]

Lowell High School, whose student population is predominantly Asian American, is different from most US high schools portrayed on film. Director Debbie Lum came to the nationally ranked school to portray Lowell’s students, particularly so called “tiger cubs” in the heat of the college admissions process for her Sundance 2021 doc Try Harder!. Of course, not all of the Asian American students shown in the film have stereotypical “tiger moms,” and it’s refreshing to see an array of Asian American parents and students shown in communities where they feel comfortable, rather than shrinking in the minority. But the pressure on […]

After so much meta-ness, it was practically relaxing to settle back in the waning hours of this year’s Sundance with a drama as solid and old-fashioned as Jockey. Not unlike The Wrestler, absent the self-consciously Dardenne-ian camerawork, this Southwestern slice-of-life follows an aging athlete – the titular jockey Jackson (Clinton Collins Jr.) – as he confronts the end of his long ride. On the racetrack, at least, although the aggregated damage caused by a series of back injuries now threatens to cripple him, or worse, if he keeps at it. Director and co-writer Clint Bentley, who previously co-wrote and produced […]

Hello Abby, We’ve been Gchatting through our initial Sundance 2021 reactions in between filing festival coverage proper, so it only seems logical to finish out this year by doing a direct handoff in public view. While our experiences were complementary, we had different timelines and levels of willingness to engage. You tried out a good chunk of New Frontier material and went to virtual gatherings in avatar form; true to usual IRL form, I kept a skulking low profile. Our coverage overlapped a few times online (thanks, by the way, for getting into the political dimensions of El Planeta I […]

Natalia Almada’s Users is an inquisition on technology and its inextricable nature from modern life. Juxtaposed against Californian wildfires and oceans on the rise, the film questions what progress means when we sacrifice so much in the process. Almada, alongside her co-editor Dave Cerf, describes the unique collaborative process used in editing the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Almada: Well… I’ve edited all my films. In part I think it is because I need the editing […]