“V/H/S”| Filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Chad Villella

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin:
For our segment of V/H/S (“10/31/98″), we spent an entire night searching for a train. After hours of driving around, we still couldn’t get what we needed, so we decided to park near some tracks and wait. It was a little after midnight on a Tuesday and there we were: four friends, grown men sitting in a parked car with lights off, down a dark alley somewhere in South Los Angeles, dressed up as a pirate, a Marine, a life-sized teddy bear & the Unabomber. A woman walking by caught a glimpse of us and quickly picked up her pace–and I’m sure our awkward attempts to look as nonthreatening as possible only made it creepier (Sorry!). But that’s why I love movies, because they allow nights like that to be completely normal and totally acceptable. I was raised on The Twilight Zone, Indiana Jones, and The Goonies, I watched 20,00 Leagues Under the Sea and Ghostbusters until the tapes wore out, so my favorite stories have always been about the promise of a big adventure for an ordinary kid–a chance to learn about life through some over the top, thrilling once-in-a-lifetime journey. And even though I’m not a kid anymore, making movies has given me the opportunity to live out those fantasies: to search for buried treasure and run from UFOs, to take on militias and zombies and a 50-foot long cave-dwelling desert beast, to leap through time and battle a medieval dragon (that you never see for budgetary reasons, of course). It took us all night, but we finally caught our shot of the train. We got to create our own adventure. And that’s one of the million reasons I love movies, because even if just for a few moments, they let the make-believe to feel so incredibly real.

Tyler Gillett:
Filmmaking is hard. Damn hard. As a medium that is a combination of so many other crafts – writing, music, photography, performance, sculpture, painting- I think making a film is really, in a lot of ways, about attempting (and struggling) to understand each of these individual processes. It’s gathering together a group of crazy people who serve the above list in some specific way, and asking them to solve … Read the rest

“SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED” | director, Colin Trevorrow

First of all, thanks for referring to me as an artist. It made me feel good. With Safety Not Guaranteed, Derek Connolly and I had the goals you might associate with art—to make something soulful, something that breaks rules, engages the heart. But beneath it all was a sincere want to entertain in a way that only movies can. There’s an element of showmanship in cinema that most other mediums don’t share. Yes, the characters in our film are honest and the emotions are true—good entertainment doesn’t have to be cynical or manufactured. But what I love about film is that it allows you to make an audience feel better on the way out than they felt walking in, it gives you that uplift. To that end, I’m probably more of a circus showman than an artist. “If you come into this tent, we’ll show you a man jump through fire on a tightrope. Then his whole family will do it. And if that’s not enough, look over there, it’s a lion!” Of course that isn’t always the case, and it shouldn’t be. I’ve left plenty of movie theaters feeling awful inside, and I loved those films. Which I guess makes this medium even better than the circus. If you leave the circus feeling awful, they really blew it.

… Read the rest

“SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS” | directors, Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 Midnight –Egyptian Theatre, Park City]

With this film we were presented with the opportunity to document a very specific moment in time, both musically and culturally—LCD Soundsystem’s final show ever, at Madison Square Garden.

The idea of shooting the concert appealed to us as not only fans of the band, but as filmmakers. We love the classic experiential concert films of the past, such as The Last Waltz, and Stop Making Sense, and for us, the idea of documenting an event like that was something we had a very specific vision for.  But we were also determined to make a film that was more than just a typical ‘music film’. We knew that alongside the story of the final show, there was a smaller, more personal, yet universal, narrative to explore.

In James Murphy we had a very collaborative subject who was open to pushing the direction of the film away from what might be expected.  Apart from the concert, we developed the narrative of the day after the final show as a way of exploring a set of themes, including the question why, at the height of popularity, you would just put a stop to your band.

The film we created together is in part a concert film, but the thing that most people seem to leave with is more than just the thrill of reliving the show. It’s hopefully an emotionally engaging experience that looks at the idea of getting older and the decisions we make about our lives.

… Read the rest

“PURSUIT OF LONELINESS” | writer-director Laurence Thrush

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 Noon –Egyptian Theatre, Park City]

First things first, I think it would be incredibly arrogant to suggest that I consciously chose to be a filmmaker out of all other art forms, as if I could be a musician if I wanted, or a novelist, or a painter or anything that I decided to turn my hand to. The very short answer to this question is that I probably make films because I can’t do anything else.

When I think about the most satisfying moments of working on the films that I have made, it is always the experience of working with the cast that resonates most strongly and this is something that I imagine might be missing from other, more solitary art forms. It’s more than just the camaraderie of working together on something, when you see someone performing in their role better than you could have ever imagined and the scenes being so much more powerful than they were on the page, and the characters and the film starting to have a life of its own, it’s very exciting. It always feels like something of a gamble as I am putting all of these things together, and I actually try and do everything I can to increase the sense of risk and make the gamble as big as I can, using people that have never been on camera before, a script that is original and different to me in some way, shooting on real locations where we don’t have control over everything, and I never really know if it’s all going to work, if the scenes are going to be believable or if we are going to get something of any value on the day. And so when you see the cast interacting and performing in a believable way, its like a huge bet that has come off, and that’s insanely gratifying and an addictive feeling.

Perhaps you could argue that all of this could also translate to the stage and that I might experience all of this as a theater director of course, … Read the rest

“TEDDY BEAR” | co-writer-director, Mads Matthiesen

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 2:30 pm –Prospect Square Theatre, Park City]

For me filmmaking is the ultimate form for dealing with character. Dealing with people creating character and express human issues. Telling a story. I have a feeling that I in filmmaking can move very close to a sense of real. Of getting close to how life really is. As I see it. When I watch a good film no other art form will capture me like film does and it’s probably that love that’s the main reason to why I make film.

In film you have the possibility to play with sound, picture, music, story together like no other art form. It combines a lot of art forms in one so to speak. For me that is ultimate and it peaks my creativity.… Read the rest

“ABOUT FACE” | director, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 2:30 pm –The MARC, Park City]

Over thirty years ago, I graduated from AFI with a degree in film and shortly thereafter, became a photographer. I wanted the work I created to be mine and found filmmaking too collaborative. Two decades later, I returned to filmmaking with my doc, “Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart”, managing, somehow, to make the film with a tiny crew. It mostly felt like my work.. and I got used to relying on others to make it sing.

About Face is my seventh film and counting, since the Lou doc. I still shoot still portraits of all the subjects. I love those moments with my 8×10 camera. I can’t give that up. But filmmaking still amazes me, as much as it did when I was drawn to it originally. I certainly understand it better now, but it’s still magical.… Read the rest

“AN OVERSIMPLICATION OF HER BEAUTY” | writer-director, Terence Nance

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 9:00 pm –Egyptian Theatre, Park City]

I come from a studio art background and consider myself an artist who made a film. I make music, murals and performances as well, so I hesitate to call myself a filmmaker. That said, I’ve been thinking lately that outside of the “burden of branding,” it doesn’t really matter what I call myself; my work will name me at the end of the day, and I’m interested to hear what that name will be after a few years of making work. So I guess if I am indeed named a filmmaker after that period of time, I will have been one because of its impurity as a medium. Film is sound, it’s performance, it’s photography, (for me) it’s drawing and painting, it’s time, it’s a game, it’s the written word, it’s everything. For me, most importantly, film is no longer physical; it’s an idea that can travel without its creator, it can be everywhere at once, omnipresent and in that way, it is a deity.

I had to make An Oversimplification of Her Beauty as a film and not anything else because of film’s scale. The movie at its heart is a conflation of a small emotion and a seemingly insignificant experience into a larger-than-life emotional rollercoaster. I wanted to illustrate that in a very literal way and how else but to put the situation on the big screen and stretch it out over an hour-and-a-half. Second, the film is goddess worship and at the time of the film’s conception I really wanted to make something that would accurately illustrate how intensely I loved the woman/women the film is about (clearly impressing her was important to me). In that context, it’s a celebration of the women it documents, their majesty, their complexity, their beauty. If you want to deify and impress, you gotta go hard or go home. A painting or a song would have been a half measure; I needed a full measure. Film is big.

… Read the rest

“BLACK ROCK” | director, Katie Aselton

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 11:45 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City]

For me, there is nothing like the experience of walking into a theater and escaping with a movie for couple of hours. The smell of popcorn, your feet sticking to the floor, the shared experience with those around you… that can’t be duplicated at home on your t.v., your computer, your iPad, whatever. Going to a movie theater is truly special. To be a part of that experience and be able take people on that two hour journey is exciting. It’s an honor for me to do so.… Read the rest

“DETROPIA” | directors-producers, Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21, Noon –Temple Theatre, Park City]

Rachel Grady:

I’m a documentary filmmaker because it’s basically like going to an amazing graduate school with each new project. And getting paid to do it. It gives you an excuse to learn, explore, hypothesize, get it wrong, change your mind, discover new ideas and then share your results with complete strangers. That’s extremely fun to me.

Heidi Ewing:

In our view, there is no other medium that is better suited for Detroit than the medium of documentary film. The slew of popular picture books about the city and its decay, while often beautiful, can’t possibly portray the swagger, the attitude, the sheer badass – ness of Detroiters. I know that’s not a word, but it should be (And so should Detropia!). Only a down and dirty, on the ground, up close, living and breathing medium like nonfiction can do this place justice. I hope very much we have done just that.… Read the rest

“TWENTY-EIGHT HOTELS ROOMS” | writer-director, Matt Ross

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 5:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City]

The most truthful answer I can come up with as to why my story is told as a film (and not a novel or a play) is this: the most profound narrative experiences I have had have been in a dark movie theatre.

One of the first films I can remember seeing was Jaws. I must have been about five. The experience was seared into my brain. It was horrifying, primal. Even now, as an adult, so many years later, every time I swim or surf in the ocean, I have hallucinations of sharks all around me. Why I was in that theatre or who took me, I have no idea. They probably should have been arrested. Whoever you are, I accept your apology. But something else happened that day.

Something wonderful. I recognized that someone made this film. That it was expertly crafted. Crafted using pictures to tell a story. The power of the image. Images that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Why I’m a filmmaker:

1. My entire life, I have painted, drawn, taken photographs, made films, written, acted, and done graphic design. But I’ve always returned to film because it’s unique among the arts in that it’s a combination of so many of them – writing, acting, photography, design, music, editing. It’s the ultimate sandbox.

2. A script is re-written over and over; it’s essentially a blueprint for a possible film. The production is a race against time to film what was written, but also to film the unknown, the undiscovered, the unrepeatable, the surprises and accidents. The edit is where you grapple with the film you actually shot, creating new rhythms and nuances, re-forming, re-structuring, and finally, re-writing. Every film asks questions. And every step of the process is an exploration; you excavate, you search for answers. That is as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

I make films because I know nothing and want to know all.

I make films because watching a film is to dream while you’re awake.

And … Read the rest