By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
They're Here: Sundance Institute Launches Week-Long BAM Residency
After a refreshing three-and-a-half month break, The Reeler returned to the Sundance beat Thursday night as the Sundance Institute at BAM series finally got underway in Brooklyn. It seems like only yesterday I was stalking a sort-of giddy Robert Redford over lunch, and now that he has returned with most of his entire Park City crew–including the Institute’s executive director Ken Brecher, Sundance festival director Geoffrey Gilmore and director of programming John Cooper–to spotlight a few members of his organization’s Class of ’06, I feel as though I am one 20-inch snow drift away from being magically lifted back to the frigid tumult of the real deal.
Little Miss Sunshine directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton introduce their film and its young star, Abigail Breslin, Thursday at its BAM premiere (Photos: STV)
All right, fine–I am exaggerating. But at least the faces looked like Sundance, with the aforementioned staff commingling with New York-based alums Hilary Brougher, Paul Rachman, Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden, Josh Marston, Rose Rosenblatt, Marion Lipschutz and God only knows who else. A popular Patricia Clarkson made the rounds once or twice, while directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris fielded a virtually endless receiving line after the NYC premiere of their festival darling (and $10 million Fox Searchlight dice-roll) Little Miss Sunshine.
“We’re very nervous about the New York audience taking this in,” Dayton said during his introduction, looking out on a crowd guzzling sugar-rimmed lemon drops. “But thank God you’ve all been drinking.” In the end, Sunshine drew the same steady stream of laughter it experienced during its Utah bow, and the filmmakers expressed their relief at the afterparty.
“It’s kind of like this dream scenario of these two institutions which we’ve known for years, ” Dayton told me. “And the idea that they’d come together and that our film could be part of the opening gala, is just, you know…” He shrugged. “Actually, standing here at the end of it all, I can say it was as good as we had hoped. Everything that you could have hoped might happen–a really fantastic, smart audience.”
“I was nervous because Sundance is the warmest, most receptive audience you can hope for,” Faris added. “And I was worried that this is New York, and it’s a Thursday night and people are coming form work, and you don’t know what kind of mood they’re in. And also the little bit of talk that the film sold for a lot of money at Sundance. And I don’t think that’s a great introduction to the film. So I was worried that a more cynical crowd might not respond. But again, because it’s a Sundance event–”
“At BAM,” Dayton emphasized.
“At BAM,” Faris said. “I mean, I wish we had something comparable in L.A. They draw great people with their program, and Sundance has connections with all kinds of great people here, and it’s exciting that the festival is here.”
The travel is certainly a hell of a lot easier, at least for folks like Brooklyn’s own Jennie Livingston, whose documentary Through the Ice will screen in the series’ shorts program. “BAM is a great place for these films to land,” she said, also recalling the days when trailblazing films like her own Paris is Burning epitomized Sundance as both a world-class breeding ground and market for independent cinema. “It was a much smaller festival, but of course, it was very exciting. It went from a first film–this little documentary–to something where people knew what it was. And in a sense, I became a filmmaker. And I went back to Sundance for the first time this year with this short. Now, of course, the festival is much bigger, and in a sense, it suffers from its films’ success because it’s so overwhelming and big. On the other hand, I saw the most amazing assortment of films. I mean, I felt like so many of the films I saw were in the spirit of what I imagined Sundance should be about. Films like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, or the Al Gore film [An Inconvenient Truth]. Two opposite ends of the spectrum, but both films that when you see them, you say, ‘These should be made.’ ”
Moreover, when I look at the Sundance at BAM program, I cannot help but think that these are the films that should be screening here. As I’ve said at least a hundred times, you cannot go wrong with So Yong Kim’s In Between Days or Brougher’s Stephanie Daley, the latter of which will be the focus of a discussion between Brougher and producer Ted Hope Saturday at 3 p.m. Goran Dukic will be in town to introduce his brilliant Wristcutters: A Love Story, while Byron Hurt’s hip-hop doc Beyond Beats and Rhymes will unspool a series-high three times in addition to a special screening and discussion for area high school students. Carter Smith’s Cannes-bound Bugcrush joins the ungodly Before Dawn in the shorts program, and all of you cine-pervs can run down with your trenchcoats and hand lotion on Saturday night to check out the art-porn anthology Destricted.
Additionally, BAM is hosting work from the Institute’s other labs and programs throughout the week: Composers Raz Mesinai, Gyan Riley and Maya Beiser perform next weekend; the Sundance Theater Songbook opens up May 15; and Sunday, the festival offers a free reading of Tanya Hamilton’s screenwriters lab work-in-progress, Discovering Stringbean and Marcus. The whole series closes out May 21 with kind of a do-it-yourself screening and panel discussion, “Four Independents That Turned the Tide”; viewers are invited to screen one of four films–Polyester, Gas Food Lodging, Spanking the Monkey or The Unbelievable Truth–before sitting in on a panel discussion with the four filmmakers behind each–John Waters, Allison Anders, David O. Russell and Hal Hartley, respectively.
“Where Sundance is a captured audience, here, we really looked to make sure that every film you walked into, you had a piece of Sundance,” Cooper told The Reeler. “You felt it like it was the same kind of experience–you have a dialogue. And we did look at films that had more than one Sundance story behind it; they either went to the labs, or they’re supported through the doc fund. There are many threads that run through the program. We could have programmed it ourselves and brought it here, but we decided that this was a place to partner with because they have theater, music and film, which is what we do. It was the perfect place. It didn’t look like just the festival here–it looked like the whole institute.”
See? I told you this place looked familiar.
