Platform

Sam Green Brings 'Utopia' to Sundance

Sundance was just days away when I found Sam Green deep in preparation for the live performance of his latest piece, Utopia in Four Movements. But even as he was ironing out the final kinks, he found a few minutes to walk me through the greatest dreams and worst nightmares of the 20th century, offering up the connections between an American exile in Cuba, the world’s largest shopping mall, which lies dormant in China, the history of Esperanto and the work of forensic anthropologists. In the years since The Weather Underground earned him an Oscar nomination, Green’s moved away from the traditional documentary format into more experimental narratives and offbeat shorts, such as lot 63, grave c, a melancholic look at the legacy of Altamont victim Meredith Hunter. His new work, a live-music infused, first-personal tour through a century of dashed hopes finds Green pushing boundaries of all sorts.

[Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in SF360’s Blogs. Green performed Utopia in Four Movements to adoring crowds at Sundance this past week. He added an epilogue to the story as the festival was closing.]

topics: activism, directors, diy, documentary, oscars, performance, sundance

Avoiding Disaster

Fine points on festivals

If you’re an independent filmmaker, odds are your plan is to submit to a major film festival in the hope of getting discovered. Festivals are a good way to have your film discovered by distributors, to build buzz and to build an audience. But as all filmmakers know, you’re probably going to get rejected from more festivals than not.

topics: directors, distribution, distributors, diy, film festivals, how-to, legal issues, sundance

Avoiding Disaster

Fine points on festivals

If you’re an independent filmmaker, odds are your plan is to submit to a major film festival in the hope of getting discovered. Festivals are a good way to have your film discovered by distributors, to build buzz and to build an audience. But as all filmmakers know, you’re probably going to get rejected from more festivals than not.

topics: directors, distribution, distributors, diy, film festivals, how-to, legal issues, sundance

The Edit Room

Documentary story structures that funders love

We all know an editor who needs to get out of the edit room more often. (I just have to look in the mirror.) I recently had the delightful and heady experience of being on the other side of the fundraising table, giving the thumbs up or down to a slew of documentary directors seeking money for their works-in-progress.

topics: bay area, diy, documentary, hbo, how-to, itvs, sundance

Report

SFIFF52: Live at the festival--"Summer" springs into action

The SF International’s Centerpiece film, 500 Days of Summer, packed a springtime Sundance Kabuki on a rainy-drizzly Saturday evening. Clouds gathered outside, but predictions of a warm and breezy evening indoors in a rom-com-world laced with humor and melancholy were dead on. Marc Webb, debuting as a feature filmmaker, demonstrated his chops as a music-video producer in a time-skewed entertainment packed with resonant music cues, from a kooky Hall and Oates-inspired dance sequence, to a karaoke version of the Pixies’ "Here Comes Your Man." The audience survived its bouts of tears and laughter to ask fairly excellent questions of director Webb and cast Zooey Deschanel/Joseph Gordon-Levitt afterward.

Gordon-Levitt, who plays a very in-love greeting card writer out of touch with the reality of the relationship he is or is not in, told the audience he was instructed to remain very "real." Said Deschanel, "Affect upon style equals affected style."

"This movie could have too easily become a cavalcade of whimsy," Webb added. "Comedy is more about humanity than a punch line."

topics: actors, q&a, san francisco international film festival, sundance, sundance film festival

Report

Film Society Awards Night--a wild ride with Ballard, Coppola, Redford and Toback

Francis Ford Coppola surprised the black-tie audience during Film Society Awards Night at the Westin St. Francis Hotel Thursday night by turning over the Founder’s Directing Award he received to longtime colleague Carroll Ballard.

"I would have never gotten to stage one in this business without Francis. He kept me from falling in the toilet at least a dozen times," said Ballard, who got his first solo directing job (The Black Stallion, 1979) from Coppola. Among Ballard’s other films are Wind (1992), Fly Away Home (1996) and Duma (2005).

"I’m touched, as you can imagine," Coppola told the audience, "because this is my hometown." The director replied to Ballard, "When you have the kind of god-given talent that Carroll does, you can never fall in the toilet."

topics: actors, authors, awards, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary, documentary film, drama, san francisco film society, san francisco international film festival, sundance, sundance film festival

Found

SFIFF52: A Robert Redford rarity--live and onstage

Robert Redford’s appearance at the San Francisco International Film Festival to accept the Peter J. Owens Award is a major occasion. Public-fuss-shy, Redford has done an amazing job, considering the odds, of remaining private. He started buying Utah land well before he was a star in order to Get Away From It All. And while he has, on occasion, stepped up to the podium to comment on his frequent environmental and political concerns, or on the status of the now-fabled Sundance Institute and Festival he founded years ago, he hasn’t used the podium to blow his own horn as a movie star (or even director) since the last time a publicist made him. And when was the last time a publicist had that much clout?

topics: actors, bay area, castro theatre, documentary film institute, drama, dramatic films, festivals, hollywood, independent film, san francisco international film festival, sundance, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki