Sundance Film Festival

“CHAMELEON STREET” By Mike Plante

Mike Plante wrote about the DVD release of Chameleon Street in our Load & Play section in 2007. The film will screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in its Sundance Collection section. In Chameleon Street, the enigmatic Doug Street goes through a series of cons, sometimes to make money, sometimes to prove he can do more than what the world expects of him. In short time he goes from a simple extortion plot to complex impersonations, including as a reporter from Time, a Yale student, a lawyer and even a surgeon. Yes, a surgeon – who performed 36 successful […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“YOU WONT MISS ME'”S RY RUSSO-YOUNG By Alicia Van Couvering

You Wont Miss Me is Ry Russo-Young’s second feature, and her first in Sundance. Orphans, which premiered at SXSW last year, was a Bergman-esque tale of two sisters, now separated, who come together in their parents’ sprawling, snow-bound house to hack emotional pieces out of one another. You Wont Miss Me is very different in style and tone. It uses experimental film techniques – disjointed narrative, a salad of film and video formats – to paint a portrait of one desperate, uncensored, sexy wreck of a young woman named Shelly Brown. Russo-Young invented the character with the film’s star, Stella […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2009
OPENING SLAMDANCE WITH “I SELL THE DEAD” By Alicia Van Couvering

Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell The Dead, starring Dominic Monaghan and Ron Perlman, will open Slamdance this year. Taglined “Never Trust a Corpse,” it’s a vintage-inspired horror-comedy set in the 18th or 19th-century, structured as a series of drunken recollections on the life of a career grave robber (Monaghan.) The film is produced by and co-stars horror-master Larry Fessenden (Wendigo, The Last Winter, Habit) of the New York production outfit Glass Eye Pix. The team behind ISTD – McQuaid, Fessenden and Scareflix producer Peter Phok — sat down with Filmmaker on the eve of their trip to Park City to reminisce […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2009
CROSSING OVER AT SUNDANCE: MELISSA AUF DER MAUR By Alicia Van Couvering

“I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.” — Mark Rothko Doesn’t it make sense that every professional artist would have ideas in between mediums, would collaborate across categorical boundaries and make new and different work as their vision expands over their lifetime? It would seem to make perfect sense, but it doesn’t happen as often as it could. This year at Sundance, though, there are several artists who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves “filmmakers” on their tax returns, and who are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2009
“CARMO, HIT THE ROAD” writer-director, Murilo Pasta

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:00 pm — Screening Room, Sundance Resort] My story was shaped by the only force affecting cinema today that really counts: the financing aspect. I’m a Third World filmmaker with no private income, no friends in high places and no godfathers in the filmmaking world. The three notions that have guided me in this five-year journey, from Carmo’s conception through to being selected for Sundance, are: strategy, strategy and strategy.What choice did I have? So before I could even consider desired visual approach, casting possibilities, prospective budgeting levels, etc., I decided that my debut feature […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“THE KILLING ROOM” director, Jonathan Liebesman

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 am — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] The Killing Room was never consciously shaped by any changes in the collective structures of other films today. However any filmmaker is influenced by what he or she sees around in film, movies, books and life. I do believe that there is a collective consciousness that breezes through many films as far as technique or structural choices are concerned. As for technique and execution, for a while now, the Hollywood films that have made the most impact on me have been those that attempt to make their […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“NO IMPACT MAN” producer, Eden H. Wurmfeld

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 am — Library Center Theatre, Park City] As filmmakers interested in creating character-driven films about social issues, we saw the story of No Impact Man as a great opportunity. An intimate, cinema vérité look at a family trying to find their place in our culture of consumption and the affect that has on the environment. The idea of No Impact Man was that Colin Beavan, his wife and their daughter would remove themselves to the greatest extent possible from the various aspects of life that cause negative environmental impact while also increasing their positive […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE” directors, Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] Our film is the story of a man born in 1919 as told by his daughters, who were born in the late 1970s. William Kunstler was a radical civil rights lawyer who took part in many of the major activist and social movements from 1960 to 1994. But we didn’t make this film for the people who lived through that history with him. We made it for younger generations. This is a film about legacy, about looking at your parents’ lives and deciding what to take from their […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“TAKING CHANCE” co-writer-director, Ross Katz

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 5:15 pm — Racquet Club, Park City] I went to school for two years at Temple University, studying story and structure with professors David Parry and Allen Barber. I was completely impatient (which has never gone away) and always wanted to go shoot, shoot, shoot. But David’s and Allen’s message, understood through studying all kinds of films, was always about story. No matter how ready I thought I was, they would always come back to “who is your audience,” “why are you telling this story,” and “the script isn’t ready.” They were right. Though I […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“DADA’S DANCE” director, Zhang Yuan

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 6:00 pm — Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City] A year of significance for China is 1989 — a significant year for many Chinese of my age. It is the year when the Tiananmen Square incident shook the world. In that same year, I concluded my four years of study at Beijing Film Academy and made my debut film Mama. The making of Mama ended up not only holding significant meaning for me but for Chinese cinema in the broader context. Prior to 1989, Chinese film rigidly followed the ways of the Soviet big brother — […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009

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