Sundance
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“Not Addressing the Core Exploitations of Capitalism is Essential to Capitalism’s Survival”: Theo Anthony on His Surveillance Doc, All Light, Everywhere
This interview with Theo Anthony about his documentary, All Light, Everywhere, was originally published alongside the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It is being reposted today as the film premieres in theaters, including, in New York, at the IFC Center, where Anthony will do Q&As moderated by Brenda Coughlin and Sierra Pettengill. In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony […]
by A.E. Hunt on Jun 4, 2021 -
Sundance Hits and Misses, Pandemic Edition
Yes, 2020 sucked. The worst year of our lives finally came to an end, and most independent films and filmmakers, like just about everything and everyone else, suffered. Grand Jury Prize winners were delayed, critics’ favorites were lost and buzzworthy breakouts, briefly the talk of Park City, remained in limbo, waiting for some nebulous future release date when movie theaters might re-open and vaccinated audiences might attend them. Normally, you could look back at a year’s worth of top Sundance titles, examine what became of them in distribution—as Filmmaker usually does—and glean some takeaways about the state of the marketplace. […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Feb 10, 2021 -
“Is There Too Much Reading on Screen?” Carey Williams on R#J, Virtual Sundance and Pre-Vis
It may still feature two households both alike in dignity, but in Carey Williams’s modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, R#J, the modes of communication look decidedly different. Set in California in the here and now, Williams’s film hones in on the title characters’ brief but intense romance via their messaging tool of choice: the smartphone. Back-and-forth texts and DMs, impromptu FaceTiming sessions, tagging each other in Instagram photos and sharing personally curated Spotify playlists add to the cumulative rise and potential fall of literature’s most infamously star-crossed lovers. Produced by Bazelevs Productions (founded by popular Russian filmmaker […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 5, 2021 -
“Looking At Diversity Through A Different Lens”: Debbie Lum on Try Harder!
Lowell High School, whose student population is predominantly Asian American, is different from most US high schools portrayed on film. Director Debbie Lum came to the nationally ranked school to portray Lowell’s students, particularly so called “tiger cubs” in the heat of the college admissions process for her Sundance 2021 doc Try Harder!. Of course, not all of the Asian American students shown in the film have stereotypical “tiger moms,” and it’s refreshing to see an array of Asian American parents and students shown in communities where they feel comfortable, rather than shrinking in the minority. But the pressure on […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 5, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook (Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun): Cusp and Close
Hello Abby, We’ve been Gchatting through our initial Sundance 2021 reactions in between filing festival coverage proper, so it only seems logical to finish out this year by doing a direct handoff in public view. While our experiences were complementary, we had different timelines and levels of willingness to engage. You tried out a good chunk of New Frontier material and went to virtual gatherings in avatar form; true to usual IRL form, I kept a skulking low profile. Our coverage overlapped a few times online (thanks, by the way, for getting into the political dimensions of El Planeta I […]
by Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun on Feb 4, 2021 -
“We Sat Down and Considered Pushing Production to Spring of 2020”: Erin Vassilopoulos on Superior
Duplicity in all its forms lurks just below the surface in Erin Vassilopoulos’s debut feature, Superior, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival last weekend. Expanded from a short she made in film school, Vassilopoulos’s feature concerns two fraternal twin sisters (Alessandra and Ani Mesa) unexpectedly reuniting after six years apart. The film opens in October of 1987, with Marian (Alessandra), a touring musician on the run from a secretive past, returning to her hometown to spend a few days with her sister, Vivian (Ani). The two sisters haven’t spoken in six years, spending the interim leading […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 3, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 4 (Abby Sun): R#J, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran
As I hinted in my first entry on Sundance 2021, I’ve spent a couple hours a day on the festival’s browser-based New Frontier space, which houses all 14 projects in the New Frontier selection, a space for watching select films in VR and Film Party, an online proximity-based video and audio chat space. There’s also a digital ferry from the Gallery to IDFA DocLab’s do {not} play platform, which was for IDFA (the world’s largest documentary festival and marketplace, held in Amsterdam in November of every year) what Film Party is to Sundance. Navigating the Sundance digital platform through my […]
by Abby Sun on Feb 3, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 5 (Vadim Rizov): I Was a Simple Man, The Blazing World
Sundance 2021 offered two case studies in the anxiety of influence, or lack thereof—neither film’s particularly worried about covering its tracks. Hawai’ian director Christopher Makoto Yogi’s I Was a Simple Man is a logical progression from his first feature, 2018’s August at Akiko’s, which climaxed by layering a Mulholland Drive riff (a sax player soloing inside an empty cave with no audience) on top of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (said shot of cave models its angle and lighting directly on Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s climactic setup). But August at Akiko’s told an essentially simple, literally meditative story about atmospherically re-immersing oneself at home after a long […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 3, 2021 -
“We Like the Poetic, Dreamy Quality”: DP Edu Grau on Passing
Rebecca Hall’s Passing is an adaptation of the Harlem Renaissance era novel by Nella Larsen of the same name. Starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as two mixed race women who “pass” for white in the 1920s, the film explores their acquaintanceship as one “pretends” to be white while the other lives life as a black woman. DP Edu Grau shares why they opted to film the Passing with a more vintage style. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Grau: […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2021 -
“This Room had Even Scared Off Another DP”: DP Ryan Jackson-Healy on Mass
Fran Kranz’s Mass is the rare film that explores the aftermath of a tragedy rather than the tragedy itself. Some years after the events of a school shooting, the parents of a victim (Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton) plan to meet the parents of the perpetrator (Reed Birney and Ann Dowd). DP Ryan Jackson-Healy speaks to not being scared of shooting primarily in a white room, switching lenses tied to emotional cues and creating a subtextual lighting arc. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 2, 2021
