Sundance at MoMA: Sundance Film Festival Shorts, running in New York April 22-29, is the second in an annual collaboration between the Sundance Institute and The Museum of Modern Art. The two organizations collaborated for the first time in 2003 with a film series called Illuminated Voices, which presented original and provocative documentary films from around the world. This year’s series promises to be every bit as intriguing with 24 titles that include new voices as well as works by more established names such as Andrew Jarecki, Spike Jonze, and Alison Maclean, all of whom have gone on to make acclaimed features. Four distinct programs reflect the innovation and energy inherent in the fertile field of shorts - ranging from narrative to documentary to animation, and with running times from under one minute to just over thirty.

“I love the forced economy of the short film - the discipline of compressing a story/idea to it's most essential, while creating the illusion that you have all the time in the world,” says Alison Maclean, whose Kitchen Sink (1989) plays in the Sundance Film Festival Shorts 2: Discovery in Motion program which highlights films by then unheard of artists. This debut of talent at the Sundance Film Festival has been one of the Festival’s greatest attributes and draws cinephiles from all over the world to the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, for the January festival.

Andrew Jarecki, the acclaimed director of Capturing the Friedmans (2002) which won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury prize in 2003, is in complete agreement observing, “some of my most interesting filmmaking experiences have been working on short films, and there are plenty of full length films that would have been much better as shorts!”

He goes on to add, “The format is un-pressurized; you are free to experiment knowing that if you don't like what you come up with, you can always just throw it out and pretend it never happened. That promotes a kind of innovative, fearless storytelling.” Jarecki’s Just a Clown(2004) also plays in the Discovery in Motion program.

The importance of short films in the career path of these acclaimed directors cannot be overstated. “Making Kitchen Sink changed everything for me as a young New Zealand filmmaker, and precipitated my move to New York,” says Alison Mclean. “It's the only film I've made that's ever generated income for me, in the form of a small cheque every year.” Alison went on to direct Crush (1992), which played at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993, as well as episodes of Sex And The City.

“Capturing the Friedmans had started out as a film about professional children's birthday party clowns; it was only after working for months with David Friedman, New York's number one party clown, that I discovered he had a secret story,” adds Jarecki. “After that story evolved into Capturing the Friedmans, there was something intriguing about going back and revisiting that original clown territory with David. In context, now, the two pieces really inform each other.”

Andrea Arnold, director of WASP (2003), which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Short Film, Live Action says it’s too early to tell how the short changed her life, but change her life it did. “There was not one second when chasing the kids in WASP after a take, or sitting on the wet pub car park floor at 3am that I imagined this now,” says Andrea. “Even now with the Oscar on my desk in front of me it is hard to believe. I was surprised to get short listed and shocked to win. I don't think you ever think it will go that far. It's still only a month or so since (it happened) and too early to say what it will really mean but life has definitely changed!” WASP plays in Sundance Film Festival Shorts 1: Short Films-Big Winners.

Sundance at MoMA: Sundance Film Festival Shorts gives New York native Peter Sollett an opportunity to present his Five Feet High And Rising (2000) which won a Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival to a New York audience. He says having it “presented at MoMA is a great privilege. It reminds me why we work so hard to make our films!”

With 24 of the finest films the short film format has to offer on view including not one but two Oscar-winning shorts: Chris Landreth's Ryan (2004) screens in the series. Sundance at MoMA: Sundance Film Festival Shorts should not be missed, but in case you do the series also plays at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on Friday nights from July 8-29. A wide range of shorts, including a number of the films featured in this series are available for viewing at no charge on the Sundance Online Film Festival web site at www.sundance.org , along with interviews with filmmakers and behind-the-scenes coverage of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, this past January.

For more info log onto the Sundance Institute’s website at www.sundance.org or the Museum of Modern Arts website at http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2005/sundance_shorts.html

SUNDANCE AT MOMA: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL SHORTS
COMPLETE SCHEDULE

Friday, April 22

6:00 pm
Short Films – Big Winners
Presenting the films Wasp by Andrea Arnold, Five Feet High and Rising by Peter Sollet, Man About Town by Kris Isacsson, and Family Portrait by Patricia Riggen

8:00 pm
Discovery in Motion
Presenting the films Victoria Para Chino by Cary Fukunaga, Tama Tu by Taikia Waititi, Tater Tomater, by Phil Morrison, Architecture of Reassurance by Mike Mills, How They Got There by Spike Jonez, Kitchen Sink by Alison Maclean, and Just a Clown by Andrew Jarecki.

Saturday, April 23
2:00 pm
Flexing the Form
Presenting the films Fast Film by Virgil Widrich, Ryan by Chris Landreth,
The Meaning of Life by Don Hertzfeldt, Solo un Cargodor (Porter) by Juan Alejandro Ramirez, The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal by Matt McCormick, and The Raftman’s Razor by Keith Bearden.

Sunday, April 24
2:00 pm
The Nonfiction Faction
Presenting the films The Children of Leningradsky by Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celinski, Natchiliagniaqtuguk Aapagalu (Seal Hunting with Dad) by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, Recycle by Vasco Nunes and Ondi Timoner, It’s Like That by Southern Ladies Animation Group, Small Town Secrets by Katherine Leggett, Our Story (La Historia de Todos) by Blanca Aguerra, Dimmer by Talmage Cooley

5:30
Discovery in Motion

Monday, April 25
5:00 p.m.
Flexing the Form

Wednesday, April 27
7:45 p.m.
Short Films-Big Winners

Friday, April 29
7:30 p.m.
The Nonfiction Faction

Accidental Filmmaking: The Fair on the Sundance Online Film Festival

READ THE STORY THEN WATCH THE FILM AT WWW.SUNDANCE.ORG

What happens when you blend an artist’s talent for book making and a love of radio with a Website called Transom, the computer-generated technology called Flash, and the Sundance Online Film Festival? For New York-based multi-media artist Jason Rayles and his project The Fair, it was a wild three-year run with an artwork that began as a limited edition-book, became a radio pitch to National Public Radio, developed into an animated film for the Internet, and finally received an on-screen premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

As unlikely and crazy as it may seem, that is more or less the story (so far anyway) of The Fair, a beautiful and passionate work that explores the distinctly American sights and sounds of the days and nights of the 2002 Brockton County Fair in Massachusetts.

A labor of love, Rayles explains, “I wanted to capture these amazing visuals and also to show the dual sides of the fair, with baby contests in the daytime and demolition derbies at night – two completely different worlds existing together in the same spot.”

Rayles’ biggest challenge was achieving suitable audio and photos for the book with limited technological resources. After some experimentation, he settled on the simple solution of using a camcorder to capture visuals and stereo microphones to record audio to a minidisc. With this approach the visual element of the project shifted from still photos to video, and in the end it may have been this low-tech multi-media approach that allowed for so many future cross-media evolutions of the project.

When the resulting handmade book landed on the desk of Bob Boilen, director of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, it caught the eye of Jay Allison who became an instant fan. Encouraged by Allison, Rayles pulled video and applied animations to create a piece for www.transom.org, Allison’s radio-meets-Internet Website.

Calling on his skills as a computer programmer to re-design and re-think his material, Rayles finally created an animation-motion picture hybrid that is both stylistically unique and effectively captures the highly visceral experience of being at a fair. It was this Web-based version that made its way to the submission pile of the Sundance Online Film Festival (SOFF) in October of 2004. And that is where fate tapped Rayles into one more rendezvous with the project that wouldn’t die.

Moved by Rayles’ creativity and by the innovations of work itself, Sundance Film Festival programmers approached Rayles with an invitation to screen The Fair as a short film at the 2005 Festival in Park City. A genuinely surprised Rayles agreed with enthusiasm, making adjustments and converting Flash animation back into video for a film that would finally project on the big screen before the feature film Who Killed Cock Robin?

The results, he admits, were a bit hit-and-miss, and although other festivals followed with more invitations, Rayles seems content to let his creation rest after its premiere at Sundance. “As far as America, after Sundance there doesn’t seem to be a way up, and even though there is opportunity out there for it to live on, I’m really proud and pleased to let it end at such an exciting place.”

As for his artistic future, Rayles confides that after a recent appearance at Harvard to speak about his work, he began to ponder something new. “I love making my books and I love the radio and I’ve always been drawn to documentaries. But I think I’m going to start a new project soon … it’s a short film … right from the start. I mean, it’s meant to be a short film … on purpose.”

You can experience Jason Rayles’ book/radio/Internet/short film The Fair for free from anywhere in the world at the 2005 Sundance Online Film Festival –just visit www.sundance.org and click on the SOFF logo. Anytime … day or night.

Five Questions for Craig Lucas

Craig Lucas has distinguished himself as an artist who moves fluidly between theatre and film, both as a writer and a director. Works such as Longtime Companion, and The Dying Gaul originated as plays that Lucas later adapted to films. Screen adaptations of others’ original work includes the script for The Secret Lives of Dentists, the acclaimed 2002 film based on Jane Smiley’s novel The Age of Grief.

In 2002, at the Sundance Theatre Lab led by Producing Artistic Director Philip Himberg, Lucas collaborated with composer and librettist Adam Guettel to develop the musical The Light in the Piazza. As he looks forward to the play’s opening at Lincoln Center this week, Lucas shares some of his thoughts about moving between the media of theatre and film, and gives a glimpse of what we’ll see from him next.

Some of your earliest work in the theatre was on stage as an actor and a singer. Did your on-stage experiences inform the way that you approach the writing process?
Yes. Understanding what actors do, how they approach the material, how they bring it to life, enact, inhabit, rehearse, along with knowing what kinds of questions they ask and how that then translates into something they can perform repeatedly in front of an audience -- all of that goes into writing. I always think it's good for playwrights and screenwriters, not to mention directors, to study acting thoroughly.

Light in the Piazza is an adaptation of the book by Elizabeth Spencer, and was adapted for film in 1962 before you adapted the story for the stage. Your film The Dying Gaul is an adaptation of your original play by the same name. Your career has been marked by your ability to adapt your own original material and that of other writers for the different media of theatre, musical theatre, and film. How does your approach to the material differ depending on the media you are working within?
Big, big, big question. The media are all story-telling agencies, of course, and the story is the brain of the piece: the main event. From there on, things get dicier. Having worked in theatre, I have some sense of what can carry, how to tell a story in a forum where some people will be sitting five feet away from the action and some people will be fifty feet away. The words carry more weight, because they can presumably be heard by both parties, the near and the far, whereas the flutter of an eyelid may only be visible to the front three rows. In addition, no matter how "realistic" a theatre set may be, the space is always metaphorical by nature: live actors in a lit box (or thrust) are NOT really where they say they are or we are expected to suspend our disbelief in order to believe they are; when you watch a performance of Julius Caesar, you know you are not in Rome, because you are sitting there, and you always know exactly where you are; the proscenium is normally fixed in theatre, so that missing fourth wall contributes to the sense that one is watching something that STANDS for something else, represents something you do not see -- the Coliseum in the distance, the Appenines in the far distance, whatever. So the IDEA of Rome is what you are providing when you watch, and that metaphorical relationship to the event allows all of the language and the behavior to have an extrapolatable quality that is far less present in movies, because you ARE seeing the real thing or what looks like the real thing; one is being convinced by the literalizing nature of the camera itself that a crew went to Rome and made the movie with the real Coliseum in the distance, etc. etc. So the event is more of what it says it is, and of course it is in two dimensions. Movies are less capable of conveying thought for this very reason; thought is normally conveyed by words in a linear way, the words representing things; the thinking required in transferring the mind from the word to the thing represented IS thought, plus the things being represented in their linear fashion are the LINE of thinking. In movies, what one is essentially succumbing to is the images, rather than something that stands for them, so the necessity to think (i.e., use the mind to substitute the image or the thing for the word) has been surpassed or circumnavigated; illiterate people can glean a great deal from watching a movie in a language they don't understand, whereas a printed text would provide little or no sustenance. So, in imagining a story for the screen, the eye of the writer which in theatre is watching everything through a fixed proscenium and doing the editing in the MIND is now using a portable proscenium (the camera can move anywhere, establishing a new fourth wall anywhere it chooses -- near or far) and all the editing will be done for the viewer, no work will be required past keeping their eyes open and focusing their attention on the screen and the sound track. Filmmakers who have relied heavily on dialogue -- Rohmer, Bergman, Jarman -- are working far outside the mainstream, and even their work is susceptible to the centripetal pull of the image, the primacy of seeing over thinking or hearing-cum-imagining.

Musicals are a whole other kettle of fish, because they take reality and look at it through a conceit -- that of bursting into song. The stylization of that allows for a certain inner truthfulness, a baring of the soul. Books for musicals are the hardest to write of the three -- they are the most reliant upon structure and economy and variety, imagination, humility. An entire book could be written about the difficulties and challenges of writing books for musicals. Suffice it to say that the job is completely other than it would appear to be -- it is most emphatically NOT providing dialogue to hook the songs together. Book writing is creating a structure which, at its highest level of achievement, disappears from the audience's view, allowing the story and the music to appear to be moving forward, happening with an inevitability that draws the eyes and ears and heart completely OFF the work of the book writer and onto the main event: songs within stories.

Looking back to 2002, how did your time at the Sundance Theatre Lab inform your creative process of developing Light on the Piazza?
The contribution at Sundance was immeasurable -- primarily thanks to the work of Robert Blacker; he provided the finest overview of the work we still needed to do; his dramaturgical skills are, in my view, as fine as any in the American theater. Along with Robert, we had the help of Michael Greif and a magnificent dramaturg from Ireland, Jocelyn Clark. Wonderful actors brought what we had to life, and myriad things became clear to us and fell into place. It was a fecund time.

What projects are on the horizon for you?
An adaptation of Miss Julie about to begin rehearsals, directed by Anders Cato (who also did the literal translation), starring Marin Hinkle, Reg Rogers and Julia Gibson at New York's Rattlestick Theater, a place I consider an artistic home.

An adaptation of Three Sisters at Intiman, Bart Sher directing.

A new musical, The Listener, with music by Michael Torke (I'm doing lyrics for the first time and am petrified to my bones), premiering at Juilliard in September; Bart Sher is directing this one, too.

And a movie of my play, Small Tragedy, starring (as of now!) Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott.

I also have two big plays that are still being produced outside of New York -- works that I am doing at various regional theaters; I may skip bringing them to New York. One is Singing Forest which has played at Intiman and Long Wharf and just won the Steinberg Award, the American Drama Critics prize for best new play of the year. The other is Ode to Joy, a commission from Long Wharf. I have outstanding commissions from several theaters and I hope to be able to get down to work on them at last. I love working at regional theaters, and hope to be able to sustain myself there without depending any longer on New York as a home for new work.

What are the plays, films, books, or other works of art that you are responding to right now?
Chekhov -- the stories, the letters, the plays, the criticism surrounding his work, often brilliant (particularly Richard Gilman's work).

Giambattista Vico's New Science and Autobiography

Peter Cameron's novels and stories.

I'm doing a great deal of reading from the public record on the psychedelic era for a possible movie.

The books of Christopher Bollas.

The novels and stories of William Maxwell.

The autobiographical writings of Wilfred R. Bion.

Denton Welch, Glenway Westcott, Julian Mazor.

The letters of Keats.

Jonathan Lear's Therapeutic Action.

Bernard Williams' Truth and Truthfulness.

Stanley Cavell's work, particularly on Shakespeare and on movies.

A whole slew of psychological horror novels for a possible musical -- these are incredibly fun.

A.A. Long's book on Epictetus.

Recent poetry by Mark Doty, Charles Simic, Spencer Reese, Richard Wilbur, C.K. Williams, plus some things I didn't appreciate when I was first exposed to them, Snodgrass' "Heart's Needle" and Berryman's “Dream Songs,” Adrienne Rich, Marilyn Hacker.

The movies I've seen lately that I loved were Unfinished Piece for the Player Piano and Oblomov. I read and hugely admired Anton Dudley's Slag Heap and Anne Washburn's The Internationalist, two wonderful young writers I admire and follow.

Now Playing in Poland: I Am My Own Wife

Moisés Kaufman (pictured below) stands in front of a theatre kiosk on the streets on Krakow, Poland just before the opening night of Doug Wright’s play, I Am My Own Wife (Pulitzer Prize Drama 2004; Tony Award Best Play and Best Actor 2004) at the Stary Theatre in Krakow. Kaufman, the play's original director, also directs the Polish production which stars Tony-award winning actor Jefferson Mays. The four-performance run is part of a collaboration of the Sundance Theatre Program and the Stary Theatre.

Watch for a full story on the collaboration in next month's inSIder.

Life After the Labs

Since being developed at the Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs, several projects recently supported by the Institute's Feature Film Program have advanced into various stages of production.

Completed Projects
Andrucha Waddington’s House of Sand (2004 Sundance/NHK Award winner, Brazil) recently premiered in Brazil.

Post-Production
Three American projects supported by the Feature Film Program are no in post-production, including Shall Not Want, directed by Laurie Collyer (2001 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), Harsh Times, directed by David Ayer (1997 Screenwriters Lab), and Down in the Valley, directed by David Jacobson (2003 Screenwriters Lab).

Pre-Production
Two Lab-supported projects are scheduled to begin production in the next several months. Rodrigo Moreno’s The Minder (2005 Sundance/NHK Award winner, Argentina) begins production later this month, and Dror Shaul’s Sweet Mud (2003 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs) will begin production in the late summer.

Post-Production Support
Many of these and other films would not be able to move forward without the crucial and generous support of the production services companies that agree to donate goods and services at steep discounts or, in many cases, free of charge. We offer deepest thanks to the following companies for providing assistance to these recent Lab-supported films:

Avid: Forty Shades of Blue, written and directed by Ira Sachs

Deluxe Laboratories: Me and You and Everyone We Know, written and directed by Miranda July; Swimmers, written and directed by Doug Sadler

E-film: Me and You and Everyone We Know, written and directed by Miranda July

Eastman-Kodak Film: Harsh Times, written and directed by David Ayer; The Motel, written and directed by Michael Kang

Pacific Title: Me and You and Everyone We Know, written and directed by Miranda July; The Motel, written and directed by Michael Kang; Swimmers, written and directed by Doug Sadler

Panavision: Harsh Times, written and directed by David Ayer; The Motel, written and directed by Michael Kang

Annual Risk-Takers Gala Benefit to Honor Filmmaker Robert Altman, Playwright Tony Kushner, and Corporate Leader Howard Schultz in New York City
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Gotham Hall, New York City

Maverick filmmaker Robert Altman, acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner, and the visionary chairman of Starbucks Howard Schultz were recently announced as recipients of the Sundance Institute Risk-Takers Award. Awards will be presented in New York City on Thursday, April 21, 2005 at the Institute’s annual Risk-Takers Benefit Gala which celebrates risk-taking, innovation, and creativity in the arts. Approximately 500 guests will attend and proceeds from the event go to support the Institute’s programs which include laboratories and workshops for narrative and documentary filmmakers, screenwriters, film composers, and theatre artists.

Documentary Series Presents Imelda on May 5 in Park City
On May 5 in Park City, the Institute's Documentary Film Series presents Imelda, Ramona Diaz's intriguing documentary on Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. The free monthly screenings are followed by open forum discussions with filmmakers, critics, and subjects of the films. Screenings begin at 7 p.m. in the Jim Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library, 1255 Park Avenue. Tickets or reservations are not required. The series is part of the Institute's Arts & Audiences Utah Initiative and is generously supported by the Summit County Recreation, Arts, and Parks Program.

Deadline: Feature Film Program
Application Deadline: May 1, 2005
Applications for the January 2006 Screenwriters Lab are now being accepted through May 1, 2005.
Apply

Deadline: Sundance/NHK Filmmakers Award
Application Deadline: June 30, 2005
Applications for the Sundance/NHK Filmmakers Award are now being accepted through June 30, 2005. Applications are by professional recommendation only, and a written referral must accompany each application. If you are unsure if you qualify, please contact the program administrator at nhk_award@sundance.org.