Sundance Film Festival

Sundance 2019

[PR] Park City, UT — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the showcase of new independent feature films selected across all categories for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival hosts screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort, from January 24 – February 3, 2019. The Festival is the Institute’s…

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Sundance: New Frontier Round-up

If you’re going to sell me that you have a six-player “epic ‘80s fantasy” experience featuring female warriors, man, I want some interactivity with that that goes beyond white-labeling last year’s cat cannon functionality reworked to shoot lasers out of my arms, and I want some story and character development that makes the female warriors feel actually incepted out of story and a hero’s journey, with enough substance wrapped around the experience to give me a connection to my character and the other avatars and to care why we are there.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 10)

We have a special episode today, in which we begin by meeting and discussing filmmaking opportunities for women with Iyabo Boyd and Senain Kheshgi. We then moved on to discuss the film Last Race with director Michael Dweck. We finish by speaking with part of the hilarious and talented team behind the episodic Halfway There, including director Rick Rosenthal, writer Nick Morton, and actors Matthew Lillard and Sara Shahi.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 9)

Ever had a project that you were super-passionate about but didn’t know how to fund? Elise McCave of Kickstarter discusses how to crowdfund for your passion projects. Heather Lenz talks about directing Kusama, and we talk about Game Changers with Louie Psihoyos, Joseph Pace and James Wilks. We end with the team behind Science Fair, Cristina Costantini, Darren Foster, Kashfia, Robbi, and Dr. McCalla.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 8)

We cover Roll with Me, Zion and Nancy as well as talk to AAPI directors about their films. We start with two diverse AAPI directors, Bing Liu and Cecilia Hsu, then discuss Roll with Me with Lisa Frances, Jorja Fox and Gabriel Cordell. We also speak with Floyd Russ, director of Zion, and one of that short film’s producers. Director Christina Choe joins us for her psychological drama Nancy.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 7)

Today we have Chloe Zhao, director of The Rider,  on planning a film with budget restrictions. Co-directors of Genesis 2.0, Christian Frei and Maxim Arbugaev, talk about filming in the heart of Siberia. And we welcome female shorts directors, Anna Margaret Hollyman, of Maude, and Emily Anne Hoffman, of Nevada.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 6)

Our Hot Topics Roundtable features Sean Means, longtime movie critic at the Salt Lake Tribune and Maria Smith, executive creative director of M&C Saatchi LA. We’re joined by Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish, also director of Slamdance closing-night film Bernard and Huey, from a long-neglected Jules Feiffer script. Director Charlie Bims and actress Julie Sokolowski joins us to talk about their Slamdance feature Human Affairs.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 4)

Day Four offers great insight for listeners furthering film careers. We speak with Carrie Lozano and Simon Kilmurry of the International Documentary Association. Pascal Plante, director of Fake Tattoos drops by, as well as the director and cast of Funny Story, Michael Gallagher, Matthew Glave, Jana Wintimitz and Emily Bett Rickards.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 3)

Day Three ranges across film genres and guests. We start off with the Russo brothers who are here at the Sundance film festival to receive the Founders Award from Slamdance, along with Peter Baxter from Slamdance. We move on to speak with Rainbow Experiment director Christina Kallas and Isaiah Blake, a part of the cast. Closing the podcast: the We the Animals feature team.

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The Daily Buzz from Sundance (Day 2)

Day Two of Sundance 2018 is filled with snow! Today’s episode starts with Salt Lake’s City Weekly’s Scott Renshaw, a juror for Slamdance film competitions. Anote Tong and Matthieu Rytz of Anote’s Ark discuss the literal sinking of the island of Kiribati and raising awareness around climate change. We end with the moving feature ilm White Rabbit with director Daryl Wein, and cast Vivian Bang and Nana Ghana.

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The Daily Buzz Podcast from Sundance

It’s officially Day One of Sundance 2018, and the first episode for The Daily Buzz is packed with amazing films. This episode begins with a heartwarming tribute to the late Irene Cho, the founder of Daily Buzz; moves on to a fascinating account of the lives and training of service dogs in Pick of the Litter, made by Dana Nachman and Don Hardy; and ends with a packed panel with Nick Offerman, Kersey Clemons and Brett Haley for Hearts Beat Loud.

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Sundance Sets Juries

Sundance Film Festival: Juries, Awards Night Host Announced 24 Jurors to Award NUMBER Prizes, Including New NEXT Innovator’s Award Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute will convene 24 experts in film, art, culture and science to award feature-length work shown at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival with 28 prizes, announced at a ceremony January 27 that will be…

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Here’s The 2017 Sundance Film Guid

Here’s The 2017 Sundance Film Guide 47-page pdf And – The Printable Schedule

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Sundance Seen Part 1

The whispering of powder from a dull quiet sky. Snowflakes fall between the screenings. Then the sun is bright and powder dusts off the slopes.

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Sundance Reviews: The Wolfpack, Slow West

Unique ironies surround Crystal Moselle’s bewildering documentary, The Wolfpack, not the least of which is that the film opens with a group of brothers at home re-enacting Reservoir Dogs, a film that premiered at Sundance 23 years ago.

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Six Films To Watch At Sundance

Attending Sundance this year means personally jumping through a lot of difficult hoops to make it happen, but this festival is becoming legendary—2014’s iteration eclipsed both Cannes and TIFF combined—and I simply couldn’t skip this year.

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Sundance 15 First Sale? Baumbach-Gerwig Mistress America Goes Searchlight

Sundance 15 First Sale? Baumbach-Gerwig Mistress America Goes Searchlight

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Sundance 2014 Last Call

As a documentarian, Balmès shows more than tells; his work tends to curate moments that strike him as meaningful into a largely abstract tapestry and let you make of them what you will. Consequently, Happiness is not a neatly delineated picture of narrative storytelling, nor is it quite traditionally structured documentary. True to form, the director’s work here tends toward the languid and fluid; we float gently along the placid life rhythm of this small village on a faraway mountaintop as the camera captures the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – shifts in the cultural and social landscape wrought by the march of technological progress.

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Sundance 2014 Review: The Better Angels

A film created to be seen on a big screen, where the gorgeous cinematography can fill your soul. Dialogue is sparse, used only to augment the narration and visuals, with the result that in many ways feels almost like watching a silent film with narration over it. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, it’s like immersing yourself into a black-and-white landscape of stunning beauty, where there happens to be this story happening around you. Edwards’ time spent as a cameraman on Malick’s films is evident here in the framing of shots, the extensive use of nature in storytelling, and his willingness to let his tale breathe in quiet spaces.

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Sundance 2014 Review: Listen Up Philip

Here’s a truism about men like Philip: smart women who tell themselves they would never put up with his particular brand of bullshit no matter what nonetheless can and do fall prey to the allure of the reclusive, temperamental, misunderstood genius, and will keep coming back for more. Men like Philip present a challenge to overcome, a puzzle to solve – until the women in their lives finally have enough and say “no more.” And then those men end up alone, feeling misused and mistreated, looking everywhere save within themselves for the answer to the riddle of their loneliness and isolation.

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Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon