“BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD” TOPS SUNDANCE AWARD WINNERS

By Dan Schoenbrun

With Sundance wrapping up tomorrow, this year’s award winners were announced at a ceremony tonight in Park City.

Perhaps unsurprising considering the amount of critical acclaim it’s been garnering this past week, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild took home the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. Meanwhile, Eugene Jarecki’s War on Drugs critique The House I Live In won this year’s Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and Mark O’Brien’s crowd-pleasing drama The Surrogate took home the Dramatic Audience Award.

The full list of winners:

Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic:
Beasts of the Southern Wild

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary:
The House I Live In

World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic:
Violeta Went To Heaven

World Cinema Jury Prize, Documentary:
The Law In These Parts

Dramatic Audience Award:
The Surrogate

Documentary Audience Award:
The Invisible War

World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award:
Valley of Saints

World Cinema Documentary Audience Award:
Searching For Sugar Man

The Best of NEXT Audience Award:
Sleepwalk With Me

Directing Award, Dramatic:
Ava DuVernay, Middle of Nowhere

Directing Award, Documentary:
Lauren Greenfield, The Queen of Versailles

World Cinema Directing Award, Dramatic:
Mads Matthiessen, Teddy Bear

World Cinema Directing Award, Documentary:
Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, 5 Broken Cameras

Waldo Scott Screenwriting Award:
Safety Not Guaranteed

World Cinema Screenwriting Award:
Young & Wild

Documentary Editing Award:
Detropia

World Cinema Documentary Editing Award:
Indie Game: The Movie

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Dramatic:
Beasts of the Southern Wild

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Documentary:
Chasing Ice

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Dramatic:
My Brother The Devil

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Documentary:
Putin’s Kiss

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic (Acting):
The cast of The Surrogate

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic:
Jonathan Schwartz and Andrea Sperling for producing Smashed and Nobody Walks

Special Jury Prizes: Documentary:
Love Free or Die
Al Weiwei: Never Sorry

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary
Searching For Sugar Man

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic
Can

Alfred P. Sloan Prizes
Robot & Frank
Valley of Saints

Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award:
Jens Assur, Close Far Away

Short Film Audience Award:
The Debutante Hunters, directed by Maria White… Read the rest

LADY VENGEANCE: INTERVIEW WITH SUNDANCE FILMMAKER EVE SUSSMAN

By Farihah Zaman

Although Sundance is predominantly known for indie dramas and social issue documentaries, the New Frontiers section provides a loving home for particularly odd ducks. Unlike many projects in New Frontiers, which are presented as installations or other new media formats, Eve Sussman’s whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir was screened in a conventional theater. However, the film’s text, 300 bits of voiceover, 150 pieces of music, and 3,000 images are live-edited by an algorithmic computer dubbed the Serendipity Machine that creates a randomized sequence, meaning each screening is entirely unique. Not only does Sussman’s piece turn the idea of the mystery genre on its ear, it plays with the very idea of genre itself, as well as chronology, and convention, and every other building block of narrative as we know it.

Fresh from a successful three-show run at Sundance 2012, Sussman spoke with Lady Vengeance about storytelling and the nature of human perception.

LADY VENGEANCE: How did you conceive of whiteonwhite?

SUSSMAN: Well the title is named after a Malevich painting; White on White and Black Square are the two seminal pieces of Suprematist work, which is about transcendence through art, and pure feeling in art—getting away from representation. But as I was becoming interested in trying to make a piece about that painting, the actor I worked with, Jeff Wood, who was also at Sundance with us, became really interested in space travel. So his literal interest in space converged with the sort of conceptual, theoretical ideas of White on White. Malevich used these sort of megalomaniac theoretical concepts where he would call himself the chairman of space, and he would talk often about the idea of space, whether it was the space of the picture plane, or literal space as in the cosmos; you could sort of read it as a double entendre. And so we started conflating those two ideas, the idea of space and the idea of Suprematism and White on White and pure transcendence.

LV: How did this idea lead you to shoot in Central Asia?

SUSSMAN: Because Jeff kept talking about space I said, … Read the rest

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Today is the day. I’ve been working to finish this movie since 2006. There were moments in the six years since putting pen to page during which I couldn’t make this day out in my future. Not that I considered quitting, that isn’t my style, but I did at times feel like the journey of making this film would stretch into eternity. This is not unprecedented, check out Ellison’s second book or Wendell B. Harris’ second movie.

To avoid that fate I had to take an extreme measure and commit myself to working 12 hours a day 7 days a week until the movie was finished. This change was sparked from a conversation I had with the Orisha through a priestess. The Orisha had a simple message that I took to heart.

Go fast.

I accelerated my pace. I have yet to pump the brakes. I rolled into Park City having slept a combined 4 hours in the previous two weeks. This week is the last mile of  my first marathon, one I did not train for.  Me and my brothers Djore, Nelson-Mandela, and Sydney Driver played original music from the film at the Sundance ASCAP Music Cafe. The crowd was hard to move yet hyper engaged. Afterwards I went a great event presented  by  The Black House.

I’ve met so many amazing people since I’ve been here. I spoke to Matthew Cherry. Great guy.  Great filmmaker. We talked new Black Wave. Last Black Wave. Community. Progress. During my photo ops  with my Question Bridge family it is clear that my cue smile is novice. Hank Willis Thomas’ is perfect. Natasha Logan’s is so well tooled it manages to seem different each time it is performed.  With mine the corners of my mouth rise, but my eyes don’t rise with them. The resulting effect is that half my face is smiling and the other half is concentrating on the task (performance) at hand. Emotional asymmetry.

I went to the New Frontier Premiere event. The work is scale-wise EPIC.  The guy who did that Kanye West video POWER had a 3D piece that is destined to be bitten up by some of my future work.  Question Bridge is so necessary … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “ARBITRAGE” DIRECTOR NICHOLAS JARECKI

Currently best know for his documentary The Outsider, Nicholas Jarecki is poised for reevaluation with Arbitrage, his narrative directorial debut. Jarecki spent a long time ruminating over what kind of story he wanted to tell, ultimately deciding on a thriller set within a world he knew quite a bit about. The film has already garnered attention thanks to its A-List ensemble, but Jarecki hopes his script will force audiences to continue thinking even after the credits finish rolling.  Arbitrage, which is set amidst today’s tumultuous economic terrain and considers the ethics of a hedge-fund mogul, screens today in Park City.

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Filmmaker: Your film is a suspense thriller, but also about a man’s morality. How do you categorize the movie? Is it a cinematic ride, a character study, or a snapshot of the American financial landscape?

Jarecki: Arbitrage is a dramatic thriller about a desperate man who must do whatever it takes to stay alive. It’s also an erotically charged, luxurious ride through high and low and the gray areas of contemporary New York morality. Six characters interweave as they all confront the same basic question: will you give up the power you love to hang on to your last shred of humanity?

Filmmaker: You worked with a large range of actors (Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth, Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, and Monica Raymund). Can you speak about working with such a large, talented ensemble cast of actors?

Jarecki: I felt lucky every day I went to work with the gifted group that came together for this movie. They taught me an enormous amount; together we went on a real journey of discovery through a one-month rehearsal process. We explored the characters, toured the stock exchange, got drunk, and rewrote the script by acting out scenes in my apartment like crazy people– we came together as a family. When we hit the set, we were confident enough in our ideas and comfortable enough trusting each other to be able to take risks in the moment. There’s nothing more a director can hope for.

Filmmaker: What motivated … Read the rest

TEN MINUTES. DOESN’T SEEM LIKE MUCH RIGHT?

Written in collaboration with Clay McLeod Chapman

Our short film—Henley—had been back-burning in our brains for over five years. Clay had published a novel back in 2003 called Miss Corpus. Craig, it turns out, was the only person who read it. There’s a chapter in the book, The Henley Road Motel, which is all about a boy growing up in a family-run roach motel. Think lil’ Normie Bates before donning mom’s summer dress. When business begins to dwindle, our 9-year-old hero cracks a pretty devious scheme to bring customers back to the family business—and poof: A short film is born.

When you’re writing a script and the phrase “a dilapidated motel sits next to a lonesome highway” mysteriously appears on your computer screen, you think—Oh, we’ll be able to find one of those, no problem.

Not that you’d tell the motel owners this. “Quaint” was an oft-expressed term we used during our location scout. Or “homey.”

Not “run down,” which it said in the script. Not “ramshackle.”

Ask and you shall receive: Located right off the interstate in rural, back-country Virginia, we found “quaint.” We found “homey.” Six rooms. The beds were nothing but rusty-wired cots that doubled as ant farms. For a shower, you needed to wait about three minutes for the water to reach an acceptable hue, flushing the mud out. Each A/C was on the fritz from day one—and this being rural Virginia in the thick of summer, the temperature was already well on its way into triple digits.

We had sweet-talked the owner into renting out the entire motel for eight days. During the day, we’d shoot, turning the motel into our own set—and at night (more like four in the morning), we would crash right there on-set, picking whichever room was available and grabbing a few hours of sleep before starting the whole thing up again in the morning. In theory, it was perfect. With little money to go around, we had everything all under one roof: A set that had practically designed itself, housing for talent and crew… The works.… Read the rest

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST (ENTREPRENEUR): CORY McABEE

By Gregory Bayne

As 2012 dawns and the conversation in the film (and greater artistic) community shifts from ‘DIY’ to the advent of the ‘artist-entrepreneur’, I find myself pondering the meaning of all this in my own career and life, while thinking about one of my most enduring inspirations to go it my own way, my friend Cory McAbee.

The bulk of this post was originally drafted in the fall of 2009 right after the release of Cory McAbee’s film, Stingray Sam, and was written simply as a fan of Cory’s work and aesthetic. I was first introduced to Cory’s work when The American Astronaut garnered some notoriety out of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. It was a film that, after a single viewing, locked me in as a true fan. I absolutely loved it. Everything about it. From the film itself, to the accompanying music, all the way down to the DVD packaging and design. I knew immediately that this was an artist, a filmmaker, a musician, that I wanted, and needed, to support.

So, for the ensuing 8 or so years I’d click back to Cory’s site to see what was what, until finally in the fall of ’09 I was very pleasantly surprised to click through and see that Cory had a new film, and that the new film was available right then. I quickly bought the deluxe package which, for $49, I received a digital download of the film and accompanying music, and also received a DVD, CD, collector’s photo booklet, and a Stingray Sam T-Shirt. It was an easy transaction for me, made even better knowing that the revenue was going direct to the artist.

What Cory’s work represents to me is exactly what all the rest of us are seemingly trying to achieve. A progressive film culture that is artist centric and direct-to-fan driven, taking advantage of both new means of production and digital distribution, as well as available social media (Cory and I’s first interaction was via Twitter). So, as I continue forth with my current work(s), I’m decidedly looking to the guy who is a couple … Read the rest

IFP LABS: TEN THINGS EVERY FILMMAKER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DISTRIBUTION DEALS

By Dan Schoenbrun

I’ll be blogging this week from the 2011 IFP Filmmaker Labs, which are in their third and final session at 92Y Tribeca. This year’s 21 participating documentary and narrative projects, are nearing completion of the grueling post-production process and are now turning their attention towards the marketplace.

Things kicked off this morning with a sobering discussion about sales and rights, led by Jon Reiss, co-author of Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul (presented by PreScreen and Area 23, also written by The Film Collaborative and Sherri Candler). Alongside the other lab leaders, Reiss stressed that filmmakers should always use a sales agent and/or lawyer when structuring contracts. But even with these professionals on your side, it’s still absolutely essential that filmmakers have at least a basic familiarity about how deals work, in order to avoid common pitfalls and stay informed.

Here are ten essential points stressed this morning, that all business-savvy filmmakers should keep in the back of their minds:

1. Overall deals are nearly extinct
Gone are the days when distributors will purchase rights in one high-paying fell swoop. There are still rare instances of these types of deals (for instance, Focus’s deal with Pariah at Sundance last year), but split rights deals are much more common nowadays. In a split rights deal, distributors only purchase certain rights (ie: DVD, VOD, digital).

2. There’s no shame in service deals
In a service deal, you pay the distributor to distribute your film, rather than vice versa.
This practice has become much more common in recent years, with major, reputable distributors like Roadside Attractions taking on more service deals. While this type of deal doesn’t promise financial benefits, it does leave more power in the hands of the filmmaker. You’ll be able to work closely with the distributor to carve out a unique marketing and release strategy.

3. Theatrical distribution is really expensive
Filmmakers should never expect to turn a profit on theatrical distribution. Getting a theatrical run is a costly, time consuming endeavor, and distributors traditionally take over 50% of the eventual gross for themselves (and that’s after they … Read the rest

THE MICROBUDGET CONVERSATION: THE JOURNEYMEN

By John Yost

As most of us receive our early morning Sundance rejection email (which literally makes us the 99 percenters…again.) we should all take a moment and reflect: what drove us to this? What brought us to this moment where a single email is either enormously heartbreaking, or just another bump on the dirt road of DIY/micro filmmaking? I’ve asked fellow columnist, and bi-coastal filmmaker, Gregory Bayne to shed a bit of light on his practice of treating each project as the first uphill battle of many, and how that journey is essential for the career independent filmmaker.

We have an almost perverse obsession with the idea of overnight success in this country. It permeates the network television line-up, which provides an un-ending stream of opportunities for under prepared, starry-eyed dreamers to embarrass themselves on a national (perhaps international) stage. In creative communities we constantly talk of getting that “big break,” and if the numbers are correct — 11,700 submissions this year — it appears we filmmakers still believe that a birth at Sundance is the end-all to launching our very lucrative filmmaking careers.

This obsession is like some strange disease for which the only cure, truly, is staying the course long enough that you finally realize there is no “one big success,” only a series of little successes and small triumphs, intermingled with some failures and the occasional tragedy. The brass tacks are, if you are going to make your way as an independent artist, you are committing to a life’s work that will always be, in one way or another, a sustained campaign.

I know this all too well, as I currently embark on my next film and with it another public funding-campaign to get it off the ground. The film is BLOODSWORTH: An Innocent Man (http://kck.st/vpqcgc), a feature documentary about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, who after being charged, convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, became the first death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence in the US. Even though I begin this work with some level of track record behind … Read the rest

TIFF 2011: THE YEAR OF THE DOC?

The buzz word at this year’s TIFF is “doc.” For the first time in its 35-year history, the Toronto International Film Festival opened with a documentary: Davis Guggenheim‘s From The Sky Down, which profiles the world’s most popular rock band, U2. Filmgoers and critics are also buzzing over Crazy Horse, by verite legend Frederick Wiseman;  Samsara (by Baraka‘s Ron Fricke); Tony Krawitz‘s The Tall Man,; and Girl Model by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon.

The doc vibe was in the air on Monday morning at a breakfast launch for Focus Foward. Sponsored by Cinelan and GE, Focus Forward invites big-name documentarians such as Morgan Spurlock (Comic-Con: Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope), Nick Broomfield (Sarah Palin: You Betcha) and Jessica Yu (Last Call at the Oasis) to make three-minute socially conscious docs that A-list festivals like Sundance, IDFA and Tribeca will screen. It was a rare bit of good news in an otherwise tough documentary business climate.

A lot of the talk that followed at Doc Conf, TIFF’s annual doc pow-wow of panels and keynotes, focused on raising money, finding distribution and getting eyeballs in front of screens. Idealism vs. cold, hard cash. A weak economy and broadcasters slimming their funding envelopes have forced documentarians on both sides of the border to launch crowdfunding campaigns on platforms like Kickstarter.com and find new ways of knocking on doors. Or rather, find new doors to knock on.

At the Focus Foward breakfast, Spurlock remained undeterred, but realistic: ”There will always be people who’ll give you money. You got to find them. When I made the Greatest Movie [Ever Told] I called 650 companies and we got 15 to say yes. It was ten months of just cold-calling, meetings, more cold-calling and meetings…. There’s a private financier for every idea, but you gotta find that guy who’ll say, “Oh my God! This is the greatest idea I ever heard! Where have you been all my life?”

For the sake of disclosure, my co-director and I last year raised Kickstarter seed money for our own African amputee … Read the rest

WHEN SHOULD YOU CALL BULLS@#T?

By Gregory Bayne

I’ve been pondering Scott Macaulay‘s post WHEN SHOULD YOU GIVE UP? as it’s a question I’ve asked of myself on several occasions, quite recently even. It’s a question that hangs heavy on the psyche of anyone with a will to create and grow beyond the confines of their own feeble inheritance. I know this because I know that anyone who has ever made any attempt to do, or create, or make, anything, ever, has failed. Many times miserably and likely to the point where it feels as if hope has not just vanished from the horizon, but has finally revealed itself to be the self projected mirage it truly was.

When should you give up? It’s a scary question. It’s a question that by simply asking it, you’ve admitted to failing on some level… and that sucks. Over the years though, I’ve come to realize there is a question that precedes this one. It’s an equally honest, pragmatic and logical question in the face of presumed failure, impasse or impending doom. It’s this. When Should You Call Bulls@#t?

Don’t mistake this as a ‘fight the power’ fueled question, I mean it goes there for sure, but the first bulls@#t to call out is your own. Our biggest threat to individual growth as artists and to achieving any level of success in our careers is often times rooted in our complete lack of objectivity. About our work, about our abilities, and so many times, about the full scope of what it actually takes to create, complete and ultimately share our work with others.

Look, here’s the hard truth. Your movie most likely sucks. If it’s genuinely your first film, and you’ve yet to live, therefore been beaten up by, life, and aren’t some one in a million filmmaking savant, yes, it’s probably garbage. Your friends and family aren’t going to say it to your face, so I will. Trash it, move on. Hopefully you at least had the sense to not spend too much on it.

Over the past 2 decades, I have personally made 4 ‘first’ features, before finally landing on … Read the rest