Sundance Film Festival
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Culture Hacker: A Storytelling Pandemic
by Lance Weiler on Jan 24, 2011
A storytelling pandemic. By Lance Weiler. -
Uncle Kent Director Joe Swanberg
Since Joe Swanberg’s first feature film, Kissing on the Mouth, premiered at SXSW in 2005, he’s managed to make at least a feature a year, multiple web-series, and found regular launch-pads at SXSW and IFC Films. When Swanberg directs a film, he really functions as a craftsman of the entire work: while he eschews screenplays in favor of improvisation, he works as cinematographer, editor, and usually acts in the film. As the nexus of a low-budget film movement stressing honesty, stories chronicling the lives of people in their twenties, and improvisation (this movement begins with an “M,” ends with “core,” […]
by James Ponsoldt on Jan 23, 2011 -
The Future Director Miranda July
Known as a West coast performance and video artist in the decade before her 2005 award-winning debut feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July seems to jump effortlessly from one medium to another. Her collection of short stories — No One Belongs Here More Than You — won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2007, and more recently she designed an interactive sculpture garden that was on view in the 2009 Venice Biennale before moving to Union Square this past summer. At this point, there are very few career moves for Miranda July that would […]
by James Ponsoldt on Jan 22, 2011 -
CULT COINCIDENCE? OR SUNDANCE TRUTH REVEALED
There are four films at Sundance that venture, at least nominally, into the world of cults. Cult recovery (MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE), cult membership (HIGHER GROUND), cult discovery (THE SOUND OF MY VOICE), and cult leadership (RED STATE.) But as the crowds swell in Park City, as bus load after bus load of excited devotees alight, something is clear: there are an awful lot of identical grey sweaters, blue lanyards, knit hats and striped scarves. Together but alone, the committed stand in line for days, freezing cold, blind with hope.
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 21, 2011 -
PROGRAMMER INTERVIEW: NEW LANDSCAPE FOR NEW FRONTIERS
Sundance programmer Shari Frilot watches all kinds of films for the festival each year, but she spends much of the her time smoking out the best, strangest, most relevant work for the New Frontiers section. Call it new media or transmedia or video-internet-3D film art; the best work in the section is indescribable. Until this year, New Frontiers was packed into a cavernous space inside the lower level of a shopping mall on Main Street. This year, they’re moving to the Miners Hospital, across from the Library. “Every year people would say, ‘Wait, where was New Frontiers?’ I missed that!’ […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 20, 2011 -
The Microbudget Conversation : Films Too Small To Fail
I first met Zak Mulligan through my DP Sean Donnelly a few years back. After a bit of back and forth on the merits of Kickstarter, I helped him with a little production design on his first feature, and we became fast friends and supporters of each others work. Zak and his directing partner Rodrigo Lopresti were recent participants of IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs with their first feature film I’m not me. Zak also won the Best Cinematography award at Sundance last year for his work on the film Obselidia. He’s here to talk a bit about the advantages of […]
by John Yost on Jan 18, 2011 -
A LETTER TO FILMMAKERS NOT GOING TO SUNDANCE
Last year I ran the below post, “So You Didn’t Get Into Sundance.” As the Sundance list came out this week, I thought I’d give it a once over and pen a new version for ’11. But after reading it again, I’m not sure what I’d change. Once, more then… So you didn’t get into Sundance…. I’m sorry. Trust me, I feel your pain. As a producer I’ve received both the acceptance calls as well as the rejection ones. (Actually, the rejection call is sometimes not even a call, but a form email or letter.) In some cases, I’ve known […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 3, 2010 -
“AMERICAN SPLENDOR” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION
At last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, a weekly documentary series at the IFC, host Thom Powers paid tribute to underground comic icon Harvey Pekar, who died in July of this year, by screening American Splendor, the dramatization of Pekar’s celebrated autobiographical comic series about his life as a file clerk. A comics fanatic who became friends with the writer while working in the underground comic scene, Powers described discovering Pekar’s work as “a truly transformative experience.” Powers almost did not attend a screening of the film at Sundance in 2003, terrified it would do something horrible to something “so precious.” […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 6, 2010 -
Sundance Creative Producers Lab Diary: Amy Lo, Part Two
Producer Amy Lo with Producing Advisor Ron Yerxa Here’s part two of Amy Lo’s Sundance Creative Producer’s Lab Diary. Part One can be read here. Back in New York, a director I’d just met the other day told me, “You’re really nice for a producer.” Have we sunk so low? He was surprised that I was…nice? In fact, at the Sundance Creative Producing Summit, there was nothing but niceness all around. It began on Friday; specifically, after lunch. Pre-lunch, we were still ensconced in our intimate, small-group sessions for the Feature Film Creative Producing Lab, which had started five days […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 26, 2010 -
FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: WINTER, 1995
Winter, 1995, was a great issue. Our cover story was Rick Linklater’s Before Sunrise. Andrew Hindes interviewed Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, while Jean-Christopher Castelli detailed the film’s use of Austrian tax funds for its financing. Paula Bernstein interviewed James Gray about Little Odessa, and then there was one of the best pieces we’ve ever run: development executive (and, later, Oscar-winning short film director) Barbara Schock’s “The Write Stuff: Intelligent Screenplay Development.” Technology and methods of financing may change, but these notes on working with writers don’t date. From the piece: One of the biggest impediments I’ve encountered in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 11, 2010
