Sundance Film Festival
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“The Rest of the Shoot Was Just as Unpredictable”: Director Alexandria Bombach | On Her Shoulders
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? When I packed my bags to meet Nadia Murad for the first time, I thought we were heading to Kurdistan. I was going to film the displaced Yazidis in camps north of Sinjar and possibly the mass graves where ISIS had murdered thousands of Yazidi people in 2014. It was July, so I packed for 120-degree […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
Mark Burnett and Nick Emerson on Editing Aubrey Plaza Comedy An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
Writer/director Jim Hosking premiered his short Renegades at Sundance in 2010 and returned to the festival in 2016 with his debut feature The Greasy Strangler. His second feature, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, premieres in the NEXT program at Sundance 2018. Luff Lin unites Hosking with a cast of comedy luminaries: Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement and Craig Robinson, among others. The film was edited by Mark Burnett, who also edited Greasy Strangler, and Nick Emerson (Lady Macbeth, Starred Up). Filmmaker spoke with the film’s editing team about the film’s tricky tone, which teeters between absurdist and romantic comedy, ahead of Luff Linn‘s premiere […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 1: Our New President, Three Identical Strangers
Two things shape my Sundance coverage this year — one purely personal, the other macro. The personal was recently reading Christian Metz’s Film Language, the kind of text normally consumed in undergrad cinema studies (not my major) but belatedly a worthwhile book all the same; I wanted some new tools to think about movies, and this fit the bill. The opening essays are recognizably Barthes-ian contemplations of i.e. what makes the moving image more plausible than a still image and the middle gets mired in a lot of precise definitions of paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic, but the finale is a surprisingly fiery, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 19, 2018 -
“Chaos Was Our Mantra”: Director Daryl Wein | White Rabbit
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? Chaos was our mantra for White Rabbit. We decided early on we wanted to embrace the unknown. To literally and figuratively go down a rabbit hole. This meant, that even though we knew the basis for our story, which was an exploration of Asian American identity, LGBTQ issues and female gender dynamics, anything was possible. Invention […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2018 -
Stop-Motion DP Tristan Oliver on Creating a Behind-the-Scenes VR Short for Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
UK-based cinematographer Tristan Oliver has worked on stop-motion features, shorts, music videos and commercials for more than 20 years. Oliver served as DP on Fantastic Mr. Fox, Chicken Run and Wes Anderson’s forthcoming Isle of Dogs. For that last feature, Anderson also tapped Oliver to shoot a VR short on the making of the film, which enters theaters on March 23. Oliver spoke with Filmmaker about the cameras used on the film, translating Anderson’s aesthetic to stop-motion and the film as “an homage to Japanese cinema.” The short will screen as part of Sundance’s New Frontier program. Filmmaker: How and why […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2018 -
Hits and Misses: Anthony Kaufman Surveys the Sundance Class of ’17
The headlines said it all: “Hollywood Faces August Death March,” “Bummer Summer” and “Beleaguered Box Office.” OK, Hollywood had a tough year, but does that necessarily apply to independent films? Well, as the saying goes, a receding tide sinks all boats. And so it was in 2017: If people were going out to fewer movies and streaming more episodic content at home, it affected both indie films and tentpoles. But if we look back at the films that premiered at Sundance 2017, there are a few instances to inspire hope: The Big Sick, of course, was the big one; Wind […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Dec 14, 2017 -
Sundance 2018 Announces Indie Episodic, Shorts and Special Event Selections
Following on last week’s announcement of its feature slate for the 2018 edition, the Sundance Film Festival has announced the selections for its indie episodic, shorts and special events selections. In that middle category Filmmaker readers will spot two of this year’s 25 New Faces of film, Robin Comisar and Alexa Lim Haas. INDIE EPISODIC America To Me / U.S.A. (Director: Steve James, Segment Directors: Bing Liu, Rebecca Parrish, Kevin Shaw) — This limited series captures a year-long look at one of Chicago’s most progressive and diverse public schools, located in suburban Oak Park. Unprecedented in scope, the series is both […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 4, 2017 -
Sundance Announces Full 2018 Features Lineup
In years past, Sundance has unveiled its feature film lineup a few slates at a time; this year, we get all of the features scheduled to date in one fell swoop. The lineup — 110 strong over 10 categories — includes no less than 15 projects that are alumni of IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent magazine, including 306 Hollywood, the debut feature from Elan and Jonathan Bogarín, profiled in this year’s 25 New Faces of Film. It’s a heady line-up; dive in. The festival runs from January 18 through 28; look for our coverage starting then. U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION American Animals / U.S.A. (Director and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 29, 2017 -
Fest Circuit: Sundance, Berlin, Borscht and True/False
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL By Ashley Clark At this year’s ceaselessly snow-pummelled Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 19-29), I hardly expected to experience my first slice of knockout formal invention while languishing at my laptop in my hotel room. But these are strange times and, having landed in Park City on Jan. 20, hours after the surreal presidential inauguration of a bit player from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, I found immediate succor in scrolling through my Twitter feed. It had been colonized by a panoply of speedily crafted user videos depicting white supremacist goon and Trump supporter Richard Spencer […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 13, 2017 -
“You Are Forced to Look Very Carefully”: DP Alan Jacobsen on Strong Island
Hailed by Filmmaker as one of the 25 New Faces of independent cinema in 2011, Yance Ford makes her feature film debut with Strong Island, an intensely personal documentary on the 1992 death of his brother. Ford worked with DP Alan Jacobsen to create the film’s singular aesthetic, which combines long takes and a camera that never pans or tilts. Ford and Jacobsen drew inspiration from the long take masters, from Tarkovsky to artist Sharon Lockhart. Jacobsen spoke with Filmmaker ahead of Strong Island‘s premiere in the U.S. documentary competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Below, he touches on the painful nature of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2017
