Sundance Film Festival
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“I AM NOT A HIPSTER” | writer-director, Destin Daniel Cretton
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] One of my favorite things about directing movies is getting to highlight other people’s talents. When I was ten, I was videotaping my brother’s magic tricks and sister’s one-handed cartwheels to show-off to my parents. With this film, I got to do the same thing with a new group of friends. Last year I saw Dominic Bogart on a Chicago stage in Jersey Boys and his singing blew my mind. I also knew he had a talent for subtle, character-driven performances, so I started to think of a role […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“½ REVOLUTION” directors, Karim El Hakim & Omar Shargawi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 am –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Co-director Karim El Hakim: The challenge of capturing the spontaneity of life in all its hidden moments and glancing magic is why I am a filmmaker. What turns me on is exploring the time and space around me, following the individual threads of emotional energy in each of the characters I become invested in. The more intense and stressful a situation is, the more emotional the characters become. How will these emotional strings play out? How will they intertwine and conflict? How do they reflect the situation? What will […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present | Director Matthew Akers
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 9:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] I began making work as a painter and sculptor. It was not until I graduated from art school that I ventured into filmmaking. Though I’m glad I did, I sometimes lament that it has dominated most of my life for the past 12 years, as I have not been painting or sculpting much. On the other hand, it has taken me all over the world and been an expansive exercise which has broadened my mind and led me down paths I could have never imagined. I have found that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THE PACT” | writer-director, Nicholas McCarthy
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 Midnight –Egyptian Theatre] There is one thread in my movie The Pact that is inseparable from the medium of film: ghost photography. Google it, you’ll find hundreds of examples. Since the camera was invented, people have believed they could photograph spirits. I’ve always been fascinated with this, and my movie is filled with examples of it. When we made The Pact there was a particular shot we were filming involving a light flickering, an effect that had been written into the script that portrayed the story’s’ ghostly spirit invading an electrical socket. We set up […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THE ORATOR” | director, Tusi Tamasese
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, Noon –Temple Theatre, Park City] When my shortlived attempts at pigfarming didn’t work out and my mum sent me to NZ, I accidentally found out that there were courses about film. This intruiged me because it made me realise just how much film is a construct in what is chosen to go in the frame and what doesn’t, the colour, sound, sequencing, etc etc. The power of this particular construct (and not that it’s the only one) is it can be like a mirror that reflects not only the reality of the storyteller but for […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THE AMBASSADOR” | director, Mads Brügger
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] Well, first of all I don’t think of myself as an artist. I am a journalist, who happens to make films. I make these films because they allow me to connect with an audience which is much larger than the five million Danes who live in Denmark. If I had written my latest film The Ambassador as a book, and published it in Denmark, I would not be answering this question in English, because nobody would know about The Ambassador outside of Denmark.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THE RAID” | writer-director, Gareth Evans
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 11:15 pm –The MARC, Park City] I’m the guy that makes stunt performers take multiple kicks to the head for the pleasure of what I hope is a captivated audience. I ask a lot of people. I deal in blood and mayhem. As a kid I was obsessed, and still am to this day with the incredible work done by my childhood heroes. My friends and I would re-enact everything we’d seen, doing remakes of our favorite films in my back garden. 8 year old kids running around swinging punches and kicks, diving across the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“OLSO, AUGUST 31st ” | writer-director Joachim Trier
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] How can you express thought in film? How can we specifically show thoughts in a character? As a director, in my view, the most personal is how you see things. My co-writer Eskil Vogt and I wanted to explore how to create a story that focuses on the emotional, and almost physical, experience of an existential crisis. “I’m lost. How do I move forward?” So Oslo, August 31st is about the state of being lost and that particular loneliness that accompanies it. Cinema is a wonderful art form […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID” | director, Carrie Preston
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 5:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Since I was a kid, I wanted to put on shows. I would make my little sister do skits with me that I had written, and I even started my own theater company in my neighborhood when I was 12, directing all the neighborhood kids in our front yards. I was dead serious about my make believe. When I was acting, I would disappear and get lost in someone else’s skin, yet at the same time, I never felt more present in my own. That’s the same way […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012 -
“THE D WORD: UNDERSTANDING DYSLEXIA” | director, James Redford
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] As a storyteller, I suppose I have that spark that makes me think that I might touch people, and the power of film is exponential in that regard. It is not just ideas, images, words and sound. It is all of these things simultaneously, and therefore the sum is much greater than the parts. I also happen to love production. Yes, it’s too rare. It’s chaotic and things go wrong. But it is exciting as hell to solve problems if you work with good people like I do. It […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012
