Sydney Freeland
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It’s Time for More Native Americans in Hollywood
“I’m just not going to be the Indian they want me to be.” — Sherman Alexie Native American culture is part of our everyday lives, from the Iroquois confederacy modeled in the U.S. Constitution to half of the U.S. states named in a Native language. It’s in our streets and cities, our sports teams, even the food we eat. Yet, Native people are rarely represented in the stories we see onscreen. Why is that? Well, there are several reasons. One is that America maintains a profound mythology about herself. You could say that she has her own “creation story,” starring the classic […]
by Chris Eyre, Joely Proudfit and Heather Rae on Apr 13, 2017 -
“How to Sell the Outrageous Premise of the Film”: DP Quyen Tran on Deidra & Laney Rob a Train
A pair of teenage sisters resort to train robbery to raise bail money for their mother in Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, a new comedy from director Sydney Freeland. Freeland returns to Sundance with her second feature after 2014’s Drunktown’s Finest, which debuted in Utah before earning a number of festival awards. Below, the film’s DP Quyen Tran (Pali Road) discusses the influence of the Coen brothers, filming on a moving train at night without any lighting and grounding an absurd story in naturalistic visuals. Deidra & Laney Rob a Train premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by Netflix on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2017 -
“I Tend to View Myself as the First Audience”: Editor Michael Taylor on Deidra & Laney Rob a Train
Michael Taylor has cut more than 40 films since he entered the world of independent film editing in 2003. Taylor’s work has included Sundance premieres Entertainment and Love Is Strange along with other recent indies such as Elvis & Nixon and The Loneliest Planet. One of two features he edited to screen at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train is the Netflix-financed second feature from Sydney Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest). Taylor spoke with Filmmaker ahead of the film’s premiere about his editing process, editing VFX shots and why he views himself as “an intermediary between the director and the audience.” Filmmaker: […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2017 -
Director Sydney Freeland Discusses Drunktown’s Finest
I’ve been hearing the praises of Drunktown’s Finest director Sydney Freeland being sung for some time now. The 2004 Fulbright scholar and Sundance alum – whose long list of awards includes a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellowship and a Sundance Institute Directing Fellowship in 2010, and a 2009 Sundance Institute Native American Lab Fellowship – has also long been a fixture on the cozy New Mexico filmmaking scene. (Since I programmed the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival 2012 it’s not surprising the Gallup native and I even share mutual friends.) That said, as a jaded critic it’s second nature for me […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 23, 2014 -
Interview with Drunktown’s Finest Director Sydney Freeland
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Freeland: I grew up on the Navajo reservation and one thing that struck me growing up was that I never saw anybody that I recognized in the movies. I wanted to tell a story about the people and experiences I saw growing up and that’s what set me out to try and make this movie. Filmmaker: How much of your crew was female? Was hiring women a consideration for you? Freeland: I’m not sure, honestly. Our pre-production schedule was only 3 weeks and our shoot schedule was only 15 days. […]
by Danielle Lurie on Jan 18, 2014 -
Drunktown’s Finest | Director Sydney Freeland
Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see our work to completion but fully discover the meanings within it. What role does attention play in your work? Can you discuss an instance where you thought about some aspect of attention when it came to your film? For me, attention […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 17, 2014
