Sundance Film Festival 2024
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“The Easiest Thing to Get People to Do on Film is the Sexual Stuff”: Scott Cummings on His Sundance Doc Realm of Satan
A decade after Buffalo Juggalos, which explored the Faygo-spattered milieu of the Juggalo subculture in his native Buffalo, N.Y., Scott Cummings returns with a full-length immersion into another misunderstood community, the Church of Satan. Realm of Satan, which premieres Jan. 21 in the NEXT section of the Sundance Film Festival, is a deeply collaborative endeavor that adapts the philosophy and practices of the church into a rigorous yet playful visual approach that also takes liberties with observational form through inspired use of VFX. Cummings, who began work on the film in 2016 and persisted through the pandemic, spoke with Filmmaker […]
by Steve Dollar on Jan 21, 2024 -
Sundance 2024: Between the Temples, Seeking Mavis Beacon
It’s rare to see a comedy immediately get going in its first shot as Between the Temples does—no credits, throat-clearing establishing shots or slow unveiling of protagonists, instead a slow zoom out introducing cantor Ben (Jason Schwartzman) being cornered at the dinner table by his moms Meira (Caroline Aaron) and Judith (Dolly De Leon). The two mothers lovingly hector him (this movie operates at dizzying levels of Jewishness), saying it’s time to seek out a doctor for his problem: following the death of his alcoholic novelist wife, Ben is a cantor who can’t sing. This gives Temples a surprisingly normal […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2024 -
“This Isn’t Just Any AI”: Director Pete Sillen on Bina48 and His Sundance Documentary, Love Machina
By the time in 2010 Martine Rothblatt completed the first iteration of Bina48, the “social robot” modeled after her real-life partner, Bina Aspen (now Bina Rothblatt), she had already trailblazed an extraordinary career across multiple industries. A lawyer and entrepreneur, she cofounded Sirius Satellite Radio as well as biotech company United Therapeutics, the latter an outgrowth of her work developing a medication that saved her daughter Jenesis’s life, along with over 40,000 others suffering from pulmonary arterial hypertension. So when Rothblatt, a transgender rights activist, who, at one point, was declared the world’s highest paid female CEO, and her wife […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2024 -
“My Imagination Was Intimately Connected to the Countryside of My Birth” | Christopher Jenkins, 10 Lives
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? I’m from the U.K., but have lived in the States for 30-something years. And while I’m thoroughly glued into my life in Los Angeles, I’ve yet to go completely native. Still, to this day when writing, I unconsciously lean into the values I […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2024 -
“14 Inches From a Very Personal Form of Murder”: Steven Soderbergh on Camera as Character and His Sundance Horror Film, Presence
A heady, elegantly-constructed ghost story, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence has a bunch of half-buried threads, a couple of perfectly-timed scares, and a horrific close-up of an act of violence that mesmerizes the camera—just as horror films mesmerize their audience. The camera is the star here, and not merely because its sustained, floating movements, its sudden turns and retreats, its anxious hovering display the virtuosity of the operator who is also the film’s director, but because it is the titular character, the unseen presence whose half-life is disturbed and then engaged by a family of four that moves into a suburban house […]
by Amy Taubin on Jan 20, 2024 -
“Can Someone Who Uses a Wheelchair Access this Location?” | Amber Sealey, Out of My Mind
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? There was a practical aspect to choosing our locations and sets for Out of My Mind that is not usually at the forefront of filmmakers’ minds: Can someone who uses a wheelchair access this location and every aspect of this location? Our […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
Eugene Hernandez and Kim Yutani Talk Sundance 2024 Along with 20 Films We’re Anticipating at the Festival
With its 2024 edition kicking off today, Sundance turns 40. In the words of festival director Eugene Hernandez and director of programming Kim Yutani, this anniversary edition will be a mixture of the old and new—with the heaviest emphasis, of course, on the new. “We sincerely thought it would best honor and celebrate the history and the legacy of the festival by nodding to it and certainly digging into it in a few key spots, but really it’s the looking ahead and discovery that is what Sundance is all about,” said Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez to Filmmaker in an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2024 -
“We Realized During the Edit That There Were Several Options for the Ending”: Editor Sofi Marshall on I Saw the TV Glow
Suburban teen loner Owen (Justice Smith) is introduced to a late-night TV show shrouded in mystery by a fellow classmate (Brigette Lundy-Paine) in I Saw the TV Glow, the latest genre offering from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun. Dubbed an “emo horror” flick by Sundance programmers, Schoenbrun’s sophomore feature is having its world premiere in Park City this year, where the filmmaker’s buzzy feature debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, similarly premiered in 2021. Editor Sofi Marshall discusses how she became involved in Schoenbrun’s latest project, how the “independent” section of her local Blockbuster catalyzed her filmic career path and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
2024 Sundance Questionnaire: Editor Responses
Each year, Filmmaker sends all Sundance feature film or series editors a questionnaire to complete ahead of their film’s festival screening. We also send out a single question for feature directors to answer as well as questionnaires for cinematographers and first-time Sundance feature producers. Below, find links to individual editor responses, which will be updated daily during the festival. “Anyone That Watched the Early Cuts Had the Same Reaction”: Editors Dashya Broadway and Jon Higgins on Your Monster “I Approached Each Edit as I Would an Onion”: Editor Julian Ulrichs on Kneecap “We Realized During the Edit That There Were Several Options […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“We Imagined the Queer London of Our Dreams” | Amrou Al-Kadhi, Layla
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Layla is a film of imagined space. Though set and filmed in East London, home to a vibrant queer scene and history, LGBTQ+ spaces in cities around the globe are currently victim to rapid gentrification. London is no exception. The majority of the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024
