Sundance Film Festival

Katie Aselton and Mark Duplass Talk Showing Off Action Star Chops Via Their Dark Thriller 'Black Rock'

Nigel M Smith — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:11:41 GMT

"The Freebie" writer-director (and indie darling) Katie Aselton is following up her well-received debut with a film that couldn't be further from the winning romantic comedy. Boasting a screenplay by Mark Duplass, her husband and current co-star on FX's hit series "The League" (they also memorably appeared together in the Duplass brothers' "The Puffy Chair"), her second feature "Black Rock" centers on a trio of women (Aselton, Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth) who set out on an all-girls' trip off the coast of Maine. Once on the island however, the three are surprised to learn that a small all-male group have planned the exact same thing. Their getaway takes a turn for the dire when one of the men take it too far with Aselton's character, leaving the three fighting for their survival on the island.

Indiewire called up Aselton and Duplass to discuss switching gears with "Black Rock," Aselton's chops as an action star, and casting Bell and Bosworth. "Black Rock" opens in select theaters this Friday, May 17.

I remember that back at Sundance, where this world premiered in the Midnight section last year, a lot of people were surprised at the trajectory you took from "The Freebie" to this, just given the genre roots of “Black Rock.” Was this a deliberate move on your part to prove that you could dabble in other genres, Katie?

Katie Aselton: I don’t think it was an effort to prove anything, more of wanting to explore other genres as an actor and filmmaker. I think I’m still trying to find my voice as a filmmaker and finding stories to tell. I was always interested in this type of thriller and telling this type of story and definitely it’s a role I’ve always wanted to play as an actor. I’ve always had a secret longing to be in a Jason Bourne movie. So it was a fun way to meld the two interests.

Katie, you’re not credited for writing the screenplay, but I know you played a large part in dreaming up the project. Could you talk about the genesis and whose idea it was to have these three ladies on an island?

Mark Duplass: For me, it was always this feeling that if Katie had not fallen into “The League” and become a comedic actress that she would have been this fascinating and interesting action or thriller actress. It could've gone that way, it just didn't. I always wanted to see her in one of those movies, and then we were on the coast of Maine for the holidays where Katie grew up, and it just so happens that it is a beautiful and ominous place. Being the independent filmmakers we are, we started to think up story ideas. Once we landed on this idea of making a “Deliverance”-style thriller with girls in the driver's seat, a sort of early '70s, more naturalistic style thriller, this really kicked us off running. So I banged out something rough, then over the next month or two Katie and I moved it back and forth and got it in shape.

Mark, given that you wrote "Black Rock" wanting to give Katie a chance to flex her action star muscles; I’m curious as to why you two decided to make it an ensemble piece as opposed to a star-vehicle.

KA: That’s a good question, I’ve never really thought about that. I liked the idea of playing with the inner personal dynamics of three women and playing up each characters strengths and weakness and watching that power struggle and that dynamic switch. I think each character has her moment of being the pillar of the group and I like that idea and sort of comradery. But also as an actor and filmmaker, I really like collaborating as a group.

MD: It also helps the stigma of the movie in that we wanted to start it feeling like one of our movies that we would’ve traditionally made with three women going to an island to reconnect. Initially the problems in the movie are what we’d call upper-middle class problems. Relationship problems and problems with passive aggressive behavior, and then something shifts and breaks it out of that into something real. So the ensemble helps with that DNA shift.

In your script Mark, you have Katie endure a horrifying incident that kicks off the thriller portion of the film. Katie, what was your reaction to reading that passage and knowing you’d have to act it out?

KA: It was a lot, but at the same time I would rather have it be me than one of my other girls do it. So I’ll take it on, it’s fine. And it’s an interesting talent to take on as an actor. It’s pretty dark but certainly nothing to shy away from.

Leading up to the Sundance premiere the film was shrouded in a crazy amount of secrecy. Not a lot of people knew if it was going to be a “Deliverance"-type movie, or a straight-up horror flick. Who’s idea was it to keep it so hush-hush and do you miss that, now that people know what they’re into for the most part?

MD: It almost happened accidentally because the movie was made off the grid. A lot of our movies are made that way. It's entirely an independent film. Now that it’s been purchased and marketed like a mainstream film, it can look different. But I think it’s important for everybody to remember that this is a group of 20-25 people who ran off to make this movie together. There’s nothing better than having an audience watch your film knowing nothing about it. You’ve got them in the best possible space and Sundance was perfect for that. That being said, there are some positives about people knowing more about the movie. When Katie and I are involved in a movie together there’s a certain expectation that it’s going to be funny and sensitive with some feelings in it. Now that people are a little more prepared, that has it’s benefits. So there are some wins and losses to that.

KA: Ohe flip side of that, as well as not knowing much about it and knowing that the movie was in the Midnight section, I think people had some expectations on the other side as far as people expecting it to be more of a horror film than it was. So like Mark said, there were wins and losses on both sides. But it was fun to go in as the dark horse that no one knew much about but there was a lot of interest. It was a lot of fun.

Katie, you and your two gal pals in the film (Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell) have such an easy, great rapport. Did you three know each other before or was it just a random casting coup?

KA: It wasn’t random but we didn’t know each other nearly to the extent that we know do. Lake and I were social friends, Lake and Kate were social friends. Lake and I run in similar professional circles and I knew her as being a really cool, smart, stunning obviously, but really smart girl. She is just confident and has an amazing presence and that’s what I wanted out of these characters. I loved these women who use their big girl voices and stood up and were strong in stature and presence. So I talked to her about the idea and she really responded to the idea. I sent her the script and she totally got it on the level I hoped she would.

From there it was like “who’s going to play Sarah?” She put out the idea of Kate, saying she’s super cool and she thought I’d like her. I loved Kate. I think she’s adorable and sweet and I thought for sure she wanted nothing to do with this and it wasn’t her cup of tea. But she loved the script and any concerns I had that she was too chic for "Black Rock" were blown out the window in the first two minutes. Her spirit was electric and she had the exact energy and vibe that I wanted to fill out the group. From that point on it was this three-way love affair between us. We clicked so well and it was fortunate, because it’s tough when you’re playing people who were supposed to know each other their entire lives. You can’t fake that chemistry well, so I got very lucky with that.

I love both of your work on "The League," so I have to ask you Mark: Will Katie be joining you on your upcoming HBO show, "Togetherness"?

MD: The truth of that is that Katie and I are both on “The League” and we would love to have Katie be a part of the show but the way it works is that the only way I can do something outside of FX is that I’m the creator of it and that allows me to do it. So we’re going to have to wait until the audience is done and tired with “The League” before we can scoop Katie up for “Togetherness.”

Sundance: Jill Soloway's Afternoon Delight Gets Pick Up from Film Arcade and Cinedigm

Kerensa Cadenas — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

After winning the U.S. Dramatic Directing award for her film Afternoon Delight, Jill Soloway's Sundance film has finally got picked up by Film Arcade and Cinedigm.

In a statement, The Film Arcade's Miranda Bailey spoke about the pickup.

We fell in love with Afternoon Delight at Sundance and look forward to working with Jill, Jen and Sebastian to bring their film to audiences throughout the country.

Soloway's film focuses on a housewife (the hilarious Kathryn Hahn) who is bored with everything including her marriage. She decides, on a whim, to hire a stripper (Juno Temple) as their live-in nanny.

As of now, there isn't any set release date for the film.

Film Arcade And Cinedigm Pick Up Sundance Winner ‘Afternoon Delight’ (Deadline)

WATCH: 'Fruitvale Station' Trailer Highlights Michael B. Jordan's Performance

Maggie Lange — Sat, 11 May 2013 17:54:02 GMT

"Fruitvale Station," the Sundance favorite well-known for making everyone cry, has a trailer. The clips showcase Michael B. Jordan's performance at the center of the film (spoilers in that link). In this based-on-a-true-story movie, Jordan plays Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old who finds himself entangled with police and street violence on New Years Eve in 2009. Fruitvale Station is a stop in the Bay Area's subway system, the BART.

"Fruitvale Station" is directed and written by Ryan Coogler, produced by Forest Whitaker, and also stars Octavia Spencer, Melonie Diaz, and Chad Michael Murray. It will be released July 12, 2013. See the gorgeous poster, released earlier this week, here.

CineCoup's Cannes Agenda with Brad Pelman

Sydney Levine — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:30:01 GMT

CINECOUP ACCELERATES CANADIAN INDIE FILMMAKERS TO CANNES

For the independent filmmaker, it’s hard enough to secure production financing, let alone make the right connections with international buyers that can unlock audiences around the world. Enter The CineCoup Film Accelerator, a disruptive new platform, piloted in Canada this year, that offers filmmakers the chance at $1M in production financing and a guaranteed release in Cineplex theatres.

THE CINECOUP MODEL

Founded by media entrepreneur, J. Joly, CineCoup is designed to help independent filmmakers develop, market, and finance feature films.

CineCoup works through a gamified selection funnel: teams of three enter the program with a two-minute trailer, and each week they complete missions aimed at packaging their projects and building a fanbase through social media.

Fans play an important role by providing valuable audience feedback and supporting their favourite projects during the Top 60, Top 40 and Top 15 voting rounds.

CINECOUP AT CANNES

Brad Pelman, CineCoup's newly appointed President, Distribution and Sales is headed to Cannes later this month to secure international pre-sale agreements for the Top 10 projects and license the CineCoup model in other markets.

Pelman, who recently departed Alliance Films as Executive VP, Distribution, will be leveraging his international contacts while abroad, including sales agents at Cinetic Media, WME, CAA, UTA, ICM and Submarine. He will be seeking deals in the $1M range and is hopeful some buyers will pick up multiple projects.

Pelman is already in talks with several interested U.S. parties and is hopeful that CineCoup USA will launch at Sundance or SXSW 2014. He will also be meeting with agents from the U.K. and Australia to discuss CineCoup as a format following the USA launch. CineCoup will retain its Canadian rights.

Telefilm is lending its support by offering CineCoup a place in the Canadian Pavilion at Cannes, a great opportunity to find out more for anyone interested in learning more about this innovative model.

CineCoup will announce the Top 10 projects chosen to launch publicly on May 13. All ten projects will be optioned for development. The Top 5 will pitch their projects at the Banff World Media Festival on June 10, where the top project will be announced.

For more information, and to check out the film projects, visit: www.cinecoup.com

Watch: The Video That Constantly Inspires Sundance-Winning Director Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:58:14 GMT

Earlier this week, "Middle of Nowhere" director and African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement founder Ava DuVernay was the keynote speaker at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. DuVernay, who won the U.S. dramatic directing award at last year's Sundance, gave brief remarks before viewing the work of the workshop's up-and-coming participants. Honored this year were Shaz Bennett, Catherine Dent, Antoneta Kastrati, Lauren Ludwig, Stephanie Martin, Juliana Penaradna-Loftus, Lisanne Sartor and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro.

Below are DuVernay's remarks to her fellow women directors:

I'm using one of my 5 allotted minutes to show you something that helps me. Some days I watch and I laugh. Some days I watch and I get a little misty. Depends on the day.

So I thought to myself, why not me? Why not us?

The question is fundamentally flawed in that it shouldn't be a viable question in the first place. It speaks to exclusion and heirachy and challenges.

But it also speaks to defiance, change and a bit of swagger. Because at the point that you ask yourself the question - Why Not Me? - you're past dreaming and hoping and wishing it was you. At the point you ask that question, you're ready to do something. You're ready to answer. You're ready to direct.

So why not us?

In answering, its vital to remember that we aren't alone. That for whatever drama we encounter, you're a part of a sisterhood of bad-ass women who make movies. A small, but powerful sorority with deep roots and legacy. And I've found the moments when I tap into this camaraderie to be some of my most joy-filled moments as a filmmaker.

So when you're down on the cold hard floor and somebody's got their foot propped on your back and you feel like that bear skinned rug. Be the bear. Get up and answer the question: Why Not Me?

The answer is very hard and very simple.

The answer is our work.

We answer with our work.

I look forward to seeing yours tonight and beyond. Congratulations.

Bart Layton and Musician K'naan Among Those Selected for Sundance's 2013 Directors and Screenwriters Labs

Nigel M Smith — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:55:07 GMT

The Sundance Institute today revealed the 13 lucky projects selected for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place from May 17-June 27. This year's high-profile Fellows include "The Imposter" director Bart Layton and rapper K'Naan.

The annual workshops give selected films a leg up in the independent film community in terms of financing and representation and make them likely candidates for the institute’s signature film festival. Ten films previously supported by the Institute’s Feature Film Program screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, including “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “May in the Summer” and “Blue Caprice.”

Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Feature Film Program, said, "We are very excited to support such a rich selection of projects that reflect the diversity of stories, artistic vision and innovation in narrative form that embraces the next generation of independent filmmakers. The support we provide through the Directors and Screenwriters Labs will allow each artist to develop the tools and confidence to more fully realize the promise of their first and second features."

Go to page two for the full slate of projects, with descriptions courtesy of Sundance.The projects and participants selected for the 2013 June Directors Lab (May 27 – June 20) are:

Pamela Romanowsky (writer/director) / The Adderall Diaries (U.S.A.): Writer Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his work. Adrift in the precarious grey area of memory, Stephen has to navigate the unstable terrain of truth and identity, led by two sources of inspiration: a new romance, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott.

Pamela Romanowsky is a New York-based writer and director. Her short films Live Girls and Gravity have played at festivals nationwide, including Slamdance, Woodstock, and the Maryland Film Festival. In 2011, Romanowsky won the National Board of Review’s Student Grant Award and NYU’s prestigious Wasserman/King Award for excellence in filmmaking. In 2012, she wrote and directed a piece for Tar (James Franco, Mila Kunis, Jessica Chastain, Zach Braff), a multi-director narrative film based on the life and poetry of CK Williams, which premiered at the Rome International Film Festival and is awaiting a U.S. theatrical release. She studied documentary filmmaking with Barbara Kopple, and narrative filmmaking at New York University’s MFA film program.

Jan Kwiecinski (writer/director) / The Incident (U.S.A.): When a young man decides to cover up an accidental murder, his whole life comes into focus in ways he never expected.

Jan Kwiecinski graduated from the filmmaking departments of the London Film School and the Wajda's Master School of Directing. He also holds an MA degree in Theatre Studies from the Theatre Academy in Warsaw. His award-winning short film, The Incident, screened internationally at many festivals including the Shanghai International Film Festival and the T-Mobile New Horizons Film Festival. Recently, Kwiecinski directed the segment entitled Fawns of the omnibus feature The Fourth Dimension, co-directed by Alexey Fedorchenko and Harmony Korine. The film premiered in the Narrative Competition at the 2012 San Francisco Film Festival.

Eva Weber (co-writer/director) and Vendela Vida (co-writer) / Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (UK/Germany/U.S.A.): Twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father's funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees San Francisco and travels to the Arctic Circle to uncover the secrets of her mother, who mysteriously vanished when Clarissa was fourteen. Based on the novel by Vendela Vida.

Originally from Germany, Eva Weber is a London-based filmmaker working in both documentary and fiction. Her award-winning films have screened at numerous international film festivals, including Sundance, Edinburgh, SXSW, BFI London, and Telluride; and have also been broadcast on UK and international television. Her documentary short film The Solitary Life of Cranes was selected as one of the top five films of the year by critic Nick Bradshaw in Sight & Sound’s annual film review in 2008. Earlier this year, she received the Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award to further support the development of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.

Vendela Vida is the author of four books, including the novels Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers. She is a founding co-editor of the Believer magazine and co-writer of the film Away We Go, which was directed by Sam Mendes.

Russell Harbaugh (co-writer/director) and Eric Mendelsohn (co-writer) / Love After Love (U.S.A.): Love After Love is a messy and desperate love story about grief, sex, and the separation of a family.

Russell Harbaugh's short film Rolling on the Floor Laughing played the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals around the world including the FSLC/MoMA co-curated New Directors/New Films, Maryland Film Festival, Sarasota International Film Festival, Milano, Warsaw, and others. Harbaugh received his MFA from Columbia University in 2011 and is originally from Evansville, Indiana. He lives in New York.

Eric Mendelsohn's feature film Judy Berlin, starring Edie Falco and Madeline Kahn, was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, won Best Director at Sundance, Best Independent Film at the Hamptons Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. His short film, Through An Open Window, premiered at Sundance, was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival and garnered him a guest spot on The Tonight Show. Mendelsohn’s most recent feature, 3 Backyards, premiered in 2010 at Sundance and garnered the Best Director award, making him the only person in the festival's history to have received the award twice.

K’naan (writer/director) / Maanokoobiyo (Somalia/U.S.A.): In war-torn Somalia, an artistic orphan named Maano joins the mercenary killing squad of a notorious warlord, only to discover his adoptive father and gang leader is responsible for wiping out his family.

K'naan is a Somali poet, rapper and singer, songwriter. He spent his childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia and was on one of the last commercial flights out of the country before its collapse. He rose to prominence with the success of his song “Wavin' Flag” after it was chosen as the anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He lives in New York.

Ian Hendrie (co-writer/co-director) and Jyson McLean (co-writer/co-director) / Mercy Road (U.S.A.): Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife and mother, as she becomes willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.

Ian Hendrie is a San Francisco–based filmmaker and the co-founder of Fantoma, a production company and independent DVD label which has been releasing premium edition DVDs of films by such famed auteurs as Francis Ford Coppola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang, Kenneth Anger and Alex Cox, among others, since 1999.

Jyson McLean has been a commercial director for over nine years. His work includes spots for Bud Light, Career Builder, and Quaker Oats. He has won the ITVA PEER award three years in a row, and has worked with numerous award winning advertising agencies including DDB Los Angeles, BBDO London and Fred & Farid, Paris. He is currently signed at Contagious LA and Magali Films, Paris for commercial representation in America and Europe respectively.

Hendrie and McLean are recipients of a Fall 2011 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant and SFFS FilmHouse residents.

Meredith Danluck (writer/director) / State Like Sleep (U.S.A.): Under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband's secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger as equally broken as she is.

Meredith Danluck is an artist and filmmaker. Her work has screened at major art institutions internationally including MoMA, PS1, Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, and Reina Sofia, as well as various film festivals including SXSW, TIFF, Doc NYC, Margaret Mead and Hamburg International. Her four-screen film installation North of South, West of East recently screened as part of the New Frontier exhibition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Miguel Calderón (writer/director) / Zeus (Mexico): Sporadically employed and still living with his mother, Joel finds his only joy in falconry in the flatlands outside Mexico City, until an encounter with a down-to-earth secretary forces him to face reality.

Miguel Calderón works in various mediums but has focused mostly in photography, video and writing. He was a co-founder of the non-profit art space, “La Panaderia,” which helped promote new tendencies of art in Latin America beginning in 1994. His exhibitions include the Rochester Art Center, the Sao Paolo Biennial, Museo Tamayo, The Yokohama Triennial and Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. His book projects include Thumbs Down (onestar press, 2012), Backstabbing Gemini (Rochester Art Center, 2012), Eden is a Magic World (littlebigman books, 2011), and Miguel Calderón (Turner, 2007). He lives in Mexico City.

The projects and participants joining the Directors Lab Fellows for the 2013 June Screenwriters Lab (June 22-27) are:

Ray Tintori (writer/director) / Untitled Cabal Project (U.S.A.): Young revolutionaries in love take on the world and each other in a kaleidoscopically complicated universe that's coming apart at the seams.

Ray Tintori is an American director, screenwriter, and founding member of the Court 13 filmmaking collective. His directorial credits include Death to the Tinman and the music videos off MGMT's first record. Besides directing, he's worked in various capacities on Court 13 productions, including production designer and story co-writer on Glory at Sea, and Aurochs and Special Effects Unit Director on Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Bart Layton (writer/director) / The Heist (U.K.): This fiction/documentary hybrid tells the unlikely but very true story of four privileged Kentucky students who, seeking an escape from mundane middle America, hatch a plan to steal millions of dollars of rare books from their university library.

Bart Layton is a multi-award winning director and producer. His most recent documentary film, The Imposter, received almost unanimous critical acclaim after premiering at Sundance, won the Grand Jury Prize at Miami, the Golden Eye in Zurich and the Filmmakers' award at Hotdocs before winning a BAFTA and being shortlisted for the Oscars. Layton lives in London and is the Creative Director of leading British production company, RAW.

Andrew Ahn (writer/director) / Spa Night (U.S.A.): Struggling to escape his crumbling family life, a closeted Korean-American teenager follows his desires and finds more than he bargains for at the Korean spa.

Andrew Ahn is a Korean-American filmmaker born and raised in Los Angeles. His short film Dol (First Birthday) premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and received the Outfest Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Short Film. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in English and received an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts.

Nikole Beckwith (writer/director) / Stockholm, Pennsylvania (U.S.A.): When a young kidnapping victim is reunited with her family after 19 years, her mother discovers she has to work harder than ever to find her daughter, at any cost.

Nikole Beckwith is from Newburyport, Massachusetts. Her plays have been developed with The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons and The National Theatre of London among others. Stockholm, Pennsylvania (2012 Nicholl Fellowship, 2012 Black List) is her first screenplay, adapted from her stage play of the same name.

Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio (writer/director) / Story Box of Dreams (Peru): In a rural community outside Lima, a young boy escapes from home to become a story box artisan, a sophisticated craft practiced only by a select group of families who have passed their skills down over generations.

Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio is an organizational psychologist and filmmaker from Peru. He received his BSC and MSC from the London School of Economics and Political Science and attended film directing workshops at the London Film Academy. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film El Acompañante (The Companion), which played at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals around the world including Rotterdam International Film Festival, La Habana, Palm Springs, Miami, Cork, Leeds, Atlanta, Indie Lisboa, Nashville, and Maryland, among others.

Roger Ebert To be Honored With Posthumous Award From Sundance Institute

Matt Singer — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:16:58 GMT

Per a press release, the Sundance Institute will honor late film critic Roger Ebert with their Vanguard Leadership Award at a benefit in Los Angeles on June 5th. The award will be presented to Ebert's wife Chaz.

Sundance's Vanguard Awards were created in 2011 to celebrate the Sundance Institute's 30th anniversary; its first recipient was "Beasts of the Southern Wild" director Benh Zeitlin. This year, Ebert will be honored alongside filmmaker Ryan Coogler, whose "Fruitvale Station" won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Ebert will be the second recipient of the Vanguard Leadership award after Sundance Institute Trustee George Gund. Here's Mr. Sundance himself, Robert Redford, on Ebert's role in the world of indie film:

"Roger Ebert was one of the great champions of freedom of artistic expression. When the power of independent film was still unknown and few would support it, Roger was there for our artists. His personal passion for cinema was boundless, and that is sure to be his legacy for generations to come."

It may be worth noting that one of the YouTube clips that was most circulated after Ebert's death took place at the Sundance Film Festival. During the Q&A after the world premiere of Justin Lin's "Better Luck Tomorrow" in 2002, an audience member stood up and scolded Lin and his cast for wasting their talent on such an "amoral movie for Asian Americans." In response, Roger Ebert launched into a passionate defense of the movie and its right to exist:

Most of the television coverage of the Sundance Film Festival revolves around stars: celebrity interviews and reviews of highly anticipated titles featuring famous actors. But in 1994, Ebert and Gene Siskel devoted a segment of "Siskel & Ebert" to a Sundance movie with no stars and no name recognition before it even premiered at the festival. That movie was "Hoop Dreams."

Once again, here was Ebert (and Siskel) using his power to spotlight movies that needed attention, rather than simply covering movies that would bring attention to their show.

Those are just two of the most famous examples; over the years, Ebert filed countless reviews and articles from the Sundance Film Festival, helping to start young director's careers and bring new, exciting films to wider audiences. You could say Ebert was at his best at Sundance. It's good to see him honored for that.

BAMcinemaFest Announces Full 2013 Lineup; 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints' and 'Short Term 12' Will Bookend

Erin Whitney — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:53:13 GMT

BAMcinématek has announced the full lineup for the 2013 BAMcinemaFest, which will feature 22 New York premieres and one world premiere. David Lowery's acclaimed Sundance drama "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" will kick off the festival and Destin Cretton's SXSW Grand Jury Prize winner "Short Term 12" will close it. The fifth annual festival, which is sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, runs from June 19 - June 28.

BAMcinemaFest will also feature two spotlight screenings at the new Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater, of Sebastian Silva's comedy "Crystal Fairy" starring Michael Cera and James Ponsoldt's coming-of-age drama "The Spectacular Now." The festival will also welcome back veteran filmmakers including Andrew Bujalski ("Beeswax") with new film "Computer Chess," and Matthew Porterfield ("Putty Hill") with "I Used to Be Darker."

Florence Almozini BAMcinématek program director commented, "We’re thrilled that BAMcinemaFest has remained a hometown festival, with nearly half of our main slate by Brooklyn filmmakers, from Dosunmu to Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman ("Remote Area Medical"), Lana Wilson and Martha Shane ("After Tiller"), Shaka King ("Newlyweeds"), Eliza Hittman ("It Felt Like Love"), Zach Clark ("White Reindeer"), Nick Bentgen and Lisa Kjerulff ("Northern Light"), and more.”

Festival sponsor Paula Keve, Head of Communications for Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal said, "The festival serves a critical purpose in surfacing and showcasing the work of independent artists, and the Journal is delighted to be part of such an important cause.”

Special events and shorts will be announced shortly.

Check out the complete lineup below.

OPENING NIGHT: "Ain’t Them Bodies Saints" (David Lowery) NY Premiere Narrative

An IFC Films release. Opens August 16.

CLOSING NIGHT: "Short Term 12" (Destin Cretton) NY Premiere Narrative

A Cinedigm release.

"After Tiller" (Martha Shane & Lana Wilson) NY Premiere Documentary

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains a divisive and incendiary national debate. In the
aftermath of Dr. George Tiller’s assassination in 2009, only four physicians in the US continue to
perform third trimester abortions, each plagued by constant death threats, protests, and legal battles—
all for their steadfast commitment to women’s rights. Filmmaking duo Shane and Wilson bring us this
intimate portrait of the intrepid practitioners as they grapple with the ethics that permeate their personal and professional lives. Winner of the Documentary Jury Prize at Sarasota Film Festival. An
Oscilloscope Laboratories release.

"C.O.G." (Kyle Patrick Alvarez) NY Premiere Narrative

Adapted from a chapter in David Sedaris’ superb story collection Naked (the first film version of Sedaris’ work), C.O.G. stars musical theater and TV star Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening and Glee) as David, a recent Yale grad who gets his hands dirty at an Oregon apple orchard in a vainglorious search for Thoreau-esque self-discovery. When his best friend and would-be fellow apple picker bails on him, he seeks companionship from a series of mentors (each scarier than the last) who provide harsh lessons on faith, friendship, love, and identity. Charming and witty as the young hero, Groff is the perfect mouthpiece for Sedaris’ indelible voice, and writer-director Alvarez imbues the story with heartbreak and a surprising degree of darkness. A Screen Media release. Opens this September.

"The Cold Lands" (Tom Gilroy) NY Premiere Narrative

Eleven-year-old Atticus (Silas Yelich, winner of the Special Jury Prize for Promising Actor at the
Nashville Film Festival) and his mother Nicole (Lili Taylor) live a modest life off the grid in the woods of upstate New York. When Nicole dies suddenly after refusing to seek treatment for an illness, Atticus is left to fend for himself, and his uncertain future takes a turn when he develops a fast-growing friendship with a weed-smoking necklace salesman. With gorgeous visuals and surprising touches of fantasy, Gilroy captures the dangers and freedoms of living on the margins of American society.

"Computer Chess" (Andrew Bujalski) NY Premiere Narrative

Bujalski, the director of Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax (BAMcinemaFest 2009), is back with a true
original—a lo-fi surrealist comedy about an imaginary 1980 chess conference where large, and
sometimes hilariously defective, chess-playing computers and their nerdy programmers are pitted
against a crusty grandmaster (Boston film critic Gerald Peary) to determine whether man or machine
rules supreme. With humor so bone dry that one might mistake his film for a documentary, Bujalski
employs a bleary-eyed black-and-white aesthetic by shooting with a vintage Portapak U-Matic video
camera, which achieves a retro hyperrealism that mixes beautifully with the film’s shades of deadpan
surrealism. A Kino Lorber release. Opens July 17 at Film Forum.

"Continental" (Malcolm Ingram) NY Premiere Documentary

The Continental, a gay bath house, opened deep in the basement of New York’s majestic Ansonia
Hotel in 1968, advertising the gleaming emporium as akin to “the glory of ancient Rome.” With a host of amenities including a sauna and swimming pool, a cabaret nightclub, the first light-up dance floor à la Saturday Night Fever, an “orgy room,” and K-Y jelly in the vending machines, it was a notorious beacon of hedonism, but it also proved integral to the gay liberation movement of the pre-AIDS era. Hosting a bevy of now-legendary performers such as Cab Calloway, Gladys Knight, the Pointer Sisters, Patti Labelle, and most famously, Bette Midler (aka Bathhouse Betty), with Barry Manilow on the keys, the Continental shuttered after just seven years. Ingram tells the club’s colorful story in this extraordinary documentary.

"The Crash Reel" (Lucy Walker) NY Premiere Documentary

Once a fearless master of gravity-defying leaps and mid-air flips, champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce
suffered massive head trauma after an accident in 2009—a brush with death that brought his Olympics- bound career to a sudden halt. Oscar-nominated documentarian Lucy Walker brings together a wealth of vérité footage, juxtaposing years of astonishing airborne feats with an unflinching look at Pearce’s long and agonizing rehabilitation. The result is an unforgettable testament to the passion of a phenomenal athlete and the tireless support of the family and friends who guide him through his recovery. An HBO Documentary Films release. Debuts on HBO on Monday, July 15.

"Crystal Fairy" (Sebastián Silva) NY Premiere Narrative *Spotlight screening at the BAM Harvey Theater

One of the openers of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Sebastián Silva’s (winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for The Maid) latest is a bizarre, mescaline-driven road trip through Chile. In a frequently hysterical, often cringe-inducing performance, Michael Cera is Jamie, a boorish American ex- pat who, when he’s not inviting transvestite hookers back to his friend’s apartment, is chiefly interested in drug tourism. He and three Chilean brothers plan to set off in search of the prized San Pedro cactus and its promise of beachy hallucinations, but in the previous night’s drunken stupor Jamie invites a free- spirited fellow American (Gaby Hoffman in a naked performance, literally), whose devil-may-care worldview gives them more of an adventure than any of them had bargained for. An IFC Films release. Opens July 12.

The lineup is continued on page 2..."Drinking Buddies" (Joe Swanberg) NY Premiere Narrative *Outdoor screening with Rooftop Films

The ever-prolific Joe Swanberg (who has directed 15 films in less than a decade) delivers this seductive rom-com, a departure from his previous work. At a Chicago microbrewery, smitten coworkers Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson, Safety Not Guaranteed) are a little too friendly considering they’re both unavailable: Kate keeps it casual with gregarious rich guy Chris (Ron Livingston), while Luke’s longtime sweetheart (Anna Kendrick) has marriage on the brain. When all four go on a camping trip, this frothy romance turns into something a lot harder to swallow. A Magnolia Pictures release. Available on VOD July 25 and in theaters August 23.

"God Loves Uganda" (Roger Ross Williams) NY Premiere Documentary

Shifting between Kansas City and Uganda, this provocative exposé reveals the inner workings of a
group of American missionaries who have instilled a virulently conservative ideology in Uganda by
influencing public policy. Their mission is to eradicate “sexual sin” with abstinence-only sex education
and the brutal punishment of homosexuality. Fueled by outrage and with a sharp journalistic alertness
to his complex subject, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams has already stirred controversy
with this powerful polemic.

"Hellaware" (Michael M. Bilandic) World Premiere Narrative

Aspiring but less than ambitious photographer Nate (Keith Poulson, Somebody Up There Likes Me)
clumsily navigates the New York City art world in a post-grad haze, waiting for his breakthrough project
to fall into his lap. During a drug-fueled wormhole through the annals of YouTube, Nate discovers his
next subjects when an arbitrary click lands him on a crude music video by the Young Torture Killaz—an
Insane Clown Posse knock-off group of jaded Delaware teens with a lot to scream about—and the
inspiration (and exploitation) flows. BAMcinemaFest alumnae Kate Lyn Sheil and Sophia Takal (Green)
co-star in this satirical snapshot of NYC pretention.

"I Used to be Darker" (Matthew Porterfield) NY Premiere Narrative

After a seaside summer gone sour, Northern Irish runaway Taryn crashes in on the end of her aunt and
uncle’s marriage while seeking solace in their Baltimore home. Drawing inspiration from Bill Callahan’s
song “Jim Cain”—“I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again / Something too big to be seen was passing over and over me”—Porterfield (Putty Hill, BAMcinemaFest 2010) confronts the pain of a family’s dissolution in the form of this naturalistic, lo-fi musical. A Strand Releasing film.

"It Felt Like Love" (Eliza Hittman) NY Premiere Narrative

Evoking the unsentimental honesty of Maurice Pialat and Catherine Breillat, Brooklyn native Eliza
Hittman’s debut feature explores feelings of fear and shame that tend to be elided in more conventional coming-of-age films. During an uneventful summer, lonely Lila develops an unhealthy fixation on an older thug. Deluded and awkward in her romantic pursuit, she soon finds herself in a dangerously vulnerable situation. Set in South Brooklyn, Hittman’s film offers a glimpse of a local milieu that is often overlooked by the borough’s indie movement.

"Mother of George" (Andrew Dosunmu) NY Premiere Narrative

In a flurry of dazzling colors, textiles, music, and dance, Brooklyn restaurant owner Ayodele and his
bride Adenike (The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira) are married and ceremoniously blessed with
traditional Nigerian prayers of fertility. Immersed in the vibrant culture of Crown Heights’ Yoruba
community, Adenike struggles to conceive a child, and with mounting pressure from her oppressive
mother-in-law, she must take drastic measures to save her marriage. With sumptuous, spellbinding
cinematography from DP Bradford Young (Pariah, Middle of Nowhere), Andrew Dosunmu’s (Restless
City) exquisite sophomore feature is an enlightening look at immigrant life. An Oscilloscope
Laboratories release.

"Museum Hours" (Jem Cohen) NY Premiere Narrative

Infused with a sense of wonder at art’s ability to console in times of darkness, acclaimed media artist
Jem Cohen’s breakthrough feature film captures the beauty of Vienna in winter from the perspective of
two unlikely new friends. A Canadian woman (singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara) comes to visit
an ailing family member and finds solace in the majestic Kunsthistorisches Art Museum, where she
meets a soft-spoken middle-aged guard who offers to keep her company on her trip. As they stroll
through the city streets, observing how the paintings of the Old Masters reverberate throughout the
snow-covered landscape, their meandering conversation gives way to candid exchanges on art, grief,
and love. A Cinema Guild release. Opens June 28 at IFC Center.

"Newlyweeds" (Shaka King) NY Premiere Narrative

Rent-to-own repo man Lyle and his girlfriend Nina are a Brooklyn couple united through a deep and meaningful love of plants—specifically, the fragrant, desiccated kind that you pack into a pipe and puff on. Dispassionately whiling away their days at their jobs and spending evenings in an amorous haze, the wake-and-bake lovebirds must reevaluate their relationship and their lifestyle after a rambling and episodic comedy of errors, rife with jealousy and poor judgment. With a vaporous mix of tones and emotional shifts, this stoner comedy cum melodrama is no cautionary tale or screed against (or for) mary jane, but ultimately a bittersweet tale about how this couple deals with life and love once the smoke clears. A Phase 4 Films release. Opens August 9.

"Northern Light" (Nick Bentgen) NY Premiere Documentary

From the frozen woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula emerge three families, each weathering the
challenges of recession-era America while preparing for the Sault Ste. Marie I-500, an annual
snowmobile marathon. First-time director Bentgen’s gentle observational gaze and meticulously
framed, breathtaking images form the nexus of this nuanced portrait of Midwestern working-class life.
An official selection of True/False and Hot Docs and winner of Most Innovative Feature Film at Visions
du Reel.

"Remote Area Medical" (Jeff Reichert & Farihah Zaman) NY Premiere Documentary

Amid the nation’s ongoing debate over health care reform, this bracing new documentary examines the
everyday realities of Americans who lack access to affordable medical treatment. Filmed during three
days in the operation of a “no-cost” clinic set up annually at Bristol, Tennessee’s NASCAR speedway,
Remote Area Medical documents the range of medical care the eponymous organization provides to
low-income patients in the heart of Appalachia. In the process, this moving film and winner of the
Special Jury Prize at IFF Boston, reveals the spirit of a community, the fragility of the human body, and
the inequality of our broken health care system.

"The Spectacular Now" (James Ponsoldt) NY Premiere Narrative *Spotlight screening at the BAM Harvey Theater
In this bittersweet coming-of-age dramedy from the writers of (500) Days of Summer, sociable high
schooler Sutter (relative newcomer Miles Teller, in a magnetic performance) is endlessly charming and
effortlessly popular—never mind that he is also arrogant and reckless and possibly an alcoholic, forever nursing a whiskey-infused 7-11 beverage cup. After a post-breakup all-night binge, he wakes up on the lawn of his classmate Aimee (Shailene Woodley, The Descendants)—a sweet, uncorrupted, and whip- smart girl with spirited ambition despite her uncool status—and the pair instantly connect, for better or worse. Funny and tender with moments of astonishing tragedy, the film co-stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights). An A24 release. Opens August 2.

"These Birds Walk" (Omar Mullick & Bassam Tariq) NY Premiere Documentary

Pushing cinema vérité to its raw emotional limits, this hard-bitten portrait of Karachi’s underclass is also an ode to the beauty and anguish of childhood that has earned it comparisons to François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. For their extraordinary debut feature, Mullick and Tariq traveled to Pakistan to raise awareness about the work of aging humanitarian Abdul Satar Edhi, the man behind the nation’s largest philanthropic organization. Immersing themselves in the lives of the countless runaways crowding Edhi’s orphanages, they emerged with this heartbreaking chronicle of poverty and street life seen through the eyes of the young and vulnerable, with a lyricism that honors the resilience of its subjects. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release.

"This is Martin Bonner" (Chad Hartigan) NY Premiere Narrative

In this reflective and absorbing drama, a divorced middle-aged Australian expat (Paul Eenhorn), adrift in his adopted country, moves to Reno, where he takes a job at a Christian charity that eases newly released prisoners back into society. Through this work he meets just-released felon Travis (Richmond Arquette), who is struggling to adjust to the world after 12 years in prison. Finding kinship in their shared feeling of being lost, the two men form an unlikely friendship. Understated, affecting performances by the two leads and a rigorous aesthetic earned this gem the Best of NEXT Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A Monterey Media release.

"White Reindeer" (Zach Clark) NY Premiere Narrative

A bittersweet, subversive take on the holiday genre that’s drawn comparisons to John Waters and
Douglas Sirk, White Reindeer follows a shell-shocked real estate agent (BAMcinemaFest alum Anna
Margaret Hollyman, Gayby) who grapples with personal tragedy while fumbling to let loose among the
strip clubs, department stores, and swinging new neighbors during one sad, strange December in
suburban Virginia. An official selection of SXSW and winner of Best Feature at the Boston Underground
Film Festival.

LatinoBuzz: Aurora Guerrero on Making ‘Mosquita y Mari’ & Challenging Hollywood’s Lack of Diverse Stories

Vanessa Erazo — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Determined to challenge Hollywood’s lack of diverse stories Aurora Guerrero set out to make a film that reflected her own identity as a queer woman of color. The result is Mosquita y Mari a sensitive, bold, and thoughtful portrait of two teenage Chicanas whose budding friendship begins to slowly become something beyond just friends. For Guerrero, it’s a personal story rooted in her own experience, “When looking back, long before I identified as queer, I realized my first love was one of my best friends. It was the type of friendship that was really tender and sweet and sexually charged but we never crossed that line.”

In the film, set in Huntington Park, a predominantly Latino city just outside Los Angeles, Mari is a rebellious bad girl who is failing math. Straight-A student Yolanda—who Mari nicknames Mosquita because she looks like, “a pinche mosquita”—offers to tutor her. They hang out, ride bikes, swap music, and do homework. As they spend more and more time together their friendship subtly transforms, evoking that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling that only a first crush can. It’s a beautifully told almost love story set to the music of local ska bands, the melancholy vocals of Carla Morrison, and other genre-remixing Latino artists.

Mosquita y Mari premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and played in theaters last summer. LatinoBuzz spoke with Guerrero just ahead of the film’s digital release to talk about the challenges of making and distributing independent Latino films.

Though Latinos are making strides in other industries there is still a lack of Latino film directors. How did the idea of becoming a filmmaker come about? What do you think are the major obstacles keeping young Latinos from becoming filmmakers?

Guerrero: It's hard to grow up and not see yourself portrayed in realistic ways on film. From a young age I was really bothered by that. When I did see a film about Latinos I didn't recognize my experience at all. I actually wondered if those type of Latinos really existed because I didn't know anyone like that. For me becoming a filmmaker was about taking back my voice—crafting stories that would move away from the problematic narratives that the studio system would put out about Latinos. I think this is why people like my films. They're refreshing. They feel more real.

As for major obstacles keeping young Latinos from becoming filmmakers, I think our communities are still coming into their identities as storytellers. It's such an important identity to reclaim—it's how our ancestors kept our cultures alive. But a long history of silencing, invisibility, and marginalization has kept generations of Latinos from believing in themselves, from seeing themselves as agents of their own lives. I think there needs to be a focus on this aspect to help cultivate young Latinas to see themselves as cultural producers and defenders.

Raising money for a Latino film (or any film) is a challenge especially in this economy. What was your budget? If you could have raised additional money and had a bigger budget do you think your film would be much different than it is now?

Guerrero: We didn't have a big budget. We were at about 200k. Our funding was pieced together as we went along in the process. A very successful crowdfunding campaign (Kickstarter) got us into production and a series of grants we applied for during production got us through post-production. I think Mosquita y Mari could have benefited from a couple more days of shooting but it wouldn't have changed our budget or our final film significantly. Ultimately I feel like the budget we had pushed me and my collaborators to be as creative as possible. It also allowed me to keep the crew at a small size which felt manageable for me as a first-time feature filmmaker.

You’ve stated in a lot of interviews that the film was inspired by your own personal experience. What was the writing process like? Was it an emotional one since the story was so close to you?

Guerrero: It was definitely emotional. I was writing about feelings and experiences I had never talked about, particularly with my BFF at the time. But it wasn’t a bad emotional process. It felt very liberating. I think that’s what drove my process forward. What got complicated were all the other layers that I wanted to talk about. I had to figure out how to weave in other elements without taking away from the girls and their growing love for each other.

Are you still in touch with the woman whose friendship inspired this story? Did you ever worry what she might think about it?

Guerrero: Let’s just say that I didn’t make it for her. I made it for me.

The story is based upon the friendship of these two girls. The success of the film obviously hinged on casting the two leads. What was the selection process like?

Guerrero: Casting was intense, mainly because we had one month to find all our cast. But I was determined and hopeful that my girls were out there. I just had to somehow get the word out to them so they could find me and this movie. Between my casting director putting word out to managers and agents and organizing word-of-mouth community open casting calls we found our cast. I saw about 300 or more young Latina women for the leads and las cuatas. It was a really validating experience. I mean to be so specific in my breakdown, “Must speak both English and Spanish fluently. Must be open to story of two girls and their developing feelings for each other.” It was amazing to get so many young women identifying with the breakdown and wanting to be part of this film. I think the hardest part was saying “no” to most of them. I had to be very picky. I had to find girls that not only identified with the story personally but that also had the chops to carry it on their shoulders. I was nervous going into the first day of shooting. I wondered if I had made the right choices, especially with only two days of rehearsal prior to shooting. But after our first day I remember thinking to myself, “these girls are really something special.”

You grew up in the Bay (so did I) but most of your films take place in L.A. What’s the deal? As a San Francisco Bay Area native shouldn’t you hate L.A.? Why did you choose to set this specific story in Huntington Park as opposed to obvious choices like S.F. or East L.A.?

Guerrero: You’re funny. I don’t want to take away the fact that Los Angeles has been my muse ever since I moved there to attend film school, but I did originally set Mosquita y Mari in San Francisco’s Mission District. After putting together an initial S.F. budget I quickly learned that I didn’t have the means to shoot there. And I wasn’t so married to having it be the Mission. I just really wanted it in an immigrant setting.

East L.A. has been played out so much on films. It’s gotten to the point where people across the nation, and even the world, think East L.A. to be the only Latino community in California. Nothing against East L.A., but I wanted to capture a community just west of East L.A. that had its own unique history and vibe. I want to bring Huntington Park out of the shadows.

Music is a big part of the story. In a lot of the scenes the characters play songs for each other and hang out listening to music. How did you choose the music?

Guerrero: I connect to specific music early on in my process of writing. I’m constantly on SoundCloud or Remezcla looking to see what new music is being produced by Latino artists. I’m not interested in producing soundtracks or scores that have been recycled in U.S. Latino films throughout the years. I’m looking for music that’s cutting-edge and contemporary. That’s how I see the worlds and characters that I put on screen so the music has got to somehow add to the texture of that world. Outside of the tracks I chose for the film I worked with a wonderful composer named Ryan Beveridge. When we started working together I remember emphasizing to him, “Please, no strumming guitars.” I didn’t want people to recognize the score. I wanted it to be specific to Mosquita y Mari. He was wonderful. I sent him bits of music I was hearing and I was sending him pictures of the neighborhood and he just ran with it. He created something really unique.

There is this beautiful moment in the film where Mosquita is riding on the back of Mari’s bike and “Esta Soledad” by Carla Morrison is playing. There are close-ups of her face, of her hand gliding through the air; she looks so happy and free. The song is so sad and kinda dreamy. What made you choose it?

Guerrero: I believe love is bittersweet, especially young love. Carla Morrison, the score and the opening song are all meant to subtly bring that tone to the film. When I think of Carla Morrison’s voice it feels haunting. Her music always stirs melancholic feelings of loss in me that end up lingering for days. For that specific scene I thought she was the perfect choice to juxtapose Mosquita’s youthful excitement of feeling alive and in the world.

The word gay is never spoken in the film. The characters and setting are Latino but no one directly comments on being Latino, they just are. Why did you choose to tell the story this way?

Guerrero: I think staying away from labels is what makes this film refreshing. Audiences are placed in Mosquita y Mari’s world—their world is Latino, Xicana, it is immigrant. They don’t have to stop to remind themselves of it. They have grown up bicultural. It’s their norm to go in and out of Spanish and English without having to point it out. It’s how I was raised and I thought it was important to depict young people comfortable in their own skin and world. Mosquita y Mari’s story is meant to capture the moments that maybe down the line, maybe in college, they will come to discover were their first moments of queerness.

Mosquita y Mari had its theatrical release last year. What lessons did you learn? What advice would you give to other Latino filmmakers about the distribution of Latino films?

Guerrero: My producer and I released the film ourselves. We didn't have a big budget at all to do this so our theatrical release was very very limited. I think I learned that to open in a city like Los Angeles and New York theater houses expect you to have a big marketing budget or they will pass on your film. We didn't budget accordingly because we were focusing our efforts on reaching our audiences via social media which wasn't going to cost us much. But I feel like social media is something that has yet to be considered a viable platform for marketing in the industry. I think my biggest advice to filmmakers is to look into the many digital platforms that exist for you and your team to distribute your film. A theatrical on a tight budget really only becomes about generating critical reviews for you and your film, not revenue.

Historically, Latino films have had a hard time at the box office. Why do you think Latino films haven’t vibed with Latino filmgoers in the past?

Guerrero: It's interesting. I believe in Mexico there's a big culture of moviegoing, both studio and indie. I think here in the US that's not the case because Latino communities don't have access to indie films. If you go into communities of color you will only find the big theater chains which only play the blockbuster genre films. So how else does our community find out about independent film? Is it talked about in their schools? Is it written about in their local Spanish speaking papers? Are the art house theaters hard to get to? I think social media is starting to close this gap when it comes to learning about films like Mosquita y Mari and Netflix is making them more attainable, but even then I think there is a "deprogramming" that needs to happen so Latino audiences not used to watching indie films can appreciate more nontraditional narrative films

What’s next for you? Any new projects?

Guerrero: Right now I'm developing my second feature film, Los Valientes. It's about a gay, undocumented immigrant who finds himself caught in a web of deceit when the small, working-class town he and his family live in purposes its own anti-immigration law. Since I'm not personally undocumented I approached two groups, DreamActivists PA in Pennsylvania and Dreamers Adrift/Culture Strike in the Bay Area, about becoming Los Valientes community partners. They've all agreed, thankfully! Together we're creating a path to ensure a mutual exchange of knowledge happens between the film and the undocumented communities the film will be set in, which in this case are San Francisco and certain parts of Pennsylvania. We'll be launching a website for the new project soon and we're hoping the fan base we've built around Mosquita y Mari will be excited to follow this new project. In the meantime, we ask people to LIKE our Mosquita y Mari Facebook page where we've been posting all our recent good news, like the screenwriting and development grants that KRF/SFFS and Tribeca recently awarded Los Valientes.

Mosquita y Mari will be available May 7 on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and Vudu and June 8 on DVD.

For more info on the movie follow @MosquitayMari on Twitter and Facebook.

Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on Twitter and Facebook.

The Weinstein Company Gunning for Oscar With New 'Fruitvale Station' Poster

Cameron Sinz — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:44:53 GMT

Ahead of its debut in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section later this month, The Weinstein Company has released the first poster for "Fruitvale Station" (formerly titled "Fruitvale"), beginning the first stages of an assumed Oscar push for the film.

"Fruitvale Station" depicts the true story of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) who was shot to death by BART officers while unarmed at the Bay Area's Fruitvale station on New Year's Dat, 2008. The film charts one day in Grant's life leading up to the tragic shooting, which soon after would become national news. Octavia Spencer, Chad Michael Murray and Kevin Durand all co-star in the film.

The film debuted to near unanimous raves at this year's Sundance Film Festival, where it took home the U.S Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, sweeping arguably the festival's two highest honors.

Now with The Weinstein Company backing the film, it will be interesting to see if it can gain enough traction following its July 12 theatrical release to stay in the awards season conversation. If the early critical buzz is any indication, it may have a shot.

Take a look at the first official poster below:

The Film Arcade and Cinedigm Pick Up Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple-Starring Sundance Stripper Comedy 'Afternoon Delight'

Cameron Sinz — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:55:15 GMT

Jill Soloway's directorial debut "Afternoon Delight," which took home the directing award in Sundance's U.S. Dramatic Competition, has found its distributor, with The Film Arcade and Cinedigm announcing their acquisition of the film today. The Film Arcade will release the film theatrically, while Cinedigm will handle all ancillary distribution following.

Kathryn Hahn ("Step Brothers") stars as Rachel, a thirty-something now bored with the daily routines in her career and family life. One night, her and her husband (Josh Radnor, "How I Met Your Mother") go to a local strip club in an attempt to spice things up and while there meet a Mckena (Juno Temple), a stripper who Rachel becomes obsessed with saving, offering her a job as their live-in nanny in a move that significantly alters their way of living.

"We've been fans of Jill Soloway for many years and she is an exciting new female voice in independent film," said The Film Arcade's Miranda Bailey. "We fell in love with 'Afternoon Delight,' at Sundance and look forward to working with Jill, Jen and Sebastian to bring their film to audiences throughout the country."

Meanwhile, speaking on the distribution deal, Soloway stated "I'm thrilled that The Film Arcade and Cinedigm are releasing "Afternoon Delight," and am inspired by how passionate they are about the film and their forward-thinking vision for its distribution."

The Film Arcade has yet to state a release date for the film, but expect to see it in theaters later this year.

LatinoBuzz: WTF is Latino at the 2013 LA Film Festival?

Christine Davila — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

The summertime, downtown set, glitzy yet ‘cashz’ LA Film Festival, presented by Film Independent has announced their film lineup today. The verdict on the Latino rep? Compared to the last three festivals I’ve examined this year, Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca, LA Film Festival comes through with arguably the most valuable representation; there are three films representing American Latino in the narrative competition and one in documentary competition.

The lineup consists of a handful of new American indies mixed in with many favorited international films from last year’s Toronto, Venice, London and Berlin film festivals, and seven Sundance films screening out of competition including Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, which won both the Audience and Jury Awards in Park City. Starring Boricua Melonie Diaz as Oakland police murder victim Oscar Grant’s girlfriend, Fruitvale will be given the gala treatment (like last year’s Sundance awarded, Black film, Middle of Nowhere), alongside the direct-from-Cannes, Only God Forgives, the reteaming of director Nicolas Winding Refyn and GQ sensitive alpha hero Ryan Gosling (Drive).

But I’m not here to comb and recycle through the ‘high profile’ films that come armed with buzz. As always I’m spotlighting U.S. films in which the writer/director/cast are native born whose ethnic/cultural roots originates from Mexico, Central or South America. In addition, films by filmmakers who may not be Latino, but whose narratives explore and relate to the relevant bi-cultural experience/subjects. And finally I also like to mention the Latin films (international).

While I’m happy to acknowledge and give it up for LA, it’s still painful for this blogger/programmer to know there are so many more fresh American Latino films out there ready to be discovered. Game-changing films offering such fresh and original perspectives, which have by and large been dismissed by most of the major US Film Festivals. With the futures of the two highest profile Latino niche festivals in limbo, The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and HBO’s NY International Latino Film Festival, it’s especially crushing to know that these films might also be robbed of their only community platform. It’s cause for alarm and high time to address this void. But wait, lets save that for another post. For now, lets get back to the Latino stories coming at you at this year’s LA Film Festival. For official synopsis and pics check the Film Guide here.

NARRATIVE COMPETITION – Notably 9 of the 12 are US, hopefully giving the scrappy indies a better chance to compete and win the cash prize against the healthy subsidized production value of foreign movies. Five are first features and only one female narrative director.

40 YEARS FROM YESTERDAY written and directed by Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck and Robert Machoian

This is the first feature from the writing/directing team who got a lot of attention with their 2010 short Charlie and The Rabbit. Ojeda-Beck (whose parents are from Peru) and Machoian who is from the heavily Mexican populated King City, met at Cal State, Monterey Bay where they forged a tight artistic collaboration. Forty Years from Yesterday is described as Machoian’s imagination of how his mother’s death would unfold for his own family, capturing the loss his siblings would feel in losing a parent and his father’s pain in facing the death of his partner.

The duo have their way with documentary, fiction and experimental form, instilling an aura of temporality in an anchored realism. This unique evocative alchemy is found in Machoian’s doc short, Movies Made from Home #16, a 4 minute existential moment which screened at Sundance this year. The cosmic life themes they tend to broach are treated in such a down to earth and sensitive way, which is further made relatable by the natural non-pro performances they employ. Robert’s father, Bill Graham has starred in a few of his films and in Forty Years from Yesterday, both Robert’s parents and siblings play themselves. See this endearing behind the scenes clip of the making of the film:

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT written by Joseph B. Vasquez and directed by Henry Barrial

Written by the late Joseph B. Vasquez (d 1995) whose 1991 movie, Hanging with the Homeboys, was a groundbreaking urban comedy when it came out, now very much a classic albeit sadly forgotten gem. The only one of Vasquez’s five movies that was distributed (by New Line), Hanging with the Homeboys was shot in the South Bronx where he was born and raised. About four homeys, two Puerto Rican (one of them played by a baby-faced Johnny Leguizamo) and two Black, the movie, available on dvd from Amazon (or, I found it in 6 parts on Youtube) screened at the Sundance Film Festival at its indie darling peak. Its good-natured humor is derived from neighborhood beefs, trying to rap to ladies, and the racial tensions of the day delivered with unapologetic commentary. An overall glimpse into a day in the barrio slice life, the film is clearly an early influence for the Ice Cube Friday series.

The House that Jack Built similarly has that raw and authentic Nuyorican energy but pushed into a rollercoaster of a dysfunctional family drama with warmth, affection and intensity. The director, born from Cuban parents and raised in Washington Heights, Henry Barrial, is also an alumni of Sundance (Somebody 2001). The film stars E.J. Bonilla as the hot-blooded self-imposed king of his family who buys an apartment building to keep his family close, only to start dictating everybody’s life since he’s letting them live rent free. Bonilla is a fiercely charismatic up and coming actor who was last at the festival with the film Mamitas in 2011 and was also in Don’t Let Me Drown (Sundance 2010). An uproarious and high-edged Harlem set chamber piece, the heavy conflict of gravity that besets Jack is from being pulled in opposite directions by his street values on one side and deeply rooted family values on the other. See the trailer on their Kickstarter page.

MY SISTER’S QUINCEANERA written and directed by Aaron Douglas Johnston

This was reportedly one of the most talked about American films in the experimental leaning Rotterdam Film Festival this year. The filmmaker who was born and raised in Iowa, Aaron Douglas Johnston, has an impressive academic pedigree having attended world prestigious universities, Oxford and Yale. His first feature, the small town, gay life set, Bumblefuck, USA screened at Outfest 2011. In My Sister’s Quinceanera, he uses the local Mexican-American Iowa residents as his non-pro actors with whom he collaborated with on the story. It’s a gentle and earnest portrayal of a young man named Silas who is convinced he has to leave town to become independent and start his life but must first see his sister’s Quinceanera take place.

WORKERS written and directed by Jose Luis Valle (Mexico/Germany) - A quietly simmering artful drama about a retiring factory worker and housemaid in Tijuana circumstantially reunited and trying to compensate for their spent lives. An accomplished and arresting feature debut, the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section and won Best Mexican Film at the Guadalajara film Festival. A full investment into the contemplative tone and rhythm yields an appreciation for the film’s visceral and dry humor undertones. Born in El Salvador, Jose Luis Valle previously made a documentary short called Milagro del Papa.

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION: 7 out 10 are US, 4 first features, six female directors (incl. 2 co-directors)

TAPIA directed by Eddie Alcazar

The 5 time world boxing champion and emotionally damaged blue-eyed Chicano from the 505, Johnny Lee Tapia, survived a series of near deaths before his turbulent life ended at the young age of 45 last year. The sheer volume of tragedy and coping afflictions Johnny endured in his Vida Loca, as he openly shares in his autobiography, includes the scarring experience of seeing his mother’s kidnapping and violent murder at the tender age of eight. Tapia funneled his heartbreaking life to fuel a successful professional boxing career. Tapia’s confrontation to such tumult is so impressive, it’s no wonder that former EA video game designer Eddie Alcazar decided to both dramatize and document his harrowing real life story. Originally announced as a biopic, subsequently the documentary was born of it, in which Eddie captures final interviews and archival footage with the haunted boxer. Remarkably, watching the clip below, a slight zeal and spirit, however low key and worn, emanates from the towering rumble of his battered lifetime – unquestionably his refusal to be knocked out. This is actually the first feature out of the gate for filmmaker Eddie Alcazar whose radical sci-fi film 0000 has been curiously tracked as in production for a couple years now. The ambitious looking trailer only piqued mad interest when it was released last year.

PURGATORIO directed by Rodrigo Reyes (Mexico) - An elegiac and cinematically shot poem filled with emotional narration and iconography, this border film is told by way of a tapestry of stories that culminates into a strong cry for human compassion. Imagining the border as if purgatory, where migrants must suffer in order to get through to the other side, the dangerous plight in crossing the US/Mexico border is viewed outside political context but rather a metaphysical prism. This is the fourth film from Reyes, a talented young documentarian from Mexico.

INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASE

EUROPA REPORT directed by Sebastian Cordero and written by Philip Gelatt - From award winning Ecuador born filmmaker Sebastian Cordero (Rabia, Cronicas, Pescador) Europa Report marks his first film in English. Somewhat shrouded in mystery, the story is written by Philip Gelatt, an adult comic book author, and is set aboard the first manned mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. The genre bending sounding sci-fi thriller was recently picked up by Magnolia’s Magnet division and will go straight to VOD on June 27 after its LA Film Festival premiere. Cordero, who is a UCLA grad, has a well-controlled gritty realism to his aesthetic, which might inhabit and distinguish this deep space thriller among the genre’s canon.

CRYSTAL FAIRY written and directed by Sebastian Silva (Chile) - From the crafty young Chilean filmmaker whose first first film, The Maid put him on the international map, this is one of two films he screened at Sundance this year. A road trip of self-discovery featuring the charming free spirited Gaby Hoffman pitted against a smarmy American tourist Michael Cera in the long and vast Chilean coast side, the film explores their unusual and fluid character dynamic and opposing auras.

THE WOMEN AND THE PASSENGER directed by Valentina Mac-Pherson, Patricia Correra (Chile) - A 45 minute version of this screened at the prestigious documentary film festival in Amsterdam IDFA. An unobtrusive camera follows four maids as they clean the rooms of one of those clandestine by-the-hour motels. Amid the moans behind doors and bed aftermaths of torrid love affairs, the women reveal their own perspectives about life, love and sex in some kind of visual love letter to the special place. I don’t believe the title is translated to interpret its full meaning, its more like, “The Transients’ women”.

SHORTS

I WAS BORN IN MEXICO BUT…. written and directed by Corey OHama - 12min (US) - Per the IMDB description, “using found footage to tell the story of an undocumented young woman who grew up thinking she was American, only to find out as a teenager that she didn’t have papers because she was brought to the U.S. as a young child. “ Sounds like the thousands of Dreamers plights whose stories are being suppressed.

MISTERIO written and directed by Chema Garcia Ibarra (Spain) 12min - So even though this is from Spain (not the Americas), I mention it if because I’m a huge fan of Chema’s shorts, Protoparticles and The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5. I have no doubt this will share that similar strange, whimsical vibe.

AL LADO DE NORMA written and directed by Camila Luna, Gabriela Maturana 14min (Chile) - 49 year-old Jorge is a silent, tired man, whose life seems to revolve around Norma, his elderly mother who has Alzheimer’s. But Antonio, who rents a small room in their home, will provide him with the chance to examine himself and question his monotonous life, which might just make for a radical change.

PAPEL PICADO – written and directed by Javier Barboza - From a 2007 Cal Arts Alumnus, and independent animation teacher and filmmaker, this looks wild! Check out his vimeo works here.

SAINT JOHN, THE LONGEST NIGHT, written and directed by Claudia Huaiquimilla (Chile) 18 min - The filmmaker is of the indigenous Mapuche tribe of Southern Chile. Set amid the happy Saints celebration of June 24, a young boy must wrestle with the reappearance of his violent father.

TOO MUCH WATER (DEMASIADA AGUA) written and directed by Nicolas Botana, Gonzalo Torrens (Uruguay) 14 min - A young woman fills her backyard pool every night and finds it empty in the morning. Strange neighbors and even stranger circumstances stir her paranoia.

Lastly, I have to mention dance beat rapper Kid Cudi’s feature film acting debut in GOODBYE WORLD directed by Denis Hennelly (Rock the Bells doc about Wu Tang Clan) and written by Sarah Adina Smith. Essentially, the film is about a group of friends hanging out when some kind of apocalypse hits. Hijinks ensue. (There’s a trend here after It’s A Disaster and the upcoming “look-we’re-so-cool-celebs partying of This is The End). Although it’s a small role, it is the first of a number of films Kid Cudi is in that are coming through the pipelines. Born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in Cleveland Ohio, he is a beautiful brown blend of African American on his mother’s side and Native/Mexican mix on his father’s side.

The LA Film Festival kicks off with Pedro Almodovar’s, I’m So Excited on June 13 and runs until the 23. Tickets and info here.

Trailer Watch: Brit Marling and Ellen Page Lead All-Star Cast in Sundance Spy Thriller 'The East'

Ryan Lattanzio — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:08:13 GMT

Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling team up for the second time in the espionage thriller "The East," which stars Marling, Ellen Page, Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Skarsgard. The pair previously collaborated on the screenplay for Batmanglij's debut film "Sound of My Voice," in which Marling also starred as a bewitching cult leader. Fox Searchlight picked up that film (along with Marling's "Another Earth") and also backed "The East."

This time around, Marling plays an elite intelligence operative who goes undercover to blow the whistle on a group of anarchists. But like the undercover journalist in "Sound of My Voice," her character becomes increasingly entwined in a world whose dogma contradicts her own.

Critics at Sundance 2013 were divided about the film, which premiered at the festival and later closed SXSW (read The Playlist's review). Watch the new trailer below.

Trailer Watch: Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes - Written and Directed by Francesca Gregorini

Kerensa Cadenas — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:00:01 GMT

Francesca Gregorini's Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes made its debut at Sundance. The film follows Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario) who lives with her father (Alfred Molina) and stepmother (Frances O'Connor). Emanuel hates her birthday because her mother died while giving birth to her. When Linda (Jessica Biel) moves in next door, Emanuel is struck by the resemblance Linda has to her late mother. After she begins babysitting for Linda, Emanuel and Linda begin to spend time together. They develop a quick bond and she becomes deeply involved in a secret of Linda's.

The film debuted in the UK at the Sundance London Film and Music Festival. There is no set U.S. release date.

LatinoBuzz: Our Top Picks From Festival Flicks! You're Welcome!

Juan Caceres — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:30:00 GMT

This year started off with a Bang (with a capital 'B') for Latino film festivals. Although Latino representation at Miami is a given, it wasn't as obvious at Sundance as in previous years and is a ghost town at Tribeca leaving SXSW, as always, to pick up the slack for the “mainstream” festivals. But, it was the Latino film festivals that really pushed the rainbow of Latino cinema upon the festival landscape. San Diego Latino (SDLFF) had, in my opinion, its strongest lineup in many years. They celebrated their 20th anniversary by showcasing classics that SDLFF had screened over the years, giving the audience a chance to fall in love with them on the big screen all over again. CineFestival in Tejas, who has always played by the beat of their own drum, dropped the mic on everyone by announcing the Latino Writers Project Lab, a collaboration with Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, which will give filmmakers telling 'American Latino' stories a venue to have their projects mentored. Next up we have three diverse festivals with the Chicago Latino Film Festival celebrating its 29th year, Cine Las Americas in Austin, TX who very much embody their local community with an 'Hecho en Texas' and Youth specific programs, and then there's a new kid on the block in Philly, the Filadelfia Latin American Film Festival. In only its 2nd year, they have put together a two day event to bring Latino films to an underserved vibrant city. LatinoBuzz painstakingly selected our personal top picks that we think are a “must-see.” But don't just take our word for it, check out their websites for full listings and see for yourself how fly Latino cinema really is!

CHICAGO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL

The Precocious and Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (La Vida Precoz y Breve de Sabina Rivas) – Mexico

Dir. Luis Mandoki

Honduran teenager Sabina Rivas intends to get to the United States, harboring dreams of becoming a famous singer and distancing herself from her former young lover, Jovany, now a vicious gang member.

The Wild Ones (Los niños salvajes) – Spain

Dir. Patricia Ferreira

Alex, Oky and Gabi are three angry, misunderstood teens from Barcelona who have to deal with parents who have completely forgotten that they too were once teens; parents who, on most occasions, blame their children for their unfulfilled dreams. The trio has dreams and ambitions of their own and they love to test the limits imposed by society. But push comes to shove and Oky commits an unforgivable act that will leave many in shock in this thoughtful and sober drama.

Nevertheless (Y Sin Embargo) - Cuba
Dir. Rudy Mora

Lapatun is late for his math exam at a music school; to justify his tardiness he invents a wild story about having seen a UFO and spoken with its crew. The school is turned upside down by Lapatun’s claims; with some students demanding his expulsion and some teachers questioning the role creativity plays in a child’s education.

CINE LAS AMERICAS

Dust (Polvo) – Guatemala
Dir. Julio Hernández Cordón

In a small Guatemalan village where many were "disappeared" during the country's civil war, a troubled young man struggles with the memory of his murdered father — and the nearby presence of the man who turned his father in.

From Tuesday To Sunday (De Jueves A Domingo) – Chile
Dir. Dominga Sotomayor

Two children travel with their parents from Santiago Chile to the north of Chile for a family holiday. The landscape's loneliness and the car's confinement help bring out the couple's troubles and the children learn that this might turn out to be their father's farewell and their last family vacation.

Delusions of Grandeur – USA
Dir. Iris Almaraz, Gustavo Ramos

In the mid-1990s a medicated grungy girl stopped taking her medication (Prozac), crossed over a rainbow, and became a woman in a crazy, wonderful place called San Francisco. Lulu, Rocio, and Illusion are struggling with the sexuality and gender roles that we all play. It is said that there is someone for everyone, and the heroines in this story put that theory to the test in a city with a history of love at its core - but will they respect themselves in the morning?

FILADELFIA LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

Violeta Went to Heaven (Violeta Se Fue A Los Cielos) – Chile
Dir. Andres Wood

Violeta Went To Heaven tells the story of the iconic Chilean singer and folklorist Violeta Parra, tracing her evolution from impoverished child to international sensation and Chile's national hero, while capturing the swirling intensity of her inner contradictions, fallibilities, and passions.

Lemon – USA
Dir. Laura Brownson, Beth Levison

Three-time felon. One-time Tony award winner. Lemon Andersen is a pioneering poet whose words speak for a generation. But Lemon has landed back in the 'hood, living in the projects with thirteen family members and desperate for a way out. So he turns to the only thing he has left, his pen and his past

7 Boxes (7 Cajas) – Paraguay
Dir. Juan Carlos Maneglia, Tana Schémbor

Víctor receives an unusual proposal, to carry 7 boxes of unknown content through the Market Number 4 but things get complicated along the way.

Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on Twitter and Facebook.

Trailer Watch: Sundance Hit 'The Way, Way Back' Stars Carell, Janney, Rudolph, Collette and Rockwell in Coming-of-Age Comedy

Ryan Lattanzio — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:01:03 GMT

The trailer for Sundance smash "The Way, Way Back" has arrived. Written and directed by comedian Nat Faxon and Oscar winner Jim Rash (best adapted screenplay in 2012 for "The Descendants"), the wincingly funny comedy stars Steve Carell, Allison Janney, Maya Rudolph, Toni Collette and Sam Rockwell and centers on teenage Duncan (Lian James), who takes a summer job at a water park and forms a few unlikely bonds.

Fox Searchlight picked up the rights earlier this year and plans a summer release. Read Indiewire's review here and watch the trailer below.

Watch: 'Voice' Contestant Judith Hill Talks Singing with Michael Jackson in Sundance Hit 'Twenty Feet From Stardom'

Anne Thompson and Beth Hanna — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:57:57 GMT

Check out this clip from must-see Sundance documentary "Twenty Feet From Stardom," in which Judith Hill (a breakout from the most recent season of "The Voice") discusses her experience working onstage with Michael Jackson. Morgan Neville's film --which hits theaters June 14 via RadiusTWC-- spotlights the true stories of gifted talents who stayed within arm's reach of center stage: backup singers.

The doc includes interviews with musical legends Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Sting, who pay tribute to the singers who often spent decades supporting their stellar careers. The film focuses on the women who made up their background choruses, and what their varied careers have held for them since. Their stories are heartbreaking: Phil Spector imprisoned and stole Darlene Love's great talent, and one after the other strove to break out on their own. What kept them back? The youngest of the women, Judith Hill, is trying to buck that trend.

LatinoBuzz: WTF is Latino at Tribeca

Christine Davila — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:00:00 GMT

If you've read my last two WTF is Latino posts on Sundance and SXSW, you know I do my best to embody a manic optimist and find a silver lining when it comes to magnifying the limited representation of Latino stories and writer/directors at mainstream film festivals. I do that by expanding and deconstructing the broad term, hoping to educate myself and the masses on what 'qualifies' as Latino. However, the relative dearth of Latinos and Latin America at this year's 2013 Tribeca Film Festival program has seriously challenged me to find a positive spin on this woeful slate of brown in the world's most celluloid famous, multi-culti metropolis. It is especially stupefying considering the number of electrifying premiere film submissions there are to choose from at this moment.

I worked as an Industry Coordinator for the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival under Director of Programming David Kwok and Festival Director Nancy Schaefer. Back then Latin America was not only well represented in the program but Tribeca was at the forefront of showing bourgeoning film renaissances taking place in countries such as Panama, Peru and Colombia. No doubt this sensibility and charge came from the legendary jet-setting of one such Peter Scarlet, the cognoscente Artistic Director beloved by many Latin American festivals. At 8 years old, the Festival was fast outgrowing its post 9/11 birthmark and has since stubbornly and desperately struggled to position itself as a blank World Cinema festival. This is a strategy I find puzzling, given it is way out of league and under the heavy shadow cast from uptown by the auteur and discovery art house Lincoln Film Society. One would think it an ideal and very NY synergy thing to do would be to carve out your own identity in specializing in the kaleidoscopic, fertile microcosm of US immigrant odyssey found in every corner from Manhattan to the five boroughs. Not only is there a lack of US Latino stories this year, nowhere to be found are films from Latin America. Seriously. Click on the online film guide's search by country scroll down menu and visibly absent are Chile, Mexico and Argentina - three of Latin America's most renowned and heralded world cinema incubators. The closest we get is one feature from Brazil by veteran director, Bruno Baretto, and two shorts from Spain. Its plain to see that the Festival's new Artistic Director, Fredric Boyer (who headed bougie prestige fests, Cannes' Directors Fortnight and then Locarno Film Festival) is seriously 'Euro-cizing' the Triangle Below Canal.

So, what's my silver lining? Well, its based on the Short Term 12 lesson I just experienced at SXSW. I did not target the indie film as a Latino film but being familiar and a fan of Hawaiian filmmaker, Daniel Cretton's work, I went to see it and was immediately absorbed by the effortless kid-adult social psychological narrative. A detail that resonated with me was that one of the main juvy instructors was a foster kid who was raised and adopted into a big loving home by Mexican parents. He's as white as they come, yet he cooks a mean Mexican dish and expresses his emotions outwardly, attributes of Latino culture that informed his personhood. Maybe that's how subtle, relative yet impactful Latino culture is seeping into all of our lives. Maybe my barely passing grade on the Latino at Tribeca diagnosis is premature having not seen all of the films. Maybe where we least expect it, beyond cast and loglines, there are films buried in here with deeper social undertones of brown representation. I'm willing to excavate. All that big picture stuff aside, I am quite excited about the six films (out of some 168) I highlight here which offers a diverse albeit thin slice of Latino - whether its the narrative's themes, up and coming actors, and real life Americans - who knows how many times removed from their Latin roots - and how cool that looks like.

Without further ado, here it is; WTF is Latino at Tribeca Film Festival.

WORLD NARRATIVE COMPETITION

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors directed by Sam Fleischner and written by Rose Lichter-Marck, Micah Bloomberg

Logline: When autistic teen Ricky is scolded for skipping class, he escapes into the subway for a days-long odyssey among the subway’s disparate denizens. Meanwhile, his mother wages an escalating search effort above ground. Based on a true story and set in Far Rockaway, Queens, in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy, these parallel stories of mother and son take the viewer on a touching journey of community and connection in and below New York City. Cast Andrea Suarez, Jesus Valez, Azul Rodriguez, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Marsha Stephanie Blake

Sam Fleischner's first film, Wah Do Dem was about a broken hearted hipster who goes on a cruise and gets stuck in the dangerous wild of Jamaica - just as President Obama is being sworn into office for the first time. The filmmaking felt so fresh, real, tense and engrossing. Just like you were on the adventure with him. Sam and his co-director Ben Chase won the $50,000 Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. I'm so happy he is premiering this NY based film which features a Latino cast including Tenoch Huerta (Dias de Gracia), and half of the film is spoken in Spanish. No, Sam is not a Latino but a native New Yorker and I love his take and thematic weaving in this story. His statement and inspiration behind the film demonstrates his sensibility and vision, surpassing and waiving any requirement or notion that says you have to be Latino to tell authentic Latino stories. This is what Sam was able to tell me over email:

"I am not Latino but this story is inspired by true events that happened to a Mexican family. I was attracted to the parallel between people on the autism spectrum and people living as illegal immigrants in the US. Both instances are people wading through systems that aren't designed for them, interesting to think about the term 'alien'. "

NARRATIVE SPOTLIGHT

The Pretty One, written and directed by Jenee LaMarque

Logline: Audrey has all of the qualities that her twin sister Laurel wishes she possessed: confidence, style, independence. When tragedy strikes, Laurel has the opportunity to reinvent herself. In a complex performance, Zoe Kazan poignantly captures Laurel’s complex mix of loss and awakening, especially as she begins a new relationship with her neighbor (Jake Johnson). Jenée LaMarque’s first feature film is a quirky, lovely tale of identity and the eternal bond between two sisters. Cast Zoe Kazan, Jake Johnson, John Carroll Lynch, Shae D'lyn, Frankie Shaw, Ron Livingston

I first met Jenee with her edgy girls short film Spoonful, a ridiculous real life scenario in which friends help out their lactating friend, which played the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. She was also kind enough to email me amid the crunch of finishing her first feature for its world premiere. I'm so grateful she responded because she truly personifies what I'm trying to convey about Latino identity (its American and expansive and our creativity relates to it vastly different ways). She says, "As for my Latina origin: my dad is Mexican, born and raised in Chino, CA. His mother's family is Mexican and has been in CA for a long time. His father's family is from Mexico City...we have a French last name, presumably because of the French who came to Mexico during the 19th century but I really don't know anything about my French-Mexican origins. My grandfather came to CA during WWII with the Bracero program. My Mom is Danish, Norwegian and French. I do identify as Mexican, as Latina, but I also identify as American and as white. I really wish that I had more of a connection to my Mexican heritage but unfortunately, my dad didn't speak Spanish to us growing up (even thought he's fluent) and he really identifies as American. It's funny, because I'm mixed, I don't feel I'm fully one thing or another, I feel like my identity is sort of slippery because of it. I think that my mixed heritage plays a central role in my voice as a storyteller; one of the themes of The Pretty One is identity (a struggle with identity) and I also find myself drawn to this theme again in again in my other work. "

DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT

The Motivation by Adam Bhala Lough

Logline: Go inside the lives and training regimes of eight of the world’s gutsiest professional skateboarders. These fearless stars face unique obstacles on the way to the Street League Championship and the coveted title of best street skateboarder in the world. Adam Bhala Lough, creator of the independent hit Bomb the System (TFF 2003), directs this fresh, energetic documentary search for that elusive quality that separates winners from the pack.

This skateboarding shred competish doc about the sheer intensity and will to defy the terror of cracked bones features some of the youngest, most successfully branded and competitive skaters in the game like Nyjah Huston (Puerto Rican father), Paul Rodriguez known as P-Rod, and Chaz Ortiz. I can't wait to meet these guys and get to know them. Adam is good like that. His last film, The Carter, about autodidactic and auto-real voiced rapper Lil Wayne impressed me for its gloss and floss but also by its covert way of infiltrating the hyped up insular world and mind of a subculture pop king. His flashy aesthetic and sneak transparency is bound to capture the badass jaw dropping leaps and outrageous rail tricks along with distilling the high intensity pressure and rush of winning in The Motivation.

MIDNIGHT

Frankenstein's Army (Netherlands, Czech Republic) directed by Richard Raaphorst and written by Miguel Tejada Flores

Logline: In the waning days of World War II, a team of Russian soldiers finds itself on a mysterious mission to the lab of one Dr. Victor Frankenstein. They unearth a terrifying Nazi plan to resurrect fallen soldiers as an army of unstoppable freaks and are soon trapped in a veritable haunted house of cobbled-together monstrosities. Frankenstein’s Army is the wild steampunk Nazi found-footage zombie mad scientist film you’ve always wanted.

Veteran Hollywood screenwriter, Miguel Tejada Flores has written such horror reboots as Beyond Reanimator and family classics as The Lion King but notably this is the guy who gets story credit for Revenge of the Nerds back in '84. His next film is the upcoming I Brake for Gringos starring Camilla Belle directed by Mexican filmmaker Fernando Lebrija. A frequent mentor over the years at NALIP's screenwriting and producing labs, it sounds like this guy is accessible and interested in nurturing the younger generation of Latino talent. A California native, his family is from Bolivia. Read his wordpress blog here

V/H/S/2 - Eduardo Sanchez is one of the seven filmmakers of the second found footage horror anthology which has screened at Sundance, SXSW and now Tribeca (that might be a record), and most famously directed The Blair Witch Project. Cuban born filmmaker.

SHORT FILM COMPETITION

Close Your Eyes written and directed by Sonia Malfa

Logline: Thirteen-year-old Imani Cortes is a gifted photographer longing to experience her first kiss. She has a crush on a quiet artist, Junito, with whom she has a natural connection, but she also faces an enormous challenge: she is slowly losing her sight to retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye disease. Will Imani let her disease stop her or be the path to independence? Cast Kimberly Lora, Julian Fernandez-Kemp, Sara Contreras, Victor Cruz, Rhina Valentina, Mia Ysabel

I'm looking forward to seeing this short set in Spanish Harlem. I don't know much about the filmmaker except that she raised 10k off Kickstarter for this, her directorial debut. And she looks Boricua. Check out her website which shows a number of her photos and videos that show off her 'eye'.

The Tribeca Film Festival starts April 17-28. Ticket info here

Now and Then: Quentin Dupieux's 'Wrong' Exposes the Limits of Surrealism

Matt Brennan — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:21:40 GMT

Drafthouse Films, the distributor of Quentin Dupieux's bizarre new film, "Wrong," describes the French director and electronic musician (stage name: Mr. Oizo) as "one of the world's most fearless cinematic surrealists." The surreal does indeed seem to be Dupieux's preferred register, but this leads me to a trickier question. Should we care?

Surrealism isn't exactly fashionable anymore. Whether you consider it a movement, an aesthetic, or a politics -- and wherever you place the dividing lines between these three -- art critics agree that Surrealism grew out of Dadaist anti-rationalism in the terrible years of World War I and petered out somewhere between the end of World War II and the Sixties, replaced by other, fresher radicalisms.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term, but it was Andre Breton, writing "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924, who brought it to prominence (and proceeded to be its domineering life force until his death in 1966). It was this eccentric, absurdist creed that came to mind watching "Wrong," especially Breton's "Encyclopedia" entry for Surrealism:

Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all, all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

A working definition of what Dupieux might be up to begins to take shape: unexpected associations and juxtapositions (a Southern California landscaper speaking French-accented English); dreamscapes (a dog riding the bus, reunited with his owner); resolute playfulness (heavy downpours inside a nondescript office building). So close to Breton's definition is Dupieux's version of Surrealism, in fact, that it resembles a relic from another age -- a curiosity found rummaging in culture's closet, mothballs and all.

"Wrong," which Dupieux wrote, directed, photographed, edited, and scored, follows Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick, of "Reno 911") as he searches for his lost dog, Paul.

To be frank, that's about as far as synopsis can go. I could tell you that the palm tree in Dolph's backyard mysteriously becomes a pine. I could tell you that he encounters a shadowy figure named Master Chang -- played by well-known character actor William Fichtner, layering on so many oddities of inflection, accent, and movement that the performance becomes a black hole in the center of the movie, absorbing any light that approaches its orbit. I could tell you that the film includes an extended deconstruction of a pizza place flyer. But I could not promise you that any of these constitute "important plot points" or "illuminating details" or "useful ironies," because then I would be lying.

All right, I will admit that just lining up the narrative elements is not quite faithful to the actual experience of watching the movie. "Wrong" does, in fleeting moments, exude a madcap strangeness that I would call compelling, particularly the tendency of all the characters to speak their minds rather than slalom through the niceties that make up so much of human conversation. (I prefer the subtler anarchism of screwball comedies and gangster films from the 1930s, but that's material for another column.) Anyway, I'm sure Dupieux would tell me, "That's not the point, you're reading too much into it, narrative is not what Surrealism is about."

Maybe not, but that doesn't mean Surrealism can get away with not being about anything. (Breton disagreed. To him, Surrealism was "Psychic automatism in its pure state... Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.") In fact, this attention to the automatic, the unplanned, and the associative is a bit of a cop out. It allows the filmmaker, or any artist for that matter, to celebrate success as evidence that the style works, while explaining away failure as a consequence of the unintentional, the accidental, the fated. Surrealism is, or would like to be, critic-proof.

That it is not is suggested by some of the unfortunate decisions made in "Wrong": to replant the palm, to make Master Chang's face pockmarked with acid burns, to use the pizza joint as the jumping-off point for a mistaken-identity love story. These are choices, and if their intent resists logic that does not necessarily make them automatic, a revelation of some deeper truth. Indeed, if "Wrong" could be said to have one consistent flaw, it is the grimness of its "play," the forced "randomness" of its associations.

"Wrong" is, at some level, an experimentalist's attempt at disrupting the dominance of narrative, and Dupieux's inventiveness is undeniable. But I finished the movie with a new quiver of doubts about the possibilities of Surrealism, and renewed conviction that its limits are what caused it to pass out of fashion. Not only does the film's use of the surreal fail to solve "all the principal problems of life," as Breton promised, it also fails to solve the principal problem of my Friday nights: what should I watch?

"Wrong" premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It is now available on iTunes and arrives in theaters Friday, March 29.

Sundance 2013 Roundup: Women Directed Films Received Distribution

Kerensa Cadenas — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:10:32 GMT

If you remember, the Sundance lineup in US features and US documentarues documentaries evenly divided between female and male directors. Since it's been a couple of months, we wanted to give you a status update of the deals that came out of Sundance.

Here are lists of of the female directed films at Sundance that received distribution thus far and those that are still waiting on deals.

Feature Deals:

Austenland/ U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Jerusha Hess, Screenwriters: Jerusha Hess, Shannon Hale)

Concussion / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Stacie Passon)

In a World.../ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Lake Bell)

The Lifeguard / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Liz W. Garcia)

Touchy Feely/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Lynn Shelton)

May in the Summer/ U.S.A., Qatar, Jordan (Director and screenwriter: Cherien Dabis)

Documentary Deals

99% - The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film/ U.S.A. (Directors: Audrey Ewell, Aaron Aites, Lucian Read, Nina Kristic)

After Tiller/ U.S.A. (Directors: Martha Shane, Lana Wilson)

Blackfish/ U.S.A. (Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite)

Gideon's Army / U.S.A. (Director: Dawn Porter) - HBO

Valentine Road / U.S.A. (Director: Marta Cunningham) - HBO

Features Still to be Sold

Afternoon Delight/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jill Soloway)

Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Francesca Gregorini)

Documentaries Still to Be Sold

American Promise / U.S.A. (Directors: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson)

Citizen Koch/ U.S.A. (Directors: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin)

The Good Life/ U.S.A. (Directors: Sean Fine, Andrea Nix Fine)

Kristen Bell Is On a Roll: Focus World, Screen Media Slate 'The Lifeguard' for Summer

Ryan Lattanzio — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:11:03 GMT

It's a good year so far for Kristen Bell, as the Kickstarter campaign to reboot "Veronica Mars" reached its goal last week. Focus Features' alternative distribution outlet Focus World has partnered with Screen Media Films in acquire U.S. rights to Sundance entry "The Lifeguard."

The directorial debut of TV writer Liz W. Garcia, "The Lifeguard" stars Bell ("House of Lies"), Mamie Gummer ("Side Effects") and Martin Starr (who previously collaborated with Bell on TV's late "Party Down"). Also joining the cast is Oscar-nominee Amy Madigan (1985’s "Twice in a Lifetime").

Almost-thirtysomething Leigh (Bell) uproots her life as a reporter in New York and returns hometown Connecticut. There, she resumes the suburban life she left behind: living with her parents, hanging out with old friends who never left (Starr and Gummer), working as a lifeguard like she did in high school, where she was once the valedictorian. But her simple life takes a twisted turn as she begins an affair with a 16-year-old boy (David Lambert).

Read an Indiewire review with Bell from Sundance here. Indiewire interviewed writer/director Garcia at the festival in January.

Focus World and Screen Media Films will distribute "The Lifeguard" in theaters and on digital platforms this summer.

Guadalajara's Maguey Award

Sydney Levine — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Maguey, pronounced Ma Gay -- the plant from which Tequila is distilled here in the State of Jalisco and the City of Guadalajara -- is the perfect name for the Gay Prize of the Festival International de Cine de Guadalajara (FICG).

FICG The Maguey Awards

(AKA: Premios Maguey: Pasiones intimas del cine queer or Intimate Passions of Queer Cinema)The jury -- comprised of Colombian Juan Carlos Arcienegas of CNN Latino, journalist and film critic; Kevin Murphy, Germany, Talent Campus; Darryl MacDonald, Director of Palm Springs IFF, Swedish filmmaker Ingrid Ryborg and Alexander Mello,Brazil, Director at Diversity in Animation. International Festival of LGBT Animation--made a quick and easy decision after one hour of deliberation, but it took 2 1Ž2 hours to write the statement.

The line-up

Included some films I had seen including the Chilean (again!!) film by Esteban Lorrain The Passion of Michelangelo which I quite liked when I saw it at Berlin’s EFM; Gun Hill Road, Sundance 2012’s debut feature and Masters Film (from NYU Graduate Film School) Gun Hill Road by New Yorker Rashaad Ernesto Green, Graduate of Dartmouth College, recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Award and Spike Lee Fellowship which most unfortunately has been caught in the bankruptcy of its U.S. distributor Motion Picture Film Group (See Indiewire: What Happens You’re your Distributor Goes Bankrupt – Why Gun Hill Road is now Finally on DVD), Sundance 2012 lesbian Chicana film Mosquito y Mari, Any Day Now, starring Alan Cummings which I saw at the Napa Valley Film Festival where it won the Audience Award and the 2013 Sundance film Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean.

And the winner is: Quebranto (Disrupted), from Mexico, the memorial and testimony of trail blazers Fernando García, known as Pinolito, who was a child actor in the seventies and Doña Lilia Ortega, his mother, an actress. Fernando came out as a transvestite some years ago, and now calls himself Coral Bonelli. They live together in Garibaldi, Mexico yearning for their past in the movies, while Coral bravely comes to terms with her gender identity. They both still perform.

Honorable Mention went to the Israeli film Out in the Dark

The announcement and celebration party at the Black Cherry was great fun. I was honored to meet the great and beautiful Mexican actress Laura Zapata. I hung out with my new-found friends Lydia Genchi from Nomad Film Distribution in Italy and Catalina Arango of Zancudo Films from Argentina, and old friends Darryl, JC and Kevin up until midnight when the prize should have been announced, but instead, the disco dancing with two great dancers a la “Rage” in West Hollywood went on another half an hour… Someone saw the poor exhausted dancers in their open window dressing room above the club afterward, self absorbed in private activities as they tried to rest their beautiful bodies. Personally I wish they would add a Latin beat to the monotony of one-one-one-one-one-one-one beat which really exacerbated my tinnitus.

So I went home, sharing a car with Swedish Staermose Soren of Yellow Bird Productions and Greek Patrice Vivancos, spokesman for Media Mundus which is Media’s international film fund and whom I had seen earlier moderating the roundtable on funds and funding strategies for Latin America.

'Dirty Wars': Glimpse Into Shadow World of U.S. Counterterrorism Via Tenacious Reporter

Jacob Combs — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:25:29 GMT

"Dirty Wars," the riveting new documentary by journalist Jeremy Scahill and director Rick Rowley that probes the shadowy world of U.S. paramilitary operations, almost didn't get made. Or rather, it almost didn't become the film that premiered at Sundance in January to critical plaudits and was picked up two days later by IFC Sundance Selects for a late-summer release.

A year and a half ago, Scahill and Rowley finished a version of the film that was significantly different from its final iteration, which follows Scahill--a national security correspondent for The Nation magazine who has investigated and reported stories in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia--as he uncovers a much larger narrative about a secretive and deadly unit at the center of the U.S. military after a puzzling trip to a remote area in Afghanistan.

The earlier version of "Dirty Wars" was a straight-up, linear documentary, a just-the-facts-ma'am look at Scahill's reporting, not the journalist himself. But with the help of David Riker, a writer and director whose film "The Girl" debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, in 2012 Scahill and Rowley turned the film from a story about the most covert arm of the U.S. national security apparatus into a story about an investigation into that elite fighting force.

It was undeniably the right choice. Through its unique framing, focusing on a journalist reporting rather than a story reported, "Dirty Wars" manages to simultaneously delve deeply and authoritatively into the murky world of U.S. counterterrorism while ultimately posing a series of questions, or perhaps a central dilemma. How do we understand the world around us and our priorities as a nation when we don't even know the breadth of our country's armed forces engagement around the globe?

As Scahill says towards the beginning of the film, "This is a story about the seen and the unseen."

Shadows and questions in a nighttime raid

One of the earliest clues that there was more to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than met the eye came from U.S. soldiers themselves, who told Scahill that the real fighting--the real war, in fact--was taking place in secret, in the background, away from the skirmishes of official military units that were reported by journalists embedded in the field. A steady stream of press releases told a different story: nighttime raids where combatants were killed in the so-called 'denied zones.' These areas were far outside the secure perimeter within which most journalists operated; these were the areas which few foreigners ever see.

Scahill was determined to be an exception. On a trip to a small city called Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan, he investigated a nighttime raid that had killed five civilians. He met with the family of Mohammed Daoud, an Afghan police commander who had trained with the U.S.; he watched cellphone video of Daoud dancing with his family hours before his death at the hands of unnamed, unknown men who showed up at Daoud's house wearing no uniforms and shot him dead. He left Gardez with questions, as had another journalist, Jerome Starkey of the Times of London, whose reporting had linked the attack to NATO but had been publicly pushed back upon by the treaty organization.

A UN investigation later confirmed U.S. involvement in the Gardez killings. NATO changed its story, and a chilling cell phone video surfaced, in which bloody, bullet-ridden bodies can be seen, accompanied by two American voices speaking in English as they parse the events of that night, reconstructing a narrative. A photo emerged of a uniformed, high-ranking American officer, Admiral William McRaven, personally apologizing to Daoud's family for the loss of their relatives. Scahill, a veteran journalist with a deep knowledge of the military, knew little of the man or an unusual insignia on his uniform. After some digging, though, he learned that McRaven had been appointed in 2008 as the head of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, one of the most secretive--and most elite--arms of the U.S. military.

"Dirty Wars" follows Scahill's investigation of the then-almost unknown JSOC, which takes him from Afghanistan to New York to Yemen to Washington. Scahill interviews former officials with knowledge of the unit's operations who detail how the war in Afghanistan transitioned to one spearheaded by JSOC through targeted killings and strategic, almost surgical attack-and-grab missions. In Yemen, Scahill visits the site of a deadly airstrike, later returning to the country to speak with the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who became the first U.S. citizen to be slated for a targeted killing and to die in the crosshairs of an unmanned drone.

Awlaki becomes an anchor for "Dirty Wars" and the central conflict of Scahill's reporting, especially in light of the fact that by the time of Awlaki's death in September 2011, JSOC's public profile had markedly increased after the dramatic operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan the previous May. How, Scahill asks, could a cleric who had been looked to as a prominent American Muslim voice against terrorism and extremism during his time preaching at a mosque in Fairfax, Virginia turn into a rabid supporter of jihad and the eventual target of an extrajudicial killing by the U.S. government?

In search of the answer to this question, Scahill--and "Dirty Wars" itself--looks to the story of Awlaki's son, Abdulrahman. A U.S. citizen himself, born in Denver, he had sneaked out of his family home in Sana, Yemen, leaving a note to tell his mother he had gone in search of his father. Two weeks after his father's death, Abdulrahman too would be killed by a drone strike, one apparently intended for an Egyptian al-Qaeda member, Ibrahim al-Banna.

Due to incorrect intelligence, the drone instead struck an outdoor cafe where Abdulrahman and several other young men had been eating. As the New York Times later reported, the fallout from the strike became a "public relations disaster" for the Obama administration, especially after unnamed officials said that Abdulrahman was 21 years old. In response, his family released his birth certificate, one that had been issued by the Colorado health department, which revealed his true age. Abdulrahman was 16.

A future where covert is the new normal

For Scahill, Abdulrahman's death points to an American foreign and military policy that has gone off the rails. "He was killed not for who he was," Scahill says towards the end of the film, "but for who he one day might become."

To be fair, that is one man's opinion, one based on Scahill's travels to Yemen and his deep experience reporting on JSOC and the American military. In the end, though, "Dirty Wars" is not, at its core, a movie about apportioning blame, nor is it an academic lecture on the facts and figures of the changing profile of the American military. It is more like an invitation to conversation, or perhaps reflection, one that is made all the more powerful because it is framed through the personal journey of one man.

When presented with the enormous, quasi-unanswerable questions about power, war and justice that "Dirty Wars" posits, any viewer's natural reaction might be to simply disengage from the material. Scahill's tenacity, his refusal to disengage from an issue that is disturbing and morally ambiguous even in the face of personal peril and a lack of cooperation from those in the corridors of power, make his reporting--and his analysis of American politics and policy--so compelling. We are certainly not all brave enough to venture into danger in search of the truth. What we can do, though, is pay close attention to those who are.

As "Dirty Wars" demonstrates, once we allow our eyes to be opened, we may discover that we are very blind indeed.

Sundance Institute To Host 4-Day Summer Film Festival In Los Angeles, AUG. 8-11

Peter Belsito — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:30:00 GMT

Next Weekend, Presented by Sundance Institute will take place Aug. 8-11, 2013 at Sundance Sunset Cinema and additional venues throughout Los Angeles. The event is an extension of the popular NEXT <=> section at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which showcases stylistically adventurous films that take a bold approach to storytelling.

Next Weekend will present four days of screenings, parties and artist programs that celebrate the renegade spirit of independent filmmaking. Over one summer weekend film fans will have the chance to choose from eight yet-to-be-released feature films. There will also be a panel discussion deconstructing how these films get made, a shorts program and the annual ShortsLab: Los Angles, a half-day short filmmaking workshop. Next Weekend will include films that have been featured in the Festival’s NEXT <=> section, as well as new films and films that have premiered elsewhere. Filmmakers, cast and crew will be invited to discuss their work and the creative inspiration driving it.

Next Weekend will kick off with an outdoor screening Aug. 8 at Cinespia at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The weekend-long festival will be headquartered at Sundance Sunset Cinema in West Hollywood Aug. 9-11. On closing night, Aug. 11, the festival will expand to venues across Los Angeles including the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre, Cinefamily, MOCA, and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum.

Robert Redford, President & Founder of Sundance Institute, said, “The best part of independent filmmaking is the freedom to tell your stories your own way, to take risks and not be beholden to convention of any kind. At the core of Next Weekend are artists that are taking risks and pushing boundaries. As such, it’s fitting that Sundance Cinemas will be the home for this festival and these films.”

Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, “The NEXT <=> section at our Festival in Utah, built under the leadership of Festival Director John Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth, showcases films that marry form and content in a way that pushes boundaries and offers fresh perspectives on storytelling. We look forward to celebrating the energy of this work and these artists and to sharing it with a larger community in collaboration with like-minded cultural institutions.”

Films that have premiered in the NEXT <=> section at the Festival, launched in 2010, include Bellflower (Director and screenwriter: Evan Glodell), Compliance (Director and screenwriter: Craig Zobel), Sleepwalk With Me (Director: Mike Birbiglia, Screenwriters: Mike Birbiglia, Ira Glass, Joe Birbiglia, Seth Barrish) and sound of my voice (Director: Zal Batmanglij; Screenwriters: Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling).

For more information about NEXT WEEKEND visit www.sundance.org/next. Programming announcements will be made this summer, and tickets will go on sale at that time. Sundance Institute members will have priority access to tickets and events; to join, visit www.sundance.org/membership.

Sundance Institute

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America.

A Fierce Green Fire Opens in LA March 15th!

Peter Belsito — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:30:00 GMT

This is such an important film by our friend Mark Kitchell. When I first saw this I was shocked at how political and even controversial the environmental movement (to this day) has always been. A brilliant worldwide view and perspective.

Spanning 50 years of grassroots and global activism, this Sundance documentary brings to light the vital stories of the environmental movement where people fought – and succeeded – against enormous odds. From halting dams in the Grand Canyon to fighting toxic waste at Love Canal; from Greenpeace to Chico Mendes; from climate change to the promise of transforming our civilization, A Fierce Green Fire is “nothing less than the history of environmentalism itself.” (Los Angeles Times)

From the Academy Award-nominated director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, Van Jones and Isabel Allende.

Opening March 15 in LA at the Nuart Theater, distributed by First Run Features.