Sundance Film Festival
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“If You’re Not Loving it, Then What’s the Point?”: Director Michael Walker | Paint
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Did you really get into making movies so that you could have order in your life? Making movies, at least low budget movies, is fucking crazy. It’s always wild and unpredictable. That’s the fun of it. When you do it with people you love and trust – which is nearly always – it’s the best party […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 4: Eighth Grade, Shirkers, Piercing
I suppose I should lead with Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, one of the fest’s breakouts or something along those lines — it arrived as an A24 production with Scott Rudin as one of the producers, so clearly people were going to be curious. The title is basically the movie: in her last week of middle school hell, awkward Kayla (Elsie Fisher) — voted by her otherwise indifferent classmates as most quiet — fumbles through a cool kids’ pool party she shouldn’t be at. Kayla shadows a high school senior and is invited to hang out with her crew. That temporary boost […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 22, 2018 -
“Unpredictable, Loud, Hot, and Dangerous”: Director Michael Dweck | The Last Race
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? The track where we shot The Last Race was a reflection of the speedway next to my childhood home where I would sneak under the fence to watch races on hot Saturday summer nights. Later, as an adult, I spent years creating still photographs there, and during that time, I lived and breathed the world of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 3: Crime + Punishment, Monsters and Men, Bisbee ’17
I’ve written before about my fondness for local news: “a fun, seemingly randomized mash-up of crimes caught on security cameras, traffic and weather updates, forced banter, cooking segments, deep concerns about marijuana use and ‘reporting’ that’s thinly veiled support for the NYPD.” One segment in the latter mode still regularly replays in my mind: following the 2014 shooting of two NYPD officers, one channel — playing to that unflappable demographic which believes the police are always in the right — aired a particularly shameless segment in which a reporter found a seven-year-old black child to tearfully state how much he […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 21, 2018 -
DP Matías Mesa on Shooting Sundance Drama The Queen of Fear
The directorial debut of Argentine actress Valeria Bertuccelli, The Queen of Fear holds its world premiere at Sundance 2018 as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The film was co-directed by Fabiana Tiscornia and stars Bertuccelli as an actress set to open a one-woman show. Matías Mesa, the film’s cinematographer, has DP’d a number of Spanish-language shorts and features in addition to his camera operator work on Okja, Triple 9 and The Road. Below, Mesa speaks with Filmmaker about lighting a blackout sequence and the visual influences on The Queen of Fear. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“How Are American Men Being Made?”: Director Bing Liu | Minding the Gap
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? It’s difficult to describe any part of the filmmaking process as not chaotic – Minding the Gap was by far the most difficult task I’d ever tried to take on. I was working on all these other projects and writing grants to fund the film and all the while my mom was fighting through a violent […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“She Has Endured So Many Tough Situations”: Director Heather Lenz | Kusama – Infinity
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? In my experience, there will always be unexpected situations that arise and create chaos. That said, some people enjoy creating chaotic situations. Personally, I prefer to avoid such people. I see the job of a producer as being a job of clearing obstacles and making it as easy as possible to focus on the work that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
“How Are We Not Going Insane?”: Director Sandi Tan | Shirkers
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? It’s been my fortune to have been submerged in the sticky, sometimes pungent, always time-warping swamp of personal documentary filmmaking these past three years. My own narcissism (often in the form of horror at seeing/hearing myself on camera) has helped to blot out much of the real-life cataclysms the world has been experiencing since November 8, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018 -
Zoë White on Filming Christina Choe’s Feature Debut NANCY Starring Andrea Riseborough
Zoë White has DP’d more than 30 features and shorts since 2004, including Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd and Onur Tukel’s Catfight. Her latest work, NANCY, marks the feature debut of Christina Choe, a writer/director whose shorts have screened at Telluride and SXSW. NANCY tells the story of a struggling writer (Andrea Riseborough) who tells elaborate lies on the Internet to compensate for her creative failures. The film co-stars Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd and John Leguizamo. Below, White discusses how she and Choe arrived at the film’s visual design. NANCY screens in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 2: Clara’s Ghost, Hale County This Morning, This Evening
For the second consecutive year, Sundance showed an Academy-ratio film with Ghost in the title, but Bridey Elliott’s feature directorial debut Clara’s Ghost is decidedly not A Ghost Story. Bridey stars along with father Chris, sister Abby and mom Paula (the only non-actor in the bunch, though she easily holds her own). The plot’s loose: sisters Riley (Bridey) and Julie (Abby) — former child stars as the Olsen-esque Reynolds sisters — come for a one-night visit home. Father Ted (Chris) has just lost his casting in a show being put together by Julie’s fiance and is feeling rancorous. Some magazine photographers come over to take […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2018
