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2009 Sundance Film Festival Premiere ‘Precious’ Sweeps Spirit Awards

On a rooftop in downtown L.A. last night, Lee Daniel's Precious and nine other films supported in various ways by Sundance Institute's programs were honored with Independent Spirit Awards. In total, 17 Sundance-supported films received 37 Spirit Award nominations. Marking the 25th anniversary of the Awards, the event took place in downtown Los Angeles at the new L.A. Live complex.

In addition to Best Feature, Precious was honored with Best Director for Lee Daniels, Best First Screenplay for Geoffrey Fletcher, Best Supporting Female for Mo'Nique, and Best Female Lead for Gabourey Sidibe. Accepting her award, Sidibe attributed her own independent spirit to a Todd Haynes film. "My mom used to pay me $2 to go to school," she said, "and I saved up my money for a week so that I could see Welcome to the Dollhouse and that's the first film I saw where I could say 'I could do that.'"

Other Sundance-supported films receiving awards were:

Sasha Gervasi's Anvil! The Story of Anvil for Best Documentary
 

Lone Scherfig's ... Read More

Sundance Film Festival presents Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle

Ring in the spring as the Sundance Film Festival joins over 100 cultural and educational organizations around Los Angeles to participate in Ring Festival LA, a ten-week festival inspired by LA Opera's first presentation of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Beginning on April 15 and running through June 30, city-wide events will take place including a Sundance Film Festival sponsored free screening of Jon Else's acclaimed documentary Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle:

April 17, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
For more info: www.hammer.ucla.edu or (310) 443-7000
Free seating is first-come, first-served; Hammer members receive priority seating.

Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999 and won the coveted Filmmaker Trophy. Filmmaker John Else goes back stage at the San Francisco Opera's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle to show this rare event from the point of view of union stagehands. Electrifying ... Read More

Your Own Small Act

It is every filmmaker's dream to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and my experience this year was so unexpected and so extraordinary that I wanted to say a direct thank you to everyone who made it possible.
 
My film, the documentary A Small Act, tells the story of Chris Mburu, a Kenyan man whose early education was sponsored by a woman from Sweden whom he had never met. By donating roughly $15 a month to an education fund, her small contribution paid off: Chris made it all the way to Harvard Law School and then started his own scholarship program, which now sponsors new generations of Kenyan students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to go to school.
 
I arrived at the Sundance Film Festival this January hoping people would like my film, but I never dreamt that audiences' reactions would directly lead to changing lives. After Festival screenings, I kept hearing from people how the film empowered them to make a difference. Audience members started handing us unsolicited donations—from twenty ... Read More

SUNDANCE AWARDS!  LIVE!  NOW!

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic 
presented by Parker Posey to:
Winter’s Bone

"The film is hugely collaborative.  65 crew members...[holds up a list].  I wish I could thank them all." - director Debra Granik

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary 
presented by Ondi Timoner to:
Restrepo

"I got to go overseas and have an experience.  My wife had to stay home and worry.  I just want to acknowledge her all the other military families who are also worrying." - co-director Sebastian Junger

"I feel more nervous up here than in Afghanistan... I want to dedicate this to the Restrepo generation.  Those who come back from the war invisible.  This is for them."  co-director Tim Hetherington

U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic 
presented by Karyn Kusama to:

Eric Mendelsohn for 3 Backyards

"The last time I was here, on this stage, I had so much Xanax in my system that I dribbled.  Pardon me.  I have a problem with anxiety.  So this is for all the people with anxiety... I wanna dedicate this to my country.  To everyone who gets up at 4 in the ... Read More

The Great Communicators

If you tell one tiny story well, it becomes universal.
—Amir Bar-Lev, director of The Tillman Sory

People, rather than politics or polemics, were what mattered to the directors behind three of the most topical and socially vital films in this year’s Festival. Veteran broadcaster Lynne Kirby moderated “The New War Stories” panel at the Filmmaker Lodge on Monday, which brought together documentarians Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger (Restrepo), Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story), and dramatic filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji (Son of Babylon) to discuss their different approaches to making films about contemporary war and conflict. By focusing on the human aspect of war, and by acknowledging the power and necessity of storytelling, all of the panelists identified the ways in which filmmaking can contribute to the larger conversations about war without getting mired in politics. 

“We have enough politics in Iraq,” said Al-Daradji. “But human beings – you don’t hear or see about them enough.” Hetheringon concurred. ... Read More

Manifestoes of Outrage

Gaspar Noe. Louis C.K. For a certain type of Festivalgoer, this was a match made in f-ed up heaven (and count your faithful correspondent squarely among this group).The 'Pushing Boundaries' Cinema Café more than lived up to it's seemingly limitless potential, offering big laughs, illuminating insights and more than a few gasps of shock. The tone was set perfectly by moderator, cinemaphile, mustache legend and long-time Sundance Film Festival Programmer Mike Plante, when he asked 'What happened to you guys?'

Both men revealed that, to some extent, their define their success by the outrage they create. Gaspar (Enter the Void) happily copped to feeling 'powerful' when people walk out of his films and noted that he was actively 'disappointed' that none of his work has ever been banned. Louis (Hilarious) concurred, noting that he 'loves it' when he can make an audience upset by offering a new take on controversial material, and then win them back. He explained this belief further "You want to talk about things ... Read More

Four take-aways from Sundance 2010

As the fest winds down at tonight's Awards Ceremony, Sundance 2010 will have been chewed over in a thousand conversations.  Yet each topic has an expiration date.  Whether it be DIY's direction, breakout filmmakers, or undiscovered gems, Sundance changes the chatter every year.   In that spirit, here are my four take-aways from Sundance 2010 (valid until Sundance 2011):

1. Vet filmmakers stretched their canvases, and scored.

Veteran filmmakers proved that with more ambition, and sometimes more money, they can still remain true to their style.  Lisa Cholodenko, with a bigger canvas and bigger cast, kept close to her signature and delivered what many believe is her best film in The Kids Are All Right.  Same can be said for Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), the Duplass Brothers who added several zeros to their usual budget for Cyrus.  David Michôd stepped up from his 2007 short Crossbow with his first feature, Animal Kingdom, which could reinvigorate the crime genre.  Yet in another vein, Debra Granik, staying ... Read More

Obsolescence and Sustainability

The group of scientists and filmmakers speaking at the Discovery Panel at Filmmaker Lodge seemed to want to discuss nothing but dinosaurs. Metaphorically speaking, and otherwise.

Moderator Joe Palca of NPR led the discussion with Harvard physics professor Peter Galison, paleontologist Paul Sereno, filmmaker Braden King, neuroscientist Darcy Kelley, and filmmaker Diane Bell, whose film Obselidia was the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award at this year's Festival (the panel itself was supported by the Foundation). The conversation began with the topic of Bell's film: obsolescence. A short clip from the film was screened, during which one of the characters says "Do you think that in the face of mass extinction people will change the way they live?"

Essentially, unless we change, will we become dinosaurs?

The panelists took up the topic of the film, a how both science and film must address issues of obsolescence. Sereno mentioned the pace of the obsolescence of technology, how "something is obsolete ... Read More

From Park City to Brooklyn

Last night, as a new extension of the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. screened eight different Sundance films throughout the nation. The film selected to screen in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) was Daddy Longlegs, a film directed by Benny and Josh Safdie about a single father who struggles to balance his hectic life with his desire to be the ultimate dad when he is permitted to briefly care for his children.

I was lucky enough to have attended the opening weekend of the Festival in Park City, and was excited to be able to continue the Sundance festivities in my New York hometown. The screening was completely sold out. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the BAM Rose Cinemas was the familiar giant Sundance background playing on the movie screen. The second thing was the lack of Sundance paraphernalia (banners, nalgenes, and friendly volunteers in Sundance jackets).

As the BAM staff member who introduced the film didn't carry the same level of enthusiasm as a ... Read More

A Circle of Support

Patron Circle members gathered at Wahso on Main Street Thursday afternoon, and were treated to a casual introduction to Taika Waititi (Boy) and Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae), two filmmakers supported by Sundance Institute's Native American and Indigenous Program. The Patron Circle is a group of donors who generously provide year-round support for the programs of the nonprofit Sundance Institute and in doing so, further the organization's work to advance the art of storytelling in film and theatre. This gathering, one of a few such events held during the Festival, is an opportunity for Patron Circle members to connect with each other and the filmmakers supported by their contributions.

Amid stories of screenings seen and plans to transition back to the "real" world once the Festival ends, Native American and Indigenous Program Director Bird Runningwater stepped up to the mike with Perkins and Waititi. Runningwater emphasized the international scope of the Program, the mandate of which is to support Native ... Read More

Riding the Next Wave

"We're all going to become straight," HOWL co-director Rob Epstein blurted out near the end of the Queer Cinema's Next Wave panel earlier this week. He was joking, of course, as he answered an audience member's question about "where the community is moving as far as the stories that are going to be told" in the future. The panel, which was organized by Sundance Institute Associate GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and held at the Filmmaker Lodge on Tuesday, featured Epstein and his longtime co-director Jeffrey Friedman, their HOWL producer Christine Walker, and New Frontier performance artist Kalup Linzy, who screened a clip from his alternately funny and trippy video series Sweet, Sampled, and LeftOva.

In answering the call to look into the crystal ball about the next wave of LGBT filmmaking, Epstein pointed out that it may not be the kinds of stories that will mark the next wave, but the way they're created that will matter. "There's infinite possibilities now," he said. "Maybe it won't ... Read More

Nao Bustamante Signs Off

Nao Bustamante came to Sundance as a New Frontier artist, and left a mustache-aficionado. We'll miss her face around here! Catch her sign-off vlog:

http://naobustamante.com/wordpress/

Walking wounded for Restrepo

"We were never detached.  It's not possible to be objective during war.  You can't be when someone's trying to kill you."

Sebastian Junger, co-director of the doc Restrepo, remembered his time embedded with the 173rd Battle Company in one of the most violent areas of Afganistan.  Junger and co-director Tim Hetherington took 10 trips to the outpost, named Restrepo for a fallen soldier, and became very close to the men they were covering.  They also shared the same level of danger during many firefights. 

"One day they said 'do you want a grenade, because this isn't going to be a very good day," said Junger, who constantly worried about getting in the company's way.  During one excursion, Hetherton broke his leg.  Rather than compromise the position, he gritted his teeth and walked four hours downhill.

"Our biggest concern was slowing the group down, getting them killed," said Junger, who tore his Achilles tendon during the shoot. "We made sure they never had to take care of us."

Junger said everything about ... Read More

How the NEXT Began

The Filmmaker Lodge was packed with people - and possibilities - as all nine filmmakers from this year's inaugural NEXT section gathered together for the first time. With Sundance Film Festival's newly minted Festival Director John Cooper moderating, the conversation was lively, insightful and, frequently, silly.

Cooper began by explaining the genesis of NEXT, citing the need to 'carve out' a protected space in the Festival program for the burgeoning low- and no-budget filmmaking scene. But Cooper warned to not think about these films merely as examples of frugality, noting 'Ultimately, it's about story.'

As the filmmakers related their tales of triumph and woe, it became obvious just how diverse the NEXT program truly is. Some of the directors on stage had brought films to the Sundance Film Festival before, such as Todd and Brad Barnes (Homewrecker) or Katie Aselton (The Freebie), but most had not. Funding came from every imaginable avenue, from the nonprofit fundraising of Sultan Sharrief (Bilal's Stand), ... Read More

Final Days, Final Parties

With the end-of-fest in everyone's sights, filmmakers got in their last few drinks and conversations across town. 

Always well repped at Sundance, the Texas filmmaking community assembled at a private home in Deer Valley, the same house where Lovers of Hate was set.  Cinetic's John Sloss and longtime friend and client Richard Linklater drank Lone Star beer and ate barbeque.  Sloss has had a busy festival, repping such films as the Banksy doc Exit Through the Gift Shop and Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right, which sold to Focus.  "Everyone wanted it," said Sloss who is extremely happy with where it landed.

Elsewhere, Lovers of Hate director Bryan Poyser drank a beer on the toilet -- a key prop in his film -- as Hate actor Chris Doubek peaks behind a door (another key prop). Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker.

Later, at the hugely popular Late Night Lounge, Sundance director of programming Trevor Groth mourned the fest's final days with stunt coordinator Nash Edgerton (Hesher) and Boy director Taika ... Read More

The Hilarity of Louis C.K.: Hilarious

I was a tad perplexed when I learned that Louis C.K., one of my favorite comics no one knows about, was premiering his standup film Louis C.K.: Hilarious at the Sundance Film Festival. Granted he’s funny. Very funny. But a guy on a stage with a mic telling jokes in a sweaty t-shirt and jeans didn’t seem very “Sundancy.” Even Festival Director John Cooper, in introducing the world premiere screening on Tuesday, seemed a tad sheepish in explaining why he included it in the 2010 lineup. He finally shrugged and unapologetically explained that when he saw it, he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. And he is the boss after all.

Louis C.K. is one of those no-nonsense funny men cut from the same cloth as George Carlin and Richard Pryor. His delivery and attention to detail is remarkable yet strangely therapeutic, and I don’t think there is a more engaging storyteller out there (with the exception perhaps of Eddie Izzard). His film caught the essence of the man––his gritty nature, his brutal honesty, and ... Read More

Animal Kingdom puts the family in crime

The final days of Sundance see packed, final screenings of the more talked about films. For David Michôd, director of Animal Kingdom, it was a bittersweet moment. "I've been overwhelmed by the response," he said. "I've gotten a little choked up about it."


Michôd's film is a pitch perfect drama of a Melbourne family whose deep criminal roots come undone. During the Q&A someone asked if the story was autobiographical. While it was meant as a joke the audience may have been surprised at the answer.

"There's a whole lot of me in there. A lot of family stuff," said Michôd.  The writer/director said it was the family element that interested him. "There's a lot of love in families. Sometimes there's too much, to the extent that it's not healthy."

To cast the the film's most crucial and violent role of Pope, Michôd turned to Ben Mendelsohn. "Pope turned out to be the most interesting to me. Beguling and charming."

Yet Mendelsohn felt frustrated early in not being able to find the character. "So we spent two ... Read More

For the Winners, Business Is Good

The international crowd at the NHK Awards Party tonight was the perfect place for me to brush up on my languages. Amidst noodles, fountains, and large origami cranes strewn over the tables, I tried to say a thing or two to each of the award winners — Russia's Andrey Zvyagintsev, Japan's Daisuke Yamaoka, Mexico's Amat Escalante, and USA's Benh Zeitlin — in his own language, and quickly found myself tripping over my tongue. It didn't help that they were being awarded for their own amazing words.

The annual award recognizes and supports four visionary filmmakers from Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Japan on their next films, and the projects sounded diverse and exciting — and even undescribable.

I spoke with Amat Escalante from Mexico about his script, and when he struggled a bit to describe the topic, we looked to Alesia Weston, Associate Director of Feature Film Program, to help explain. We came to the conclusion that it's too difficult to explain, but decided that most people's perception of ... Read More

Out of Competition

When I entered the Competition Dinner on Wednesday night, the snow falling outside only made the dinner's venue at The Shop feel warmer. Filmmakers from the Festival's four Competition sections (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary) filled the room. Weaving through the crowd, I overheard filmmakers raving about one another's work and swapping stories of audience responses, crazy schedules, and tips for surviving the stress of introducing a film to the world for the very first time.

As Festival days go, Wednesday is traditionally a bit quieter – a half-way point in the 10-day Festival marathon of film presenting, panel listening, film discussing, snow shuffling, film going, late nights, early mornings, and lots and lots of hors d'oeuvres eating. For filmmakers, it's often the day of an adrenaline crash, when the excitement, anxiety, and frenzy of Opening Weekend gives way to exhaustion. And the extent to which those experiences are shared among filmmakers created a ... Read More

Take 3 of Is There a Doctor in the House?

This is a continuation of wrap-up notes from the mega-panel known as "Is There a Doctor in the House?" Moderated by Eugene Hernandez, indieWIRE Editor-in-Chief; and Peter Broderick, head of Paradigm Consulting and sage in the new distribution landscape, the panel was split into four different sections with different panelists. You can find Take 1 here and Take 2 here. This third group included Richard Abramowitz from Anvil! The Story of Anvil; Sandi Dubowski, director of Trembling Before God; Chris Hyams, founder and CEO of B-Side; Tim League, founder of the Alamo Drafthouse and Cora Olson, producer of Good Dick.

Movie as an Event

Abramowitz: The experience of the Anvil! live event after the screening is not only just fun, but because of the film you come to know them in a very personal way and to see them step off the screen and be exactly as they were portrayed it engendered an enthusiasm for the film that powered word-of-mouth. We did a bunch of concerts throughout the country. In one venue in Little Rock ... Read More

My Perestroika’s long road

Director Robin Hessman said the filming of her doc My Perestroika was made up of many victories and defeats.  The doc follows the lives of five Russian schoolmates brought up before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Her original plan of a 3 month shoot stretched to over 2 1/2 years as problems with producers and funding mounted.  Yet all the problems contributed something wonderful, says Hessman, including key moments in the film.

"During those years we got home movies of Brezhnev's funeral and shot during the election of 2008," said Hessman. "For all the filmmakers that think it's taking longer, remember they lead to great gifts"

At the vodka lunch, thrown in an art gallery showing Russian Impressionism, Hessman passed out scarves to partiers eating beef stroganoff and downing neat glasses of ice cold vodka. "For the young communist pioneer you must know how to wear the red scarf," she said, trying the traditional knot around everyone's necks.

The Many Faces of Anna Deavere Smith

This week Sundance Film Festival audiences have been taken to other countries, other worlds, and other realities via the power of film, but this afternoon Anna Deavere Smith transported a crowd at the Egyptian Theatre through the bare essentials of theatre - voice, expression, and deep conviction.

As part of the festival's Offscreen discussion series, Smith sat down with Michele Norris of NPR's All Things Considered to talk about her career and craft. She also performed sections of her current one-woman play about health care, Let Me Down Easy, which was created, as with all of her plays, from a painstaking process of research and immersive impersonation.

After conducting hundreds of interviews, Smith selects characters for her plays based on a simple but essential criterion. "Each character understands something I can't understand," she said. "And each of those things is very important." For the current play, often all she had to do to elicit responses about her subject's health and medical treatment was to ... Read More

A Sense of the Possible: Art in America

Senior Programmer John Nein opened the Art in America panel on Thursday by pointing out that the panelists – two artists and two people involved in creating arts policy in Washington, D.C. – would be talking about something ineffable: “a sense of what is possible.” When we talk about the role of art in government and in communities, “we often forget” – especially at a film festival, where the buzz focuses on filmmakers and films – “that policy makers and institutions and organizations are often thinking about what is possible,” Nein said.

But if the point was talking about something ineffable, the panelists were anything but vague; they revealed a number of concrete insights into how (and whether) the government should be involved in funding the arts in America, and whether artists should be interacting directly with legislators or should stick to creating art. Moíses Kaufman, the celebrated playwright behind The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and I Am My Own Wife, made a ... Read More

Privilege Is Who Gets To Be Heard

At this morning's Cinema Café "On Art and Culture," pair the slightly cynical Danny "I'm wary of community" Perez, director of ODDSAC, with James "I have to be an eternal optimist" Kass of the Youth Speaks organization, sandwich it with readings from two inspiring young poets (Carvens Lissaint and Simone Crew), throw in a little Tamra Davis (director of Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child) and moderator Jon Korn and you come out with an illuminated and somewhat divergent perspective on the future of arts and culture in America.

Thoughts flew around the panel about how best to offer artistic and cultural outlets and foster creativity in the young people of this country. James Kass's Youth Speaks program works to bring the arts to young people, to give them "the opportunity for their art to be heard and have impact." Kass says that they want to transform "fear and silence into power and voice." Danny Perez feels the same need for some sort of transformative quality of arts and culture in our society: "Just ... Read More