Another morning at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival means another fascinating conversation at the Cinema Cafe in the Filmmakers Lodge. This time it was a meeting of the minds between two writer/directors, Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg) and Richard Ayoade (Submarine). Both films deal with young people finding their way into the adult world, but the other similarities between these two filmmakers are less obvious.
At a festival that showcases films from around the world, that exposes audiences here and beyond to a wide spectrum of cultures, classes, and political realities, and that was founded by an actor turned influential advocate, it’s apparent that art can have an impact on society. But what kind of an impact? And what responsibility do artists have to the future of our country, the education of our children, and the greater good? These were among the questions that three renowned artists wrestled with at Power of Story: Making Art Matter, a panel discussion held at the Egyptian Theatre on Saturday. Moderated by Rachel Goslins, who serves as the Executive Director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the panel featured pioneering broadcaster and constitutional rights advocate Norman Lear, stage and screen director and former producer of New York’s Public Theater, George C.
We had our world premiere of Circumstance at the Library Theatre during the Sundance Film Festival. After being involved with the project since the 2007 Sundance Institute Composers Lab, there were so many mixed emotions going into the premiere! There were nerves, of course, as well as this feeling of relief. I have been so proud of this film and could not wait for people to see it, so to finally be there at the theater waiting for it to start was quite emotional.
PARK CITY, UT — Sundance Institute and Mahindra today announced the winners of the inaugural Sundance Institute|Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award, in recognition and support ofemerging independent filmmakers from around the world. The winning directors and projects are: Bogdan Mustata, WOLF from Romania; Ernesto Contreras, I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE from Mexico; Seng Tat Liew, IN WHAT CITY DOES IT LIVE? from Malaysia; and Talya Lavie, ZERO MOTIVATION from Israel. The awards were presented at a private ceremony at the Sundance Film Festival, currently underway in Park City, Utah.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s empowering documentary Miss Representation explores the underrepresentation of women in media, government, and business. Blending interviews with female leaders (Gloria Steinem, Condoleezza Rice, Geena Davis, and Katie Couric to name a few) and politicians including her husband Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom, and eye-opening statistics on the role of women in American society, Siebel Newsom’s directorial debut is what she likes to label a “call-to-action” film. Weaved throughout Miss Representation is the director’s own story – dealing with discrimination as an educated, late 20-something in the acting world, a two-year struggle with an eating disorder, and the birth of her daughter Montana.
Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a documentary about brand collateral, product placement in movies, and co-promotion and it’s really funny. Using himself and his attempts to get $1.5 million in funds from corporations who would like their products advertised in a documentary about product advertising in movies, Spurlock is his usual charming, funny, and insightful self as he becomes the ringleader of a circus of visits and negotiations with companies (Ban deodorant, Jet Blue, POM Wonderful, the island of Aruba) that eventually come around to his idea, even though they were aware that they will not get final approval of the film and are subject to Spurlock’s desire for transparency.
Saturday morning, as part of what Robert Redford likes to refer to as his favorite Festival tradition, all of the filmmakers boarded a caravan of buses to take them from Park City up the mountain pass to the Sundance Resort-the place “where everything began.” When Redford first realized the need for a safe, secluded space for artists to work away from the pressures of Hollywood and the rest of the world, he opened up his home at Sundance. That’s where Sundance Institute’s first Filmmakers Lab was born, and over the last thirty years has grown into year-round artist development programs that have expanded from feature filmmaking to documentary, film music, and theatre.
I found myself in the driver’s seat of a parked Chevy Malibu, anxiously alternating between the rearview and sideview mirrors, wondering how in the world I got there. The car wasn’t mine. I didn’t even know whose it was.
Bill Haney’s sobering, engrossing documentary The Last Mountain details a practice that has only recently garnered coverage in America although it threatens to endanger the drinking water of tens of millions of Americans. Mountaintop removal – which the coal industry endorses because it ensures maximum profit in the most efficient manner – involves blasting off the tops of mountains to have easier access to the coal seams within those mountains. In West Virginia, where the practice threatens to ruin Coal River Mountain, the last mountain near the homes of a small but determined tribe of activists, the coal industry is particularly powerful, although Haney points out in the film how prevalent coal plants are throughout most of the United States.
Saying that Tom McCarthy’s moving new film Win Win is a wrestling movie would be like saying that The Wizard of Oz is about a pair of red sequined shoes. There may be a lot of wrestling in it, and nail-biting turns of the plot may take place on a wrestling mat, but Win Win is really about the modern American family and the sometimes strange and unexpected ways a family becomes itself. Paul Giamatti plays a strapped New Jersey attorney who agrees to become the guardian for an elderly client, but he moves him into a retirement facility just as his client’s abandoned grandson has fled his drug-addled mother in Ohio and plopped himself on his grandfather’s doorstep.
The opening to director Kelly Reichardt’s film Meek’s Cutoff sets a grim scene—a group of pioneers arduously carries their belongings across a river, while a man carves a message into the bark of a dead tree: “LOST.” Meek’s Cutoff is based on the true story of the pioneer group led by Stephen Meeks, a guide who promised to lead them through a shortcut on the Oregon Trail in 1845. A Sundance Film Festival veteran, Reichardt (River of Grass, Old Joy) applies quiet atmospheric shots of the barren plains to illustrate the loneliness and fear of the pioneers (played by Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood).
The summer of 2009 was supposed to usher in a new age of noticeable and lasting democracy in Iran. A groundswell of optimism for real societal change was roaring through the country in anticipation of new presidential elections, and many thought the overthrow of the economically and politically disastrous administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was imminent. This “green wave” of reform grew to become a formidable force, taking to the streets en masse with a thunderous and self-assured voice for real and lasting change and a new beginning for Iran.