Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Dan Schoenbrun
A dubious term to be sure, it seems that one of the pre-reqs for hipster certification is denying that you actually are one. Based on this criterion, Brook, the main character in Destin Daniel Cretton’s feature debut, definitely qualifies. But I Am Not a Hipster is not so much concerned with labels as it is with crafting an intimate, small-scale character portrait. Adrift in San Diego’s music scene, Brook’s lackadaisical lifestyle is interrupted when his family visits with the intention of spreading his late mother’s ashes. Cretton, who made a splash at Sundance in 2009 with his Grand Jury Prize winning short Short Term 12, has employed the musical talents of singer-songwriter Joel P. West to help bring to life this introspective exploration of a character, a music scene, and a subculture.
Filmmaker: How long have you been involved in the San Diego music scene? How did your experiences within it influence this story?
Cretton: I lived in San Diego for 10 years and fell in love with a lot of local bands there. I can’t really say I was heavily involved in the music scene, because I’m not a musician (more of a groupie). But being a part of the creative community in that city was a constant source of inspiration for me. It’s just a really great group of down-to-earth people who love to get together and do creative things, whether that’s music or art or building a mini golf course in someone’s living room. But the movie isn’t just inspired by that community; it’s literally made by them. We shot most of the film in San Diego at a lot of the same venues we hang out at (The Casbah, Habitat, San Diego Velodrome). We basically rallied all our friends there to help make the movie. There was absolutely no way we could have done it without them.
Filmmaker: How did you conceive of Brook, the film’s main character? Was his backstory developed from personal experience?
Cretton: Brook’s backstory is fictional, but still based on emotions that are close to me. I’m not a musician, but … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Scott Macaulay
I’m leaving Sundance this year was the longest list of films I missed but really want to see then ever before. At the very top of is Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s treatise on the multiple meanings viewers have constructed from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “Discover why many have been trapped in the Overlook Hotel for over 30 years,” is the film’s beguiling tagline. Here, via Lance Weiler’s Text of Light, is an excerpt about the music.
… Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Filmmaker Staff
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 27 6:30 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City]
There are so many reasons why we chose film as our medium to tell stories. The fact is we’re children of our culture (how could we not be?) a culture of the mash up: of so many forms of expression constantly mixing and intertwining in all of our daily lives. Well, film is the only medium where you get to combine so many of these forms of expression simultaneously: literature, music, photography, visual art and theater, all in your own unique way to create a singular vision that can reflect life, contemplate it and, if you’re lucky, for a moment even crystallize it.
There’s the joys and trials of actually making the film, the constant planning, the problem solving, the limitations you encounter before, during, and after production, and the re-imagining these limitations force you to do that constantly keeps you fresh, sharp and creative in trying to tell your story in the most compelling way possible. This is to say that it is often the most frustrating difficulties of making a film that lead to its greatest joys. When you can say that about your chosen field, that’s a pretty cool job.
Then there’s the communal aspect: in making a film you’re constantly being challenged, surprised and inspired by so many interesting, talented people every day as you collaborate to bring this vision to life. No matter how simple or complicated, playful or important the project may seem, there’s always that joy of creating with friends or colleagues that, when all is said and done, goes back to the simplest days of being children.
Also, with film you have an opportunity to play with time in ways that, obviously, you just can’t in life (move forwards, backwards, even stop time) to make sense of things, to make amends, to speak to issues that are important to you or even just for the sheer joy of it. Because of this, in many ways, making a film is the closest you can come to literally creating dreams. Since The … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Scott Macaulay
25 New Face composer and performer Gingger Shankar (right) with director Mridu Chandra outside the Main Street Transit Center. Shankar, Chandra and the Shanghai Restoration Project were part of Sundance’s New Frontiers with Himalaya Song, a New Frontiers multimedia performance piece that “explores this majestic mountain range and its interconnecting cultures as the region undergoes major environmental and ecological change. Featuring live narration by filmmaker Mridu Chandra and musical performances by musicians Gingger Shankar (vocals/double violin) and Dave Liang (piano/electronics), this live multimedia presentation combines modern sounds and ancient instruments with a cinematic journey through the Himalayan past and present, exploring folktales, mythological narratives, contemporary ways of survival, and tomorrow’s inevitable changes in the great melting glaciers.”
I’ve been coming to Sundance for almost 20 years, and I don’t remember snow as strong as was experienced last Friday. The IFP house this year was three avenues up the mountain from Park, and the stairs were steep. When I returned home after this day, I thought I was on the wrong street as the stairs were completely gone… and then I realized they were snowed under. This shot was taken from the top of the Transit Center.
Last year Union Editorial partner and editor Sloane Klevin (Taxi to the Dark Side, Real Women Have Curves) was on the Sundance Documentary jury. This year she arrived representing her company, which got behind the production of three Park City films, including James Marsh’s well-received Shadow Dancer, cut by Union’s Jinx Godfrey.
Sundance is not just about the movies. Increasingly the festival has become a hotspot for not just one-on-one meetings but larger events and conferences tackling issues of broad interest to the community. Before the festival this year there was the Arthouse Convergence. And during the festival there was a brunch and afternoon-long meeting of the IFP program, the Festival Forum. “The Film Festival Forum is a year-round professional association that advocates for the needs and interests of film festival organizers internationally,” read the brunch invite from IFP and partner Sundance Institute. Above, left to right, are … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Nicholas Rombes
Second #3384, 56:24
1. Sandy’s dream, recounted to Jeffrey:
In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren’t any robins. And the robins represented love. And for the longest time there was just this darkness, and all of a sudden thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed like that love would be the only thing that would make any difference. And it did.
2. A few moments earlier, Jeffrey said to Sandy:
Frank is a . . . a very dangerous man.
3. From The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus:
Rabbi Burke never used the word devil. The universal coinage was worthless, in his view. Words that mask what we don’t know. But he spoke about dangerous people who orbited the moral world, building speed around us, rendering themselves so blurred, they looked gorgeous. Burke spoke of refusing dizziness, latching on to these satellite monsters . . . so we could travel at their velocity, see them for what they were.
4. A lighter note: in the Blue Velvet Blu-ray interview, Kyle MacLachlan says that the “chicken walk” sequence was a stunt he used to pull on the set and was probably inspired by Steve Martin or John Cleese.
5. From “Dear Reyonlds, as last night I lay in bed,” (with the “gentle robin”) by John Keats:
The greater on the less feeds evermore:
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
Still am I sick of it: and though to-day
I’ve gathered young spring leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,
The shark at savage prey—the hawk at pounce,
The gentle robin, like pard or ounce,
Ravening a worm.
Over the period of one full year — three days per week — The Blue Velvet Project will seize a frame every 47 seconds of David Lynch’s classic to explore. These posts will run until second 7,200 … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Scott Macaulay
Independent film, depending on how you define it, has had many births. But for the purposes of this blog post, let’s consider the one in the 1980s, just before the launch of this magazine. She’s Gotta Have It, Parting Glances, Poison, True Love — these were narrative features made by lone filmmakers with a mixture of private money and, sometimes, foreign TV deals, and they were released into the marketplace after being acquired by independent distributors who catered to arthouse audiences. More films followed — Clerks, El Mariachi, The Blair Witch Project — and the idea that one could possibly be not just a filmmaker but an “independent filmmaker” was born.
Of course, things change, and I wonder if a new generation for whom media creation is simply part of life even cares about that self-definition. Is making a movie that special anymore? Maybe the ones who really care about the meaning of “independent” are in other fields, like video games. Case in point: the creators profiled in Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky’s Sundance documentary Indie Game, who evince all the blood, sweat and tears we like to claim as the hallmarks of the independent filmmaker. More importantly, they are creating games during a historical moment that feels both somewhat new and not unlike the rush that the filmmakers behind films like, say, The Blair Witch Project, must have felt when their homemade creations suddenly burst forth on 2,000 screens.
Pajot and Swirsky interviewed 25 game designers before narrowing their film’s focus to three. Braid creator Jonathan Blow (pictured above, at right, with Pajot and Swirsky at the Sundance Q&A) is the eminence grise, the obsessive elder statesman who revolutionized the indie game world with a work that was not only fun to play but emotionally rich. That an indie game could make such an impact, scoring mainstream reviews and selling in the hundreds of thousands of downloads, inspired the film’s other two game designers. Designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes are the team behind Super Meat Boy, an anarchic … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Randy Astle
All eyes may still be on Park City, but there’s still enough happening back here in the Big Apple to keep indie film lovers busy. One event was Tuesday’s presentation by Steve Coulson, Creative Director at the marketing firm Campfire, about the transmedia campaign he spearheaded for the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones last year. The event was organized by Storycode and hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in the intimate Howard Gilman Theater. Because of the detail of some of his material Coulson asked that his presentation not be simulcast or recorded, but some of the overall lessons are still worth noting for indie filmmakers.
As a fantasy period piece, Game of Thrones was not the type of material HBO is known for. A big part of Campfire’s job, therefore, was to convince HBO viewers that the genre would fit in well with shows like True Blood and Boardwalk Empire. At the same time, the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin had their own fans who would be very enthusiastic about the new show but also potentially protective of the original material as it was adapted to a new medium; they had to believe in HBO as a custodian of the characters and settings they loved. Finally, the brief from HBO required that the ad campaign not reveal anything about the many twists and turns in the series’ plot.
Campfire’s eventual solution was to launch a campaign that would evoke a memory of Westeros, the mythical setting of the series; this would bring new viewers into the setting without giving anything specific away, and it would prove to loyal fans that their world was in good hands. But evoking a memory of a fictitious world is difficult. The solution? To use the five senses. As actors certainly know, memories are often couched in sensory experiences; by using sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, Campfire could create the aura of Westeros–and the entire Game of Thrones season one.
The resulting campaign ran in five parts, for the five senses, … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Tom Hall
The role of authority in the lives of everyday people is a crucial question at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. From the first wave of documentaries examining the Arab Spring to fictional accounts of the personal and collective consequences of confronting our conception of power, Sundance filmmakers this year have looked at the state of our world and our culture and uncovered a complex battle for control. Of the standout films I have seen at Sundance this year, for one reason or another, the issues of control and responsibility have played a crucial part in giving this edition of the festival its distinctly dystopian tenor; there is a decidedly downbeat feeling up here in the thin, frozen air, a sense that something is truly broken.
Front and center in my mind is Craig Zobel’s Compliance (above), a film that is inspiring a great deal of debate among viewers. The film tells the story of a young female employee at a fast food restaurant who, after her manager receives a phone call from a police officer, is subjected to confinement and, ultimately, physical and sexual humiliation at the hands of her employer. The film, which spends most of its time within the tight quarters of the restaurant manager’s office, is a study in Kafka-esque economy; a woman accused of a crime she may or may not have committed acquiesces to the abuse of her captors, who are themselves driven by a disembodied voice on the phone that exerts a perverse authority over their actions.
The film is deeply chilling, not just for what it proposes about human nature, but for Zobel’s extraordinary skill in creating a visual strategy that uses cinematic space to express the role playing and relative power of each of his characters in the frame. The result is a daisy chain of, well, compliance, with small clusters of authority and subordination recreated in the film’s geometry, giving a deep resonance to the film’s exploration of the brutality of capitalism in the era of Guantanamo.
Of course, not everyone sees the film this way; many have become fixated on the details of the story and the veracity … Read the rest
Posted Jan 27, 2012, by Dan Schoenbrun
During a ceremony held tonight at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, prize winners were announced for the 18th annual Slamdance Film Festival. Taking home the Narrative Grand Jury Prize was Welcome to Pine Hill, Keith Miller’s vérité portrait of a reformed Brooklyn drug dealer undergoing a crisis of mortality. Meanwhile, Jens Pfeifer’s basketball documentary No Ashes, No Phoenix was awarded the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, while Caskey Ebeling’s Getting Up and Andrew Edison’s Bindlestiffs took home the Audience Awards for documentary and narrative, respectively.
The full list of winners, per The Hollywood Reporter:
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Audience Award for Feature Documentary: Getting Up by Caskey Ebeling
Audience Award for Feature Narrative: Bindlestiffs by Andrew Edison
GRAND JURY AWARDS – NARRATIVE
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Narrative: Welcome to Pine Hill by Keith Miller, “for its poetic and emotionally honest depiction of one man’s final journey in life, crafted from a true spirit of humanity and community.”
Special Jury Award for Bold Originality: Heavy Girls by Axel Ranisch, “for its joie de vivre, an incredibly life-affirming film that is presented with a unique vision and an amazing cast.”
GRAND JURY AWARDS – DOCUMENTARY
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Documentary: No Ashes, No Phoenix by Jens Pfeifer, “for its adeptly piercing and cinematic look at a basketball team’s impassioned struggle not for glory, but to just avoid losing.”
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Short Documentary: The Professional by Skylar Neilsen, for ”an honest and natural portrayal of work-as-life, and the slowly disappearing craft of an American working man.”
GRAND JURY AWARDS – SHORT FILMS
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Animation: Venus by Tor Fruergaard, “for its creative use of claymation characters to explore sexual adventure and its lighthearted, touching and memorable story.”
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Short Film: I Am John Wayne by Christina Choe, “for its unique storytelling, cinematography and performances, including the brilliant use of a real horse in an urban environment.”
Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short: Solipsist by Andrew Huang, “for its unique blend of live action footage of the human body, puppetry and computer animation that creates a colorful and insightful fantasy world.”
Honorable Mention for … Read the rest
Posted Jan 26, 2012, by Scott Macaulay
If you’re attending Sundance, you undoubtedly have seen the orange jackets worn by the festival’s volunteers. They were designed by Kenneth Cole, the Sundance Institute board member who has been providing vests and jackets to the volunteers for eight years. In addition, Awearness, the Kenneth Cole Foundation, collaborated with Sundance on a comedic short written by Kenneth Cole Productions and produced and directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, The Devil Came on Horseback). QR codes at the festival are prompting fest goers to stream the short on their mobile devices, and it played in front of all the films on the 25th. The short is below, and more info can be found on the Facebook page.
… Read the rest
