Sundance Film Festival

“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
“THE GLASS HOUSE” writer-producer, Melissa Hibbard

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 12:15 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] The idea for making The Glass House came organically when the director, Hamid Rahmanian, and I were invited to the Omid e Mehr Center in Tehran during a short visit to Iran (for what should have been a couple of weeks and turned into two years). At first we weren’t interested in covering a women’s crisis center in Iran — it had been done a few times already. Our biggest hesitation was the difficulty in penetrating the thick façade of pretenses that dominate Iranian culture; intimacy […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
“ART & COPY” director, Doug Pray

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 5:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Art & Copy is a movie about advertising, creativity, and the innate human urge we have to communicate – whether it’s painting on cave walls or selling canned spaghetti. What makes this documentary a reflection of its times may be simply that people are finding my characters to be inspirational, at a time when many documentaries– for a lot of very good reasons– are depressing, and losing their audiences a result. Maybe times are changing, and people are ready to be less cynical. (Even about advertising…?)
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009
ADVICE FROM THE FRONT LINES: SUNDANCE SURVIVAL TIPS By Alicia Van Couvering

More than anything, Sundance is a survival game. Here are some tips from veterans on how to make it through your stay there. Park City Fashion: You shouldn’t be embarrassed about skiing down to Main Street and going straight to a screening. It’s cool to show up at the Egyptian in your snow gear. — Jeff Abramson, Gen Art Budget Control: The more time you spend in an actual theater the less chance you have of buying rounds in bars and other more frivolous expenses. Rather than partying, choose that midnight movie instead! — Michael Tully, Hammertonail.com Housing Strategy: Wait […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 15, 2009
SUNDANCE MOOD RING By Alicia Van Couvering

What’s the mood heading into the 25th Sundance Film Festival? Overall, the sense of a across the board scaling back is palpable. Almost no one will talk about their own company’s downsizing publicly, for fear of appearing financially unstable, but it’s no secret that the economic catastrophes have hit everyone’s travel and promotional budgets. Besides fewer sponsored parties – Motorola, for instance, will not be in attendance — the rumor is that some photo agencies have majorly scaled back their coverage, sticking to the red carpet only, and usually ubiquitous publications aren’t sending their film critics. “The party grid is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009
VAULTING ACROSS SUNDANCES By Scott Macaulay

Independent filmmakers like to think that they are creating works of art that contribute to an enduring American culture. There’s just one problem: these works of art are disintegrating. Literally. More concerned with life rights than half-life, filmmakers are allowing their films to crumble and dissolve into analog blurs and forests of digital glitches as formats change, materials are uncared for, and elements are left forgotten on lab floors. Enter the Sundance Collection, a collaborative program with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It is the first archive to be devoted exclusively to the preservation of independent cinema. This year, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009
INDUSTRY BEAT: In the wake of Prop 8, will a new Queer Cinema rise at Sundance? By Anthony Kaufman

Here’s Anthony Kaufman’s Industry Beat column for the upcoming Winter issue. “Gay Marriage Ban Inspires New Wave of Activists,” declared a recent headline in The New York Times. If the passage of California‘s Proposition 8 initiative — which denied same-sex couples the previously granted right to marry in the state — could stir hundreds of newly politicized members of the gay community to join together and fight back, will that same activist energy jolt America‘s gay and lesbian filmmakers to do the same? If a new, more radicalized LGBT cinema were on the rise, trend spotters would likely find murmurs […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 9, 2009
“AFGHAN STAR” director, Havana Marking

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 6:15 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City] Afghan Star is a documentary about a TV show of the same name. It’s a powerful TV format we all know — a version of Pop Idol — but in a country that most of us don’t: Afghanistan. With the backdrop of warfare and Taliban repression (they banned music and used to impale TVs on spikes) you certainly wouldn’t expect to find a TV music talent contest. But Afghan Star: The Series is now one of the most potent forces of change the country has. You […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2009

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