Before we turn our collective attention to a new season of independent film, a handful of releases from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival round out the year. Director Mona Fastvold’s unsettling drama The Sleepwalker, recently picked up by IFC, meditates on several fractured relationships forced to run their course in a secluded Massachusetts mansion, while Amir Bar-Lev’s Happy Valley provokes a far more disturbing variety of distress in its scathing deconstruction of the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State.

Below, check out all of the Sundance-supported films hitting theaters and coming to DVD and Blu-Ray.

In Theaters

Wednesday, November 19

Happy Valley, directed by Amir Bar-Lev

Thursday, November 20

An Illiad, PBS (taped live performance), 10 p.m.

Friday, November 21

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, directed by Ana lily Amirpour

The Sleepwalker, directed by Mona Fastvold

Friday, November 28

The Babadook, directed by Jennifer Kent

DVD & Blu-Ray

Tuesday, November 4

A Most Wanted Man, directed by Anton Corbijn

Tuesday, November 11

This May Be The Last Time, directed by Sterlin Harjo

The Babadook, directed by Jennifer Kent

Happy Christmas, directed by Joe Swanberg 

There seems to be a faction of horror flick aficionados who loathe anything less than gratuitous violence in their films. A caveat for those fans: while this list may not be for you, our prior years’ Haunted Collections do pander to your macabre desires – check them out here and here.

For Halloween this year, we’ve culled our selections strictly from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, which featured a dynamic group of what we’ll call “horror-adjacent” films across various program categories – Competition, Spotlight, and of course the Midnight Section. All of these films are currently available in theaters, On Demand, or for purchase on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Blue Ruin

We’ll kick off with a film from the Spotlight section, which highlights Sundance programmers’ favorite picks from other festivals, and in this case, Cannes. Jeremy Saulnier’s consuming thriller displays his acumen for constructing stark, convincing environments, which he first exhibited as the cinematographer on 2013’s I Used to Be Darker. Blue Ruin adopts a different world, but one equally enveloping and that follows an enigmatic man’s pursuit of vengeance after he learns that his parents’ murderer will son be released from prison. Watch it now.

What We Do In The Shadows

Longtime friends and collaborators Taika Waititi and actor Jermaine Clement – of Eagle vs. Shark and Flight of the Conchords, respectively – reconvene for this peculiar bit of droll humor. The pair has unabashedly christened the film a “vampire mockumentary,” and it delivers on that promise and then some. What We Do In The Shadows chronicles the anything but quotidian lives of Viago (379 years old), Deacon (183 years old), Vladislav (862 years old), and Peter (8,000 years old), a group of vampires who have chosen to share a flat in Wellington, New Zealand. Waititi and Clement share writing, directing, and acting duties in this hilarious corrective to the ubiquitous vampire romances of our day. Watch it now.

Life After Beth

Jeff Baena, writer of 2004 hit I Heart Huckabees, made his directorial debut with Life After Beth, a film that walks a fine line between zombie thriller, madcap comedy, and poignant romance. Naturally, any narrative attempting to fuse those disparate components would need to solicit a cast that could deftly walk those genre lines. For their lead roles, Aubrey Plaza and Dane DeHaan offer a pair of revelatory performances. Beth (Plaza) dies unexpectedly and leaves her boyfriend Zach (DeHaan) miserable and despondent, until she stumbles back into Zach’s life as a mercurial zombie. Watch it now.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night can feel hypnotic in its in ability to lure audiences. The 2014 NEXT section film transports viewers to the film’s fictitious Bad City, a home to debauched drug users and other degenerates where a subdued vampire stalks the denizens. However improbable, our vampire “Girl,” stunningly portrayed by Sheila Vand, only changes her ways upon being seduced by a debonair romantic named Arash. At the Festival in January, director Ana Lily Amirpour’s indelible choice of words about the film’s anamorphic and black-and-white qualities still ring true: it provokes a “separation from reality.” Indeed, the spacious, shadowy confines of A Girl are among the film’s greatest offerings. In theaters November 21st.

The Babadook

For a film out of the sometimes-overlooked Midnight section, murmurs about The Babadook swept through Park City with surprising energy last January. Perhaps it’s because the film – digesting the trailer alone takes some mental fortitude – is a multilayered and terrifying experience. The narrative is one so unsettling that it surely engenders questions of where the creator’s mind travels to gather such material. That’s a topic for another time, as director Jennifer Kent is brilliant in conveying this hybrid horror/mindbender that sees a mother and son fending off a bogeyman incarnate named Mister Babadook. Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman are a convincing mother-and-son duo in this cerebral effort that will have you questioning what’s real and what’s imagined. In theaters and On-Demand November 28th.

First-time filmmaker Peter Sattler got the inspiration for Camp X-Ray, a gritty drama about soldiers watching over suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, after he watched documentary footage of a guard and a detainee discussing the books on a library cart.

“It was the most surreal, absurd interchange I’ve ever seen in my life,” Sattler told the audience at the film’s Sundance Film Festival premiere last January. “I saw this vision of a two-hander, one room-type of movie where these two characters just talk. I wondered what they’d talk about. To me, it was a cool way to address Guantanamo Bay indirectly.”

The writer/director said he didn’t want to make a propaganda movie. Yet Camp X-Ray is often sympathetic to the plight of the prisoners, specifically Ali, an innocent detainee, played by Peyman Moaadi, in the film’s strongest performance. Ali is watched over by a female guard named Amy (Kristen Stewart), who begins to question the abusive treatment of detainees at the camp. After some Hannibal Lecter-Clarice Starling-style banter, the two form an unlikely friendship over, you guessed it, the selection of reading material at the controversial U.S. prison camp.

Moaadi, a gifted, charismatic actor known to movie audiences for his searing work in 2011’s A Separation, discussed the preparation he underwent to play Ali, saying he spent many hours alone in his prison cell. “They only let me out to come here today,” he joked.

Stewart’s pouty sullenness has often characterized previous performances, but it serves her well here. The actress, also on hand for the Q&A, told the audience it was important for her to figure out exactly who her sometimes inscrutable character was so she spent hours watching numerous documentaries about the subject matter, which depicted “both sides of the coin.” Stewart revealed that she also trained for several days with a “really awesome Marine named JB who…whipped me into shape.”

Stewart effectively de-glammed herself to play Amy and Sattler added that just getting Stewart into the uniform resulted in a huge transformation in his star. Sattler said he initially intended for Stewart’s character to be male, but he changed to a female protagonist to create more conflict between the two main characters.

Camp X-Ray opens in theaters and is available On Demand Friday, October 17. Click here to find a screening.

Five award winners from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival make their way to theaters this October, led by the Grand Jury Prize winner Whiplash, starring Miles Teller as a tenacious drum virtuoso training under the tutelage of a notoriously demanding mentor in J.K. Simmons. Things are similarly taut on the documentary side with the release of Jesse Moss’ The Overnighters, which intimately tracks the proceedings in an isolated North Dakota town where an oil boom has yielded droves of out-of-staters looking for work.  One local pastor shoulders the burden of the city’s new migrants by converting his church into a dorm and counseling center, until word gets out that sex offenders are among the church’s denizens.

Other highlights this month include William H. Macy’s directorial debut with Rudderless, and Kristen Stewart’s stint at Guantanamo Bay in Camp X-Ray. Check out all of this month’s Sundance-supported films below.

Friday, October 3

Fishing Without Nets, directed by Cutter Hodierne

Web Junkie, directed by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia

Friday, October 10

The Overnighters, directed by Jesse Moss

Whiplash, directed by Damien Chazelle

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, directed by Tommy Wirkola

Friday, October 17

Camp X-Ray, directed by Peter Sattler

Dear White People, directed by Justin Simien

Rudderless, directed by William H. Macy

Watchers of the Sky, directed by Edet Belzberg

Listen Up Philip, directed by Alex Ross Perry

Friday, October 24

Low Down, directed by Jeff Preiss

Laggies, directed by Lynn Shelton

White Bird in a Blizzard, directed by Gregg Araki

There is a discouraging paradox that exists in today’s climate of connectivity. While we are ostensibly more connected than ever, we are perhaps becoming more socially inept. Lilting, director Hong Khao’s wistful drama starring Ben Whishaw and Cheng Pei-pei, flips that contemporary notion on its head in a poignant study of communication and personal connection.

When a young London man named Kai dies unexpectedly, his boyfriend Richard (Whishaw) is compelled to establish a relationship with Kai’s only living family member, his Cambodian-Chinese mother Junn (Pei-pei), who speaks little English. Junn is overtly intractable and does little to veil her dislike for Richard, who hires a translator to facilitate dialogue in an attempt at healing. The pair slowly develops a rapport, fueled by their mutual yearning for the loss of a loved one.

Hong Khao’s direction is brilliantly stripped down and precise, allowing Whishaw’s and Pei-pei’s performances to shine. Below, he discusses creating an intimate environment on set and how his childhood in the UK informed the film’s narrative.

You’ve talked in the past about how your relationship with language informed the premise for Lilting. Are the communication challenges we see in the film a direct reflection of those you experienced living in the UK?

Language and communication are the main premises for Lilting and it reverberates onto other themes. Some of the events in the film are a version of what I’ve experienced, filtered through a dramatic device. Inevitably there will be certain ideas and details that are from personal experiences, but equally it needs to be shaped and re-worked for it to work. One hopes that in the filtering process the personal nuances can remain, as I think they tend to resonate deeper.

The film relies heavily on brilliant performances from Ben Whishaw and Cheng Pei-pei and this very ethereal relationship that they cultivate. It’s such an elusive chemistry to capture. What was their working relationship like?

The elusiveness you’re talking about is in the premise of the set up. Their characters don’t know one another and are unable to communicate. That in itself presents this dilemma and dramatic dynamic. Their performances are incredible, really vulnerable. And there is strength there too. I find them very mesmerizing to watch.

On a similar note, how much did you deviate from script?

During rehearsal, the script changed here and there. There weren’t any big changes. It was in the editing process that the bigger changes happened. We lost some scenes, shortened others and rearranged them.

There is also a subtle brand of humor that permeates the film. Did you foresee that element in Lilting?

The humor was always there. In a story like this it needs the humor to help give us space to breath. What you get is that one helps to magnify the other, and the emotion resonates a bit more.  

In making such a contemplative drama, how do you avoid overindulging in that intensity? Did you and the team find any respite from the heaviness?

It’s a difficult balance to get right. The shoot was tough for everybody because of the time and budget constraints. I don’t think the subject matter cast a dark shadows over us. If anything the nature of a low budget set made it difficult, in that we can’t get away for one another too easily. Everyone was a real professional and that also made it exciting - it galvanized us.

Seven million people live in Hong Kong, an area that’s just half the size of Rhode Island. The waterfront skyline is a mashup of skyscrapers and mountains. The humidity makes the air heavy and still. Neon lights - whether running along the sides of gigantic buildings or shining in shop windows - are everywhere you look. And so are the people - Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Indian, expat bankers from the Western Hemisphere, and too many others to list. So, when our flight landed with a handful of staff and filmmakers to present the Sundance Film Festival – Hong Kong Selects to “Asia’s World City,” we didn’t know what to expect.

Also unpredictable was the audience response to the program of films, filmmaker discussions, live music, and events. We presented films ranging from Skeleton Twins (with Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader as siblings who share both humor and pain) to Fishing Without Nets (an account of a Somali man who turns to piracy to survive) to The Case Against 8 (the documentary account of  two gay couples appealing California’s Proposition 8 to the Supreme Court). Infinitely Polar Bear, Life After Beth, Wish I Was Here, and God Help the Girl rounded out the eclectic program. And without exception, the theatres were full and the audiences were delighted.

The spirit of the series was evident during a panel discussion that brought Hong Kong filmmakers and film lovers together with the featured filmmakers, Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper, and series manager Bede Chang. What follows is a summary of questions from the audience and paraphrased answers from the filmmakers. And while the words of wisdom shared may have a familiar ring, The Case Against 8 co-director Ryan White acknowledged that friendly reminders are always a good thing. “We should all remind each other of this advice as we go on,” he said. “Even for established filmmakers, it’s too easy to forget!”

What is Your Advice for Getting Started?

Don’t talk yourself out of it. Keep your foot on the gas. Don’t get scared of what you don’t know. –Maya Forbes, Infinitely Polar Bear

The bad news is that it’s going to be harder than you think it’s going to be. The good news is that you can figure it out. –Ben Cotner, The Case Against 8

There is no one way to start. I made a lot of short films that were not very good, actually. Finding a community is really important – finding those people whom you like and respect and you want to work with is a big deal. Build your tag team and embrace the collaborative nature of it...you get to lead and inspire your gang. –Craig Johnson, The Skeleton Twins

Don’t rush too much to make the film – remember that you’re telling a story about people. So much of documentary filmmaking is about managing personal dynamics. Sometimes it’s about knowing when not to film in order to support your subjects through the experience. –Ryan White, The Case Against 8

How Does Casting Affect Your Film?

With a known actor, it’s easier to access financing and you can get your film made. And it’s your job to make other talented people fall in love with your project. Actors are looking for roles with depth and authenticity, and those roles are not as easily found in the studio world. All of this being true, the most important thing is to cast for the character – sometimes the most famous actor is not right for the role. –Maya Forbes, Infinitely Polar Bear

What is the most challenging thing about transitioning from short to feature-length?

Realizing that your job becomes more about inspiring and motivating a bigger group of people around your story. –Cutter Hodierne, Fishing Without Nets

Editing is a much bigger challenge with a feature. –Craig Johnson, Skeleton Twins

We shot for five years and amassed 600 hours of footage. So yes, editing was a challenge. –Ben Cotner, The Case Against 8 

Prior to its premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, The Skeleton Twins had been billed as a non-comedy starring Saturday Night Live vets Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as estranged siblings. As it turns out, this description isn’t quite accurate. While the film is at times a very affecting and penetrating drama, it also contains as many genuine laughs as any “drama” in recent memory. Director Craig Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Black Swan’s Mark Heyman, effortlessly balances the film’s tricky tone.

Hader is a revelation as Milo, a gay, depressed struggling actor and Wiig delivers perhaps her most impressive work as Maggie, a dental hygienist dissatisfied with her marriage to her uncomplicated husband (Luke Wilson, in a fine comic performance). The siblings live on opposite coasts but reconnect after a decade when both contemplate suicide on the same day. The well-honed chemistry between Hader and Wiig comes to a head in what will likely become known as the film’s set piece — Hader’s epic lip-syncing performance set to Starship’s power ballad “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now” in an attempt to reaffirm the bond between the siblings.

Hader, however, wasn’t Johnson’s first choice to play Milo. “We were thinking about some people and I must say, Bill wasn’t on my initial radar,” the director revealed during the Q&A after the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January. Johnson said it was casting director Avy Kaufman who suggested the comic after she was impressed by a dramatic reading opposite Kate Winslet.

Johnson said he and Hader met at a bar for a drink and soon realized they were both big movie nerds. “We kind of geeked out a little talking about directors, and I kind of had this idea that Milo is a little bit more of a nerd,” he explained. “Then I thought, ‘We’ve found our nerd.’” The Skeleton Twins hits theaters this Friday, September 12. Click here for tickets and showtimes.

Maryam al-Khawaja, the notable Bahraini human rights defender and subject of We Are the Giant (2014 SFF), was arrested August 30 upon her arrival in Manama, Bahrain, on charges of assaulting a police officer – which she refutes – and other alleged crimes related to her work in human rights. Maryam was returning to see her ailing father and longtime activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is currently on a hunger strike while serving a lifetime sentence for charges stemming from human rights demonstrations in 2011.

Maryam is a dual Bahraini-Danish national, but her Bahraini citizenship has now been stripped, and she is being held in jail for seven days as the government builds a case against her. Now, the film team behind We Are the Giant is soliciting help in spreading awareness around Maryam’s arrest with the goal of pressuring the Bahraini government into her release.

The scene is not dissimilar from the one that played out during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where Maryam’s presence with We Are the Giant in Park City, Utah, provided impetus for the release of her sister Zainab, who served much of last year in Isa Town Detention – where Maryam is currently held ­– for peacefully standing her ground against riot police.

Please join us in standing behind Maryam by signing an online petition asking for her release.

“There are two kinds of heroes. There are heroes who preach, and there are heroes who do. They are the people who don’t ask you to go and stand in the front lines; they do it themselves.” –Maryam al-Khawaja

#FreeMaryam

As we collectively lament the closing days of summer, a handful of new releases help usher in a promising fall season for indie film. The ever-enigmatic singer-songwriter Willis Earl Beal offers a captivating portrayal of a musician caught in the trap of creative inertia in Memphis, and Belle & Sebastian front man Stuart Murdoch officially makes his foray into filmmaking with the pensive musical drama God Help The Girl. Bringing some levity to the month's releases – though still sharp and thoughtful – is Craig Johnson's The Skeleton Twins, which tracks the reunion of estranged twins expertly played by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Below, check out all of the Sundance-supported films hitting theaters this month.

Friday, September 5

Memphis, directed by Tim Sutton

God Help the Girl, directed by Stuart Murdoch

No No: A Dockumentary, directed by Jeffrey Radice

Wetlands, directed by David Wnendt and Guy Edoin

Friday, September 12

The Skeleton Twins, directed by Craig Johnson

The Green Prince, directed by Nadav Schirman

Friday, September 19

20,000 Days On Earth, directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard

Friday, September 26

Lilting, directed by Hong Khaou

DVD & Blu-Ray

Tuesday, September 2

They Came Together

Under the Electric Sky

American Promise

Tuesday, September 9

Fed Up

Ida

God’s Pocket

Tuesday, September 23

The Signal

Very Good Girls

Tuesday, September 30

Cold In July

Ivory Tower

Hellion

Something about the notion of Labor Day has always seemed archaic to me. Then again, the guy who questions a day off is no better than the 7^th grader who reminds the teacher that homework hasn’t been collected – exactly 10 seconds before the bell rings. Thank you, young comrade.

In reality, millions of hardworking Americans, whether toiling away at jobs they resent, tolerate, or unabashedly love, deserve a day of rest. And if you’re feeling especially bad about your current line of work, surely these wretched occupations from the films below will bring some levity to the situation. Because, if nothing else, misery loves company. Happy Labor Day.

American Job

Director Chris Smith’s deftness in depicting man’s idiosyncrasies and other inscrutable character blemishes arrived with 1996’s American Job, the narrative precursor to his better-recognized documentary accomplishments American Movie and The Yes Men. In American Job, we are subjected to the tedium of some of America’s most unappealing jobs through the lens of our aimless protagonist Randy Scott, whose helpless disposition is a wry bit of a humor in and of itself. Smith’s shrewd verite filmmaking further advances the film’s comically humdrum atmosphere, leaving us to intermittently pinch ourselves, just to be sure Randy’s reality is not in fact our own.

Roger and Me

Before he became the most recognizable and polarizing figure in documentary film – and before Detroit became the national punch line for America’s economic woes – Michael Moore was just a man meddling in the country’s innumerable issues, hoping to expose some truth. Ok, so nothing has really changed after all. But in Roger and Me, Moore’s first filmmaking effort, we are privy to the simplicity of the man and his camera. In this particular endeavor, Moore’s obligation is to the thousands of Americans out of their jobs thanks to General Motors. A Flint, Michigan, native himself, Moore returns home with a steadfast – and quite humorous – mission to sit down with the man behind the madness, and the head of GM, Roger Smith.

Dirty Work

There is “dirty work,” and then there is the repugnant, nausea-inducing work that the three singular subjects in Dirty Work manage to pursue as both their profession and passion. At times more probing than perhaps desired, this surprisingly accessible documentary explores the (mostly) unenviable worlds of Darrell, a septic tank pumper, Russ, a bull semen collector, and Bernard, an embalmer. Beneath its unpleasant surface lies not only the reality that “someone’s gotta’ do it,” but that someone may actually be happy to do it. Watch it via Sundance #ArtistServices.

Clerks

It would be criminally remiss to omit the most seminal indie film to explore the torment of menial work. Kevin Smith’s Clerks transcends the cult classic label, achieving something closer to the sacred embodiment of independent filmmaking. This lo-fi, indulgently cheesy trailer from ’94 beats any attempt at a film description.

C.O.G.

Kyle Alvarez’s 2013 Sundance Film Festival selection stars a self-effacing Jonathan Groff as a young man who takes up the obscure, and perhaps marginally idyllic, vocation of an apple picker. Based on a David Sedaris short story, Alvarez’s smartly adapted narrative is suffused with undertones of sexual discovery and religious confusion, set to the bucolic milieu of an apple orchard. At the end of its runtime, the idea of fleeing to farm life doesn’t sound bad at all…

Among the niche genres of filmmaking, documentary shorts’ unheralded treasure trove of filmmaking is as well stocked as any. It’s also fertile terrain for this year’s edition of Shorts Lab L.A., which offers filmmakers the opportunity to participate in an intensive one-day seminar of screenings and discussions with firsthand insight and access into the world of short-form documentary story development, production, and exhibition.

We’ve solicited the expertise of a seasoned roster of documentary filmmakers to speak on-stage about the art of storytelling and how to use style in a non-fiction format. Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel, Waste Land), Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, THIN), Kirby Dick (The Invisible War, This Film Is Not Yet Rated), Rodney Ascher (Room 237), Aj Schnack (We Always Lie To Strangers), and Sundance Institute’s director of the Documentary Film Program Tabitha Jackson will each be on hand for the day of moderated discussions, during which each panel will devote half its time to Q&A sessions with attendees.

If you’ve somehow managed to miss the acclaimed work above, crafted by a veritable who’s who of the contemporary documentary film world, check out their work in the doc short realm below, and join us for Shorts Lab L.A. Saturday, September 13 at Cinefamily. Learn more and purchase tickets here.

kids + money
directed by Lauren Greenfield

The S from Hell
directed by Rodney Ascher

David Hockney In The Now
directed by Lucy Walker

Watch the film for free on Lucy Walker’s website. Also, check out Walker's most recent Oscar-nominated documentary short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, available for rent on iTunes.

To Be Takei opens in theaters and is available on-demand Friday, August 22. This interview was originally published following the world premiere of the film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Click here to find a screening near you.

George Takei is on a mission. With boundless energy, relentless good cheer and a hearty chuckle, he’s been omnipresent in Park City while promoting To Be Takei, Jennifer Kroot’s vibrant portrait of the energetic 76-year-old actor, worshipped around the globe as Star Trek’s helmsman Sulu. The documentary reveals Takei’s childhood, much of it spent in internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II, as well as his later personal struggle as a closeted actor. Takei came out publicly in 2005 and following his marriage to Brad Altman three years later has become a tireless and outspoken activist for LGBT equality. During his numerous press interviews at Sundance, Takei hasn’t missed an opportunity to take jabs at Utah Gov. Gary Herbert over his decision not to recognize same-sex marriage. As his nearly six million Facebook followers will attest, Takei has used his social media presence as a game-changer for issues he advocates in a way few celebrities have. Gov. Herbert, consider yourself warned.

How did you and Brad connect with Jennifer to make the documentary?

George Takei: Jennifer approached us. It turns out she is a Trekkie from way back. She read my autobiography [To The Stars] and observed I had been active in advocacy for civil rights during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s and she was intrigued by the Star Trek popularity so she approached us.

What convinced you to accept her proposition?

We did not know Jennifer from Eve — not Adam, since she’s female. [Laughs] We asked to see her film It Came from Kuchar and found it very impressive. We talked a lot and wanted to make sure her philosophy of life and vision for her project was what we’d want to see. Once we were satisfied that we were kindred and she’s a fine documentarian, we thought the timing of this project coming at us was amazingly prescient because the struggle for equality for the LGBT community was accelerated. To chronicle that arc would be not only important but, certainly for us, personally gratifying. Also another project we’d started to develop, Allegiance, a musical about the internment of Japanese-Americans, was starting up then and this was a chance to record that process — they’re both about social justice — so we agreed to do it.

Were there any other objectives you had in making the film?

We were hoping we’d have Allegiance opening on Broadway by this time but alas there have been difficulty getting it into the right theater so it will be opening later this year. We had what we call the royal premiere in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre. So we did what we set out to do. Jennifer accomplished it brilliantly with humor and the seriousness of the subject balanced. The humor is organic — it’s not telling you a joke — it’s in the identifiability of our relationship.

I agree and despite your celebrity status, you and Brad come across as a very relatable couple. Did you have conversations about how much access you’d allow into your personal lives?

That’s the very thing we wanted to display — the normality of our relationship. It’s not too much unlike the rest of America’s. We have our little squabbles and we have our working together in concert. We are partners in career as well as in personal life so our life together is an open book. Sometimes there’s boringness, but sometimes there’s the craziness of an actor’s life that’s shoe-horned into a normal life.

You saw the final cut of the film for the first time at the premiere here on Saturday. What was the experience like watching your life play out in front of an audience?

That was really special. Seeing it together is a communal experience and to get the laughs where we expected to see them and to get the gasps or tears and sobs, it’s so gratifying that we’re connecting with the community that’s gathered into the theater. And for our opening here in Utah it was an amazing confluence of forces because the film is about the struggle for equality for the LGBT community and we were delighted when it was accepted into Sundance because we’d be opening in a marriage equality state but then things started to happen and it is reflecting the importance of the message of this film. Sundance is a prestigious festival in a state where the struggle for equality is really coming to a head with this governor Gary Herbert and his resistance.

You’ve been very vocal in speaking out against Gov. Herbert.

I use a Star Trek phrase: “Resistance is futile.” [Marriage equality] is certainly going to become not only the rule of the land but also of Utah. Right now we have a divided nation. 17 states have marriage equality, plus two states that are question marks — Utah and Oklahoma. Oklahoma is waiting to see how it goes here so Utah is pivotal to the equality movement. So the fact that the film is opening here at this prestigious festival in Utah with that issue coming to a head right now with this governor, it’s like George Wallace did half a century ago trying to deny little black children a quality education. In a short eleven-day period, 1,300 couples seized that opportunity and got married — that’s 2,600 citizens of Utah. There’s that hunger for it here. The governor of the state has to be the governor for all the citizens of that state, but he consciously and willfully inflicted damage on 2,600 people of his state for no good reason. When they appealed it to the Supreme Court the argument they put up was heterosexual couples raised better children than gay or lesbian couples. Well that’s been clearly proven wrong so it’s going to happen in Utah whether he likes it or not. Resistance is futile. [Laughs]

When you came out publicly in 2005, did you have any idea you’d become such a prominent poster boy for LGBT equality?

That would have required me to be a prophet. You know actors have egos so I’ll say, “Yes, I knew.” [Laughs]

While we’re on the subject, there has been a lot of press recently about whether closeted politicians who have antigay voting records should be outed. What’s your opinion on this?

I don’t believe in outing people because there are individual situations, but politicians who have taken a position contrary to what they really are they need to be called to task. You know it’s like when you’re training a dog to be housebroken you push his nose to the accident he’s committed. A politician who has been hypocritical and dishonest has no place in public service and they need to be called to task.

One of the most entertaining elements in your documentary is your alleged long-running feud with your Star Trek costar William Shatner. It makes for good copy, but since he agreed to be interviewed in the film, I had to wonder if the rivalry is real.

[Laughs] Bill is a difficult person to work with. My feelings toward Bill are shared by every actor in our cast. However, we have worked together all these years so we need to have some kind of modus operandi and we have one. We’re still doing Star Trek conventions together so when I see him, I say, “Hi Bill, How are you?” He says, “Fine, George, how are you?” So we have a working relationship.

Yet Leonard Nimoy comes across as a good friend and a true straight ally in your film.

He’s very much like Spock. He’s a rational guy and a problem solver. I was given an award by the Human Rights Campaign and they asked Leonard to present it to me. The awards were handed out in San Francisco so he flew his own plane and came with his wife just to present that award and then flew right back. He’s a good friend. Walter [Koenig, Star Trek’s Chekov] was the best man in our wedding and Nichelle [Nichols, who played Uhura] was, well, the usual term is the matron of honor, but she was not comfortable playing the part of a matron so she asked if Walter can be the best man, why can’t I be the best lady? And we certainly agreed with it. She is the best lady.

You have such a lively social media presence. Why is it important to be so accessible to your fans?

One of the great rewards can be counted in dollars and cents. As I said we were developing this musical and we got the Old Globe Theater in San Diego to produce it, but we wanted a larger orchestra for the dimension of the sound. We had investors, but that would have stretched the budget too much so we decided to go on Indiegogo and do crowd funding. We told them the reward would be a happy dance if we reached the goal. We not only reached our goal of $50,000, but we got $158,000. So my happy dance was genuinely happy.

Editor's Note: This story was originally published January 23, 2014, following the world premieres of "The One I Love" and "Listen Up Philip" at the Sundance Film Festival. "The One I Love" makes its theatrical release Friday, August 22. 

Though she’s too experienced and celebrated to be considered a Sundance discovery, Elisabeth Moss is nevertheless turning heads at this year’s Festival. Best known for her work on television—she currently stars as Peggy Olson on AMC’s Mad Men (for which she’s received 5 Emmy nominations since 2009), played Zoey, the President’s daughter on The West Wing, and recently took home a Golden Globe for her work on Jane Campion’s The Top of The Lake—Moss has slowly built up an impressive film resume. After working with the likes of Lawrence Kasdan and Walter Salles in recent years, she arrived in Park City this week with two features that reveal very different, and previously unseen sides of the 31-year-old actress. In Charlie McDowell’s The One I Love, she and Mark Duplass play a couple whose attempts to fix a marriage on the rocks turns surprisingly—and meaningfully—surreal. And in Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip, she plays a New York photographer whose impatience with her misanthropic boyfriend leads her to forge a life on her own. Both roles are a far cry from the steely professionalism and vintage coiffure of Peggy Olson, exposing an impressive physical and emotional range—in one particularly devastating 45-second shot in Listen Up Philip, she registers at least half a dozen distinct emotions—and establishing Moss as a performer who’s not only adept at exhuming the nascent feminism of Madison Avenue in the 60s, but also at assuming any number of faces of today. In advance of her visit to Park City, we talked to Elisabeth Moss about working with directors of different styles, the importance of costuming, and getting into the nitty-gritty of contemporary relationships.  

Was last year your first visit to Sundance?

Moss: Last year was my first time at the Festival, with Top of the Lake. But when I was 18, I was actor in the Sundance Directors Lab, and then when I did the Larry Kasdan film [Darling Companion], it filmed in Park City. I got to know Park city without the Festival being there, which was very cool. I got to know the bars and restaurants, and where to buy toothpaste—I know where the Starbucks is. I had a car, and no one was there, it was winter. Last year we did press in the hotel that I lived in when I was making the movie, and I was like, “Where are all these people coming from? Why are all these people here in my hotel?” But it’s just a different experience. I do feel grateful that I got to see not only Park City without all of the hoopla, but that my first introduction to Sundance was actually staying there [at the resort], seeing movies in a screening room and eating in a cafeteria, which is how it was started—curating films and supporting filmmakers. 

Who did you work with when you were at the Labs? 

I was actually with Vincent Kartheiser. That’s how I met Vinnie. I can’t remember if we played brother and sister or boyfriend and girlfriend—which is very fitting. 

Since you’re always working with new directors in television, are you more adept than others at adapting to different directors on film projects?

I would say that’s actually a very astute observation. Now, on Mad Men we have a smaller group of directors that we rotate among, but it can still be 10 different directors for a season. In the beginning we would have 13 different directors, and people would come in and we’d never have met them before, and we would have to work with them. Then on The West Wing I had 7 years of that. I like directors so I tend to get along with them pretty much 99% of the time. I think that definitely comes from having the opportunity to work with different people. Directors are different—they can be wildly different. You develop this skill at being able to listen to a director and also retain your own sense of what you want to do, and to communicate that to the director. 

Has it made you more self-reliant? 

I suppose yes, but for me that kind of self-awareness comes from working more, and working with different people. You do have a self-awareness that grows, of what you need and what doesn’t works for you. But any good director will ask you before you start—what do you want, what do you need, what do you not like? And you get that out of the way. Just try not to insult me, you know? Don’t be mean. But I like working with different people. And I don’t have a preference necessarily for a director who meddles too much or not enough. I like when a director is extremely collaborative and helps you on every scene and gives you notes, and I also like when they just let you do your thing. 

Let’s talk about your two Sundance directors, Alex Ross Perry and Charlie McDowell. Judging from their films and reputations, it’s hard to imagine that they’re anything alike. 

You are 100% correct. In fact, I knew that they were going to meet at a Sundance directors mixer, and I really can’t wait for that to happen. To just be there and document it in some way. Because they are very different. 

How do their personalities come through in terms of working with them?

Well they’re both very collaborative. Both are willing to listen. For me it’s the mark of a good director. You can work with first-time directors that are extremely specific and they know exactly what they want, and then you go work with a very seasoned filmmaker like Jane Campion, and those kinds of people are the first to admit that they don’t know—they’re willing to say I’m not sure, let’s try that, I don’t necessarily know the answer to your question. I got that from both of them, which was really good. Charlie had that kind of confidence, which was really surprising for a first-time filmmaker—and I don’t mean confidence in knowing exactly what I want and how I want you to do it, I mean collaborative confidence. And as different as Alex is, personality-wise and personally, he was also really willing to collaborate, really willing to try it this way or that way. He was a really big fan of letting the camera roll and seeing what happened. And of being very supportive. It felt that he really liked this movie and really liked the actors in it, and that’s important for an actor. What I liked about Alex is that he’s really specific visually—he’s very well-versed in film. Even if he was willing to let the actors play, he definitely knew what he wanted visually. As an actor you don’t want to sit around waiting for the director to figure out what he wants to shoot. 

Both films involve you being in pretty intense relationships. Was it emotionally or psychologically taxing for you to go from one intensely emotional role to another?

What I like about exploring relationships in film is that I don’t really get to do that. With Mad Men it’s so stylistic, you don’t get to sit down and have relationship conversations. And in Top of the Lake I’m shooting people and getting raped, so it’s not that either. So it was cool to do two very different films with two very different relationships and explore them in different ways cinematically. The One I Love is a very realistic examining of a marriage that isn’t going so well. What I loved about The One I Love is the concept of examining the person you are at the beginning of the relationship [versus] the person you are a few years later. Anyone that’s ever been in a relationship can identify with that, but then cinematically we approached it with a little bit of a twist, which has a bit of a Charlie Kaufman feel. Then with Listen Up Philip, their relationship is so kind of fucked, they’re so not getting along—they’re in a different phase in their relationship than the two in The One I Love. So I got to explore what that relationship is. Where as in The One I Love they’re trying to make it work, to fix it, I felt that in Listen Up Philip it was more about Ashley’s journey away from the relationship, and about when you decide that you’re maybe not going to make it work. When you decide that it’s not worth it. It was very different for me to get into the everyday nitty-gritty of relationships. 

I’m interested in the way POV shifts in Listen Up Phillip. Is where you are in the script affect at all how you approach your character? Or are you always in the POV of your character?

As a viewer and a fan of movies, I really liked that, that angle, that it was a triptych. You think it’s going to be all from Philip’s POV and then it veers off into a different track and you get her POV, then it goes back to Philip, and I thought that was a nice move there by Alex. But yeah, I always approach it from my character’s POV. We did a lot of talking before we started filming—just me, Jason and Alex. And most of that talking had nothing to do with Ashley and Philip, and was just us sharing our personal relationship stories. It was really cool, because we didn’t sit down necessarily and go, that’s what this scene is about—we talked about our own stories, we just got to know each other, and it did inform the story of their relationship. 

Both of these films are set in the present days, and you’re a blonde in both of them, you’re wearing tank tops and jeans. Which is very different from the dresses and coiffures of Mad Men. Does costuming help you get into your characters?

Absolutely. We finished Mad Men, and I started The One I Love two days later, and in that time I died my hair blonde from brunette. I just wanted it to be different from Peggy for the viewer. I wanted to be able to help them a little bit in imagining that I might be a different person. I don’t know if it has to do with being a girl or not, but to me costuming is really important. It was important to have the two films be different in the way I looked, even though I was still blonde and they’re both contemporary. You have just a few minutes really to create a new character and convince an audience that you’re this different person, and hopefully you do that 75 or 80% with your acting, but it certainly helps if you can also create it with the costumes and hair and makeup. Especially for The One I Love, the costumes were really instrumental in creating a big part of that story. And for Listen Up Philip it was interesting to explore it in the sense that you’re sort of normal in a relationship—you dress as you dress—but then when Ashley and Philip break up she kind of goes out and dresses all sexy and tries that on for a second, and that doesn’t work, and then there’s a softening of the character, maybe she dresses a little more pretty, maybe she puts a little more effort into it. It was instrumental for telling that story.

Instrumental especially in contrast to Peggy, who’s central to a show where costuming is almost another character. Costuming always matters, but I can imagine that it might matter to you even more than it matters to us, because it’s almost like anti-costuming after Mad Men. 

Top of the Lake was my first really big experience of stylistically and costume-wise leaving Mad Men. It was the first time that I did something on a bigger scale that was modern. In a more superficial sense, it’s really awesome to wear jeans and t-shirts and not have to wear panty hose and dresses. But then also, with Mad Men, our costume designer is an incredible visionary, and [costuming] is very much also under the direction of Matt [Weiner]. You don’t get a whole lot of input. So it was cool to go into these movies and have so much say not only about the costumes, but everything. To have this collaborative experience where I could change lines and improvise, especially on The One I Love. To flex some different muscles.

“I’ve jokingly said I wasn’t a full-blown nerd, but I was halfway there,” Todd Miller says, only mildly veiling his proclivity for dinosaurs. Lucky for everyone else, Miller’s youthful fascination blends with a display of striking filmmaking in the documentary Dinosaur 13. The film itself employs a tantalizing excavation process, beginning with the 1990 discovery of “Sue,” the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found, and later spirals through a mess of legal and political battles that sees the team – led by the doc’s protagonist Peter Larson – behind the discovery stripped of their beloved T-rex. 

After premiering earlier this year at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and then once again for UK audiences at Sundance London, Dinosaur 13 hits theaters and is available on-demand Friday, August 15. Below, director Todd Miller talks of discovering the story of “Sue” through Peter Larson’s heartbreaking memoir and eventually embedding himself in the foreign world of paleontology to make Dinosaur 13.

Is it fair to say that the making of Dinosaur 13 was driven by paleontologist Peter Larson’s book Rex Appeal?

We met a lot of different paleontologists around the country, museum curators, people that orbited in the paleontological world. In reading Peter’s book, and knowing other folks we had met in the industry, he immediately jumped out. He was very gracious with his time, allowed us to see a large part of his collection and a lot of places that were off-limits. He was very forthcoming and a very dynamic personality. That, combined with the story, prompted us to dive into the film.

But the original film was conceived to be something different than Dinosaur 13.

Right. I’ve jokingly said I wasn’t a full-blown nerd, but I was halfway there. I hadn’t even thought about dinosaurs past the age of 10 or 11 years old, so telling this story kind of reconnected me with that love of science when you’re a kid.

The film first screened last January at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Was there anything that caught you off guard when it came to the public’s response to the film?

It’s been an unbelievable response. There were several people who were actually from Chicago. There was an 8-year-old kid with his Mom who was from Chicago and they said, “I’ve seen Sue in the museum a hundred times, and this makes me want to go see it a hundred more times.” Responses like that really validated why we made the film.

The only unanticipated response I really had was involving this schism in the industry between paleontology and the commercial and academic side of fossil collecting. And we just do an overview of it in the film, but I have gotten some feedback from people in the industry and I really would have thought that this film would have mended some of those fences, but it’s really galvanized the controversial aspects of fossil collecting.

The film score plays a huge role in driving this narrative. It feels almost docudrama, but of course it's set to this great archival footage.

Yeah, Matt Morton did the music, who’s literally just one guy working in his basement in Ohio. I’ve known him my whole life. It’s one of the things I’m really proud about, his kind of coming out party. My hope is that the film does really good things for him. Music is a very important aspect for the kind of films I want to make, and Matt and I talk in shorthand because we’ve known each other for so long. I’m in New York, he’s in Ohio, and it’s very easy to go back and forth. But we definitely wanted a sweeping, classical, and more epic score. I think he really delivered on it. 

If Day 3 at Sundance NEXT FEST heralded the vigor of independent film, Sunday’s closing events celebrated the arrival of an assured new female filmmaking voice. Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night played like the satiating denouement to the four-day festival, transporting audiences to the film’s fictitious Bad City, a home to debauched drug users and other degenerates where a subdued vampire stalks the denizens. However improbable, our vampire “Girl,” stunningly portrayed by Sheila Vand, only changes her ways upon being seduced by a debonair romantic named Arash.

Director of @AGirlWalksHome, @Lilyinapad with producer @woodelijah and cast at #Sundance #NEXTFEST! pic.twitter.com/mNvTUCtA6U

— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) August 11, 2014

Amirpour, a wonderful presence in her own right, has talked about her decision to make the film anamorphic and black-and-white, explaining that it provokes a “separation from reality.” Indeed, the spacious, shadowy confines of A Girl is among the film’s greatest offerings.

Following the screening, Los Angeles-based indie rock band Warpaint performed for a standing room of moviegoers. The all-female band led a sonically charged set of their unique brand of rock that vacillates between brooding rhythm guitars, meditative synchronized vocals, and upbeat psych rock. Not unlike the previous night’s west coast hip-hop homecoming, Warpaint’s rapport with the local crowd was palpable, as they managed to transform the grand screening room into a communal jam session.

What an amazing way to end #Sundance #NEXTFEST! @_warpaint is rockin' out after the screening of @AGirlWalksHome! pic.twitter.com/EF3WFmLzK6

— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) August 11, 2014

Check out some highlights from yesterday’s happenings, including a screening of The Guest and a conversation with director Nicolas Winding Refn earlier in the day.

Vitality reigned at Day 3 of Sundance NEXT FEST. If skeptics needed a testament to the health and diversity of independent film, last night’s display was it, as stories from disparate communities throughout the country hit the screen.

First up was David and Nathan Zellner’s beautifully paced drama Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, which follows a young woman (Rinko Kikuchi) who ditches the austerity of Japanese work life and treks to Minnesota to discover the buried loot from the film Fargo. The Sundance vets and filmmaking brothers fleshed out the narrative after coming across a 2001 news story describing a Japanese woman on an intercontinental expedition to uncover a treasure in Minnesota. The film pays homage to classic adventure tales, but perhaps through a more pensive lens. On hand for a conversation with the Zellners following the screening was film luminary Werner Herzog, whose sharp wit suffused the 1,600-seat Theatre at Ace Hotel. Here’s what was overheard:

Werner Herzog: “I want to thank you for inviting me here. This was a complete blind date. But it has been very rewarding. It’s very moving, a very deep and touching film.”

Herzog on the discovery of the story and the fabricated elements that the Internet contributed: “This was an internet invention. There is a certain beauty about the Internet because there are very, very few true things… I’m not that much on the Internet, but I’m aware that in my case there are a variety of doppelgangers out there – a community of fictitious Herzogs,” he said to audience laughter. “This is all fine because they are like body guards whom I don’t have to pay for.”

On choosing to depict real-life stories as narrative or documentary films: “In Grizzly Man I made a choice. It should not be a documentary of the regular kind. It should contain inventions. In your case, it was the absolutely right decision to do the film as you did it. It wouldn’t make a good story as a documentary. The real film is about solitude… solitude in society that can become frozen over. It’s about cold. About frozen. About loneliness.”

Next up was Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philp, starring Jason Schwartzman as a young novelist with a grave case of misanthropy, and his frustrated girlfriend’s (Elisabeth Moss) adjacent existence. Perry’s brand of cynicism is remarkably endearing and it permeates his intimate comedy, which concluded with a discussion between the director, Schwartzman, and novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho). Some takeaways from the evening:

Perry on Bret Easton Ellis’ influence: “I was a stupid teenager. When I was a sophomore in high school I probably hadn’t read a book for fun since I was like 9 years old. In my sophomore year I read American Psycho and it blew my mind.”

Bret Easton Ellis on the novelistic elements in the films: “It’s kind of a fusion between a film and a novel, because when you think it’s going one way, that we’re going to be following Philip the entire time, and then suddenly it become focused on the Moss character. In that way it’s very unique... It is a movie, and it seems that the character that Jason plays is sort of a composite of a lot of frustrated writers. It felt real to me – the writer that commits suicide, the way you handled the publishing scene.”

Ellis on the notion of ‘the miserable writer’: “Watching a movie where a filmmaker is fearless enough to put this character in the center of a movie… I start looking beyond the surface of their behavior and start to wonder why they are the way they are. Yes, Philip’s behavior is unbearable in the first 20 minutes or so, but I ended up having some kind of empathy for [Jason’s character]. Sure there are authors that bad, but a lot of writers I know are very solitary people and they just write all day. I don’t’ know if the kind of behavior depicted in the movie is widespread in the writing community.”

Capping the night was the equivalent of a west coast triumvirate, led by Khalil Joseph’s Kendrick Lamar-commissioned short film m.A.A.d, a part-elegiac, part-raucous ode to Compton, California, set to an array of Kendrick Lamar tunes. But the feature performance came in the form of Malik Vitthal’s Imperial Dreams, an incisive portrait of a young writer returning to Watts, Los Angeles after a 28-month stint in prison. The film took home the NEXT Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and firmly placed the talented young actor John Boyega on audience’s radars.

Of course, the night wouldn’t be complete without a live performance from one of Los Angeles’ own, and sultry R&B singer and dancer Tinashe perfectly fit the bill. The refreshing young hip-hop talent performed a number of hits from her early mixtape work as well as her debut single “2 On,” which has forcefully climbed its way to ‘Top 40’ charts across the country since its January unveiling.

Tonight, the final day of NEXT FEST wraps up with a double bill from A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and LA-based band Warpaint, who will perfrom a set of their expansive rock, including hits from their latest self-titled album that Rolling Stone has described as the perfect soundtrack to a “moonlit dance party.”

Last night’s Sundance NEXT FEST opener at the Theatre at Ace Hotel felt more like a reunion of old pals than a glitzy Los Angeles premiere. Perhaps that’s what you get when Aubrey Plaza and Father John Misty take the helm as your unofficial co-hosts. The versatile pair was on hand for the Los Angeles premiere of Plaza’s zombie romance Life After Beth and a post-screening performance from indie crooner – and all-around droll entertainer – Father John Misty.

Director of Programming Trevor Groth shared a curt note about the conception of the festival before handing the night off. “We wanted to do something very different in terms of our programming. We wanted to pair films with music as a double bill, and tonight you are in for a real treat.” Director Jeff Baena then introduced his phenomenal cast, made up of Plaza, Dane DeHaan, Molly Shannon, and Matthew Gray Gubler, before dimming the lights for his part-zombie thriller, part-poignant romance.

After rolling the credits, Plaza entered back on stage to introduce her longtime pal, occasional collaborator, and inscrutable musician Father John Misty. “The person I’m about to bring on stage is a very dear friend of mine, and [creator of] one of the only music videos I’ve ever performed in. He’s a magical wizard from another dimension,” quipped Plaza, as her companion twirled his way on stage, indulging the actress’s mystic description. “His name is Josh Tillman, but tonight he’s Father John Misty.”

Often noted for his eccentric but invigorated performances, Father John Misty took on the less familiar task of performing without a backing band, and instead stationing himself under a lone stage-light with a pair of acoustic guitars. Come to find out, he operates quite effectively with the bare necessities. Tillman (as we’ll refer to him for clarity’s sake) barreled through crowd pleasers “I Love You, Honey Bear” and “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” the latter for which he casted Plaza as a deranged young woman in the music video – and a role not entirely different from her unstable character in Life After Beth­. But the brilliance of Tillman rests in his acumen as an entertainer – a talented singer and songwriter, yes, but also a performer with sharp enough wit to insert one-liners and extemporize throughout his set.

Tillman riffed on the ornate confines of the Theatre at Ace Hotel – a stunning renovation of the United Artists Theatre originally opened in the 1920s –joking that he had expected “exposed walls” and “a typewriter under every seat.” He continued, “but this is a pretty classy place.”

A pretty classy place, indeed, and the talent wasn’t too shabby either. Screenings and performances continue through Sunday, August 10. Click here for tickets and additional information.

The Sundance Film Festival is headed east. No, that doesn't mean the Festival will be departing its snow globe-like wonderland in Park City. Instead, Sundance Institute and The Metroplex will present Sundance Film Festival – Hong Kong Selects, a screening series of new American independent films accompanied by a delegation of filmmakers and Festival organizers from September 19 to 28, 2014, at the newly opened cineplex in Kowloon Bay in Hong Kong. The new series will screen eight films direct from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

We chatted with Festival Director John Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth about the continued growth of Sundance Institute's public programming, the challenges of programming films for a culture disparate from what they're used to, and perhaps where we can see Sundance going next. 

We’re seeing a trend develop with Sundance Institute’s public programming outside of Park City – Sundance London, Sundance NEXT FEST in LA, and now Hong Kong. What is the impetus for this movement?

John Cooper: In many ways, the expansion of our programs mirrors how international audiences are increasingly open to exploring American independent films.  For a long time we’ve felt like the quality of work we show has the ability to travel overseas.  In response to that, we’ve been actively looking for new ways to connect our filmmakers to audiences outside the U.S.

Why is Hong Kong the next location?  What do you hope to achieve here?

John Cooper: Hong Kong is a major global capital with a rich cinematic history, which makes it an excellent place for us to promote American independent film.  We also see this as an opportunity to learn more about filmmaking in Hong Kong and how we might be able to support and incorporate that more in our programs. 

How do you program films for a region like Hong Kong, where the culture offers a stark change from the audiences you’re typically showcasing for?

Trevor Groth: We’re looking to show films made with independent perspectives and that demonstrate the type of films we show at the Sundance Film Festival.  For this year, we’re mainly considering films we presented at our most recent Festival in Utah.  We’ll announce the program next month, and we’re excited to host the Hong Kong premieres of these films. 

The atmosphere in Park City is a hallmark of the Sundance Film Festival. How do you recreate or reinvent that vitality in these new festival sites?

Trevor Groth: Park City is a fantastic home for the Sundance Film Festival, and we take its energy and spirit out into the world with us for these other events.  Whether it’s in London, LA or Hong Kong, the focus for us is creating a place for artists and audiences to connect with each other.  What results from that is an increasingly global conversation about these specific films and independent film more broadly.

Where in the world can we expect the Sundance Film Festival to pop up next?

John Cooper: You just never know. We go where we think we can be helpful – like Batman. 

How do we really know that it's Michael Fassbender behind that lollipop-shaped fake head in Frank? Frankly (sorry), the evidence is equivocal – but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Beyond that playfully absurd film that casts Fassbender as a Daft Punk-esque musician (that is to say, full of enigma), August is a breakout month for Sundance films of all shapes and sizes. Fan-favorite and Audience Award winner Dinosaur 13 retains the childlike wonder of our dinosaur-loving days with a tension-filled documentary about the legal battle over the largest T-rex ever discovered, and indie film veterans Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss suffer through the throes of a combusting relationship in The One I Love. 

Check out these and other Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival supported films hitting theatres, coming to DVD, or showing through #ArtistServices this month.

In Theaters

Friday, August 1

Calvary, directed by John Michael McDonagh

Finding Fela, directed by Alex Gibney

Rich Hill, directed by Tracy Droz Tragos & Andrew Droz Palermo

Friday, August 8

The Green Prince, directed by Nadav Schirman

Friday, August 15

Dinosaur 13, directed by Todd Miller

Frank, directed by Lenny Abrahamson

Life After Beth, directed by Jeff Baena (catch it first at NEXT FEST)

The Trip to Italy, directed by Michael Winterbottom

Friday, August 22

The One I Love, directed by Charlie McDowell

Love Is Strange, directed by Ira Sachs

Video On Demand

Friday, August 1

About the Pink Sky, directed by Keiichi Kobayashi

Saturday, August 2 (Netflix Premieres)

The Cold Lands

Troublesome Creek

So Much So Fast

Ed's Next Move

Wave Twisters

Tuesday, August 5

Who Is Dayani Cristal?, directed by Marc Silver

DVD & Blu-Ray

Tuesday, August 5

Ping Pong Summer, directed by Michael Tully

Tuesday, August 12

Locke, directed by Stephen Knight

Tuesday, August 19

Only Lovers Left Alive, directed by Jim Jarmusch

Tuesday, August 26

The Double, directed by Richard Ayoade 

There are meteoric ascents, and then there is Tinashe, whose debut single “2 On” has forcefully climbed its way into ‘Top 40’ charts since its January unveiling. It’s a case of spontaneous buzz that can occasionally draw skepticism, whether warranted or not, from critics and listeners alike. But even if it belies her refreshing charm, Tinashe’s staying – and star– power is self-evident, as is her role as a catalyst in an undefined realm of nouveau R&B.

At the moment, it’s a tall order to make any commute without overhearing a spin of the 21-year-old’s mellifluous R&B single, but it’s her early mixtape work – deftly crafted over the past three years – that heralds a breakout new talent. Now she’s gearing up to release her debut album Aquarius in September, but not before her performance at Sundance NEXT FEST alongside the Los Angeles premiere of Imperial Dreams, starring John Boyega. That event takes place Saturday, August 9, at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, and tickets are on sale now for $25.

We caught up with the do-it-all performer to chat about her acting background, a frenzied first half to 2014, and her upcoming debut album.

Where do the artistic roots begin for you?

Tinashe: Well as far as my heritage goes, my Dad is from Zimbabwe, so that has an influence on who I am. And I feel like growing up in LA has an influence. And as you mentioned, I grew up acting and being in movies – entertaining has always been my focus my whole life.

But you’re originally from Lexington?

I was born there, but I didn’t spend any time there. I left when I was three months old.

So Los Angeles is your home, and sonically speaking, your work embodies a west coast hip-hop feel. How does performing in Los Angeles compare to other places?

Interestingly enough, you’ll get the most hyped crowds in the middle of nowhere because they don’t get concerts that often. In LA, kids can go to shows every night of the week if they want. But, I do love to perform in LA just because it is my hometown. To know that people in my home city want to come see me live, that’s awesome.

Your acting credits are fairly extensive, especially for a 21-year-old who gave up acting years ago. Was music always at the heart of your aspirations?

For me it always seemed like the obvious thing to do. I’ve been acting since I was basically five, so it was about ten years of full-time dedicating to acting. But I always knew that music was my biggest passion – it was always what I wanted to do eventually. So when I felt like I was finally old enough to really start getting into it seriously, I was excited to do that.

On Aquarius, there are some big name collaborations that you’ve mentioned – Clams Casino, Ryan Hemsworth, A$AP Rocky. Talk about the creative liberty you had on your mixtapes, as opposed to the collaborative approach to the album.

At first I think it was definitely a struggle. It wasn’t easy. Like you said, when you’re used to doing everything by yourself, it’s hard to get adjusted to working with other people. I also think at the beginning of the process people weren’t really familiar with who I was as an artist necessarily, and they hadn’t done enough research and they didn’t know that I even had an opinion. To establish myself as a real artist and that I did have an opinion, and to get comfortable in that collaborative environment – it definitely took a few months. It was a learning process. Now I definitely have the hang of it.

What will people be surprised by when they come to a Tinashe show?

It’s important for me that there is a performance element. I feel like, especially in the last few years, people kind of put the performance aspect in the backseat and just focused on singing the songs  – and that’s great. I feel like there’s always a place for that. But for me, I always remember growing up I always wanted to go see shows that inspired me, that made me want to dance, that made me excited. You know, a real show. I try to be able to do that (laughs).

On the theme of NEXT FEST, do you have any all-time favorite films that come to mind?

I think one of my favorite films… I always go back to Into the Wild. It’s one of my favorites, and I don’t why. I always connect with nature, so maybe it’s something about that.

It’s been a huge first half of 2014 for you with the success of “2 On.” Has it felt as sudden as it appears – were you prepared?

I hoped for it, I wanted it to happen. At the beginning, I don’t think I really processed that it was happening. I could tell that I was a lot more busy. Really kind of looking back on everything that happened, and just how different my life is now as opposed to even 6 months ago – it’s almost shocking. It’s amazing.

There are prolific filmmakers–Woody Allen famously cranks out a new movie each year–and then there’s Joe Swanberg, who makes everyone else who has ever stepped behind a camera seem like a slacker. Since 2005, the 32-year-old has directed, written and produced 17 films, often starring in them and in some instances serving as his own cinematographer. Once synonymous with the Mumblecore movement, Swanberg continues to evolve with Happy Christmas, a consistently surprising comedy that reunites him with his Drinking Buddies star Anna Kendrick, here cast against type as an irresponsible, down-on-her-luck young woman, who imposes on her brother (Swanberg) and his wife (Melanie Lynskey), and disrupts their domestic tranquility. Happy Christmas is currently available on VOD and iTunes and makes its theatrical release Friday, July 25.

What inspired the story you tell in Happy Christmas?

Joe Swanberg: My wife and I had a kid and we found ourselves in a situation that probably a lot of young artist couples do. We didn’t have a ton of money to pay for childcare. Because I had projects I was working on that were bringing in money, my wife was spending a lot of time being “a stay at home mom.” I think a lot of artists have a hard time relating to the concept of what that means. There are big identity issues wrapped up in that. That was the starting point. Also we bought a house and my little brother moved to Chicago and lived in our basement for a little while so there’s some autobiographical situation drawn from that too. [Laughs] I just wanted to tell a family Christmas story. For Melanie and Anna’s characters the way you go from being in-laws to sisters, the way you take on your significant other’s family-in-law to where they start to feel like your actual brother or sister.

There are several provocative themes in the film. What sort of conversations do you want to inspire?

I definitely want to open up the conversation for women who are struggling with these issues or moms who are not relating to being a stay at home mom. There’s very little of that out in the world. There’s this guilt I think some people feel. Melanie’s character talks about it in the movie. You love your child and you want to do everything you can for them but you’re also an artist or a person who has her own shit going on. I’m hoping the movie can help people dealing with that will have a way to talk about it. I wouldn’t mind at all if it provokes fights between couples. I’m all for my movies sparking debate between men and women.

This role is a departure for Anna and she’s terrific. You worked with her on last year’s Drinking Buddies and you two have a really relaxed chemistry in the new film. Tell me about your working relationship with her.

She’s so smart and funny and so easy to work with. I feel that she’s still so young and it’s so early in her career that there’s a lot of stuff to play around with. She’s very good at playing these uptight characters, who are very in control of their world so I wanted to push her into playing someone immature and reckless and not so on top of things. That was fun for me and I hope fun for her to do something different.

How did you two first connect?

I first saw her in 50/50. She’d already been nominated for an Oscar, but I’m occasionally so out of touch with the world. I saw that movie and thought Who is that? She’s amazing. When we were casting Drinking Buddies I had the chance to Skype with her and I was so excited to connect with her. It turned out that she knew Andrew Bujalski (director of Computer Chess, which premiered at Sundance in 2013) so she was aware of our little mumblecore world. She was just open to coming and doing a movie like that.

It was inevitable that Anna and Lena Dunham would play best friends in a movie. How did Lena become involved?

Lena and I have known each other for a really long time. She saw a web series that my wife and I made called Young American Bodies. We’ve been corresponding and hanging out for 7 or 8 years now. I was in a web series she did called Tight Shots. I’ve been wanting to put her in something of mine, but I shoot in Chicago and she lives in New York so it never worked out. This was finally a chance to cast her in something. She was so busy with Girls at the time so I feel very grateful that she made space in her schedule to come out and do it.

There are three strong female characters in Happy Christmas. What are some of the challenges in creating them?

I’ve sort of tried to avoid those challenges by writing as little as possible and letting the actresses own their characters. Melanie spoke a lot with my wife with the motherhood questions, but I write scenarios and then the dialogue gets improvised. For me that’s the way of avoiding having a very male voice inform these female characters. I would like to say that what’s great about the characters in the movie is what’s great about Melanie, Anna and Lena. It’s hopefully a way of working and letting their strengths come through.

How closely do you guide the performances? Some of the scenes with Anna, Melanie and Lena have a very naturalistic quality.

If you were to look at the outline we worked from, the final movie is pretty close. It’s all those small things that I don’t feel I’d be confident enough as a writer to come up with sitting by myself at a computer. It’s a way to have all the depth and subtleties come from the actors.

You elicited a remarkable performance from the baby in the film. It was almost as if he was taking direction. How was the experience working with a toddler?

[Laughs] That is my son. It’s always a giant question mark when you’re working with anyone who isn’t a professional actor. I think we caught him at just the right age. He was two when we shot the movie. He was just old enough to be aware of what was going on and understand that we were playing around and there was a camera, but he was also young enough to be pretty oblivious in the sense that he wasn’t always making eye contact with the camera and all that stuff. He was pretty agreeable. I’m pretty lucky because it was about a month later that the terrible twos started and he was saying “no” to everything. We just played with him. We took time for him to get to know Melanie and Anna. We let him play with the sound equipment so he felt very comfortable and familiar with what was happening. Also because of the way I shoot there’s not dialogue in the script and stuff like that, he didn’t have to do multiple takes and do the same thing each time. The best way possible to work with a two-year-old is to just let him be a two-year-old and shoot around that.

You’re incredibly prolific. Where does this energy and passion come from? I think you’re a fine actor but why do you take on the added responsibility of acting in your own films?

[Laughs] I like to do it. There’s the selfish aspect that I think it’s fun. It also makes me a better director. Any acting work I’ve done has contributed to the directing skills I have. It’s a very difficult thing to do. I think acting is a very embarrassing thing to do. You’re put in a very vulnerable position where people are looking at you and expecting you to perform. The more acting work I do the more empathetic and sensitive director I become. I’m hoping that as I get busier with filmmaking I’ll still be able to keep acting.

The budgets on your films have increased over the years. How have the benefits and challenges changed?

Every year I’ve been making films has been a better and better time to be an independent filmmaker. Just like an independent band, you put in the time touring and building an audience and over the course of the years you see the audience grow. I’ve been at it 10 years now so there’s a natural evolution of people being able to find my work. I’m able to work with some really great actors, as well, which helps a lot.

Did you ever feel pigeon-holed by being so synonymous with the mumblecore movement?

It’s been interesting. There was a period of time around 2007 when every single thing was about mumblecore. It’s not just me, but all of the filmmakers associated with it were pretty annoyed by it. Looking back, I feel really lucky that I was so heavily associated with it. It’s really hard to get people to see independent films, especially independent films without famous people in them. In a way the word “mumblecore” kind of became the celebrity and the way for audiences to find stuff. It spawned a bunch of major articles in The New York Times and Rolling Stone. I don’t think I’d be able to make the films I’m making right now if it weren’t for the idea of mumblecore.

Being so prolific, do you already have your next project lined up?

I don’t. This is actually the first time since I started making movies that I don’t know what I’m making next. [Laughs] I’m developing something with Fox Searchlight right now. I’m writing a script for the first time. I’m also reading scripts to see if there’s something someone else has written that I’m drawn to. I’m talking with actors and coming up with things, but I don’t know what I’ll shoot next which is nice, actually. I’m typically finishing one film, starting the next and somewhere in the middle on another one so it’s nice now that everything I’ve made during the last six months will get out into the world. Now whatever I make next I’ll be able to really focus on and I’m ready for that. I’m in a place now where I want to try my hand at one thing at a time.

- - -

Click below to see Joe and actress Melanie Lynskey discussing "Happy Christmas" at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Alex Ross Perry’s brand of misanthropy is remarkably endearing. It also happens to permeate his intimate comedy Listen Up Philip, which screens Saturday, August 9, at the Theatre at Ace Hotel as part of Sundance NEXT FEST.

Perry’s peculiar charm was on full display when he introduced his film Listen Up Philip last January at the Sundance Film Festival. “Well I hope everyone is ready to feel really shitty about humanity,” he said. While it may have been an indelicate introduction, especially for a film that actually has a lot to say about and for humanity—shitty and otherwise—it definitely prepped viewers for the dyspeptic unpleasantness of Philip (Jason Schwartzman), a young novelist whose discontent saturates the first third of the film.

But something unexpected happens as the film progresses—Perry shifts focus from Philip to his frustrated girlfriend, Ashley (Elisabeth Moss), and later to his self-appointed mentor, Ike (Jonathan Pryce), a wizened and embittered superstar writer who serves as both a cautionary tale and a shining beacon for Philip. Though none of the characters come off as especially heroic in this triptych of portraits, the curiosity for and respect of multiple points of view, of lives normally left unseen and unexplored in standard cinematic narratives, is strangely encouraging for humanity.

Immediately following the screening, acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero) will join director Alex Ross Perry and actor Jason Schwartzman for a conversation and Q&A. Click here for tickets.

The Guest + Conversation with Nicolas Winding Refn

Sundance NEXT FEST comes to a close on Sunday, August 10th, but not before one last thrill – quite literally – in the form of director Adam Wingard's The Guest followed by a conversation with acclaimed director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives). The Guest follows a small town family in distress following the loss of their son to the war in Afghanistan. After a mysterious discharged soldier visits the home of his fallen comrade to offer support, a string of deaths prompt questions about their new guest's identity. Click here for tickets. 

There’s not much one can hope to gather from the genre-spanning description for Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. After all, what is a Persian vampire comedy romance – or one better, an Iranian vampire western? Now's your chance to find out. The inscrutable work from Amirpour will be on display once again on Sunday, August 10, at Sundance NEXT FEST. This time, however, the film’s denouement will be marked by a set from Los Angeles-bred indie rock band Warpaint.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night takes place in the desolate, dusty oil town of Bad City, where a young man struggles against a junky dad and a preening pimp, and an unassuming young woman stalks the night as a vigilante vampire. Shot in stunning anamorphic black and white by cinematographer Lyle Vincent, and accompanied by a soundtrack that mixes Iranian and European pop and rock with an operatic, Ennio Morricone-like score, Amirpour’s film evokes everything from Down By Law to Rebel Without a Cause without skipping its own beat.

When asked about her inspiration for the film after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, she cited Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish and Harmony Korine’s Gummo—“for those weird small towns that actually are real, but seem totally not,” she said. And to describe why she chose her film format, she said that black and white gave her “a separation from reality” that fostered some of the more supernatural elements of the story. And also: “Anamorphic makes me just come in my pants.”   

Warpaint

Not to be outdone, Warpaint will take the stage following the closing credits and perform a set of their expansive rock, including hits from their latest self-titled album that Rolling Stone has described as the perfect soundtrack to a “moonlit dance party.” Have a listen below and join us at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles on August 10. Click here for tickets.

Between Jeff Baena’s serpentine zombie romance and Father John Misty’s unruly video for his breakout song “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” it seems Aubrey Plaza can act her way into any adaptation of a deranged young woman.

Both Baena’s dramatic comedy Life After Beth and Father John Misty, in all his paradoxical (part-nihilist, part-shamanistic) allure, will be on showcase at Sundance NEXT FEST for a two-part event. First, we’ll screen the Los Angeles premiere of Life After Beth, which walks the thin line between zombie thriller, madcap comedy, and poignant romance, and stars Plaza and Dane DeHaan in similarly revelatory performances. Immediately after, charismatic performer Father John Misty will take the stage for a solo acoustic set of his sometimes inscrutable, often existential, but always pleasing tunes. Click here for tickets to the screening and performance.

For a more complete breakdown of the film, here’s Director of Programming Trevor Groth’s take on Life After Beth:

“Imitating what Dr. Frankenstein did with his monster, writer/director Jeff Baena assembles disparate parts of his film into a new whole and jolts fresh life into it. By fusing elements of a young love story and a zombie movie, he concocts a wickedly funny and shockingly poignant film. With its killer soundtrack and all-star cast, including Aubrey Plaza, whose distinctive delivery has never been used to greater effect, and Dane DeHaan, who perfectly embodies the suffering of a young man with a broken heart and a rotting girlfriend, Life After Beth will leave you dying to see it again.”

Below, check out our chat with director Jeff Baena prior to the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Father John Misty’s Aubrey Plaza-led music video, and a Spotify selection from the musician’s debut album, Fear Fun. 

Even the most prescient indie film enthusiast couldn’t forecast the spectacle. It was the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and Efren Ramirez – who plays Pedro, the bashful Mexican transfer student running for school president in Napoleon Dynamite – recalls pinning posters up and down Main Street in Park City while dutifully passing out ‘Vote For Pedro’ pins. It’s hardly an exceptional sight at the Festival, but certainly not one indicative of a film that would go on to gross some $45 million in domestic revenue.

While that anecdote is a compelling one, Ramirez reveals below just how astonishing the rise of Napoleon Dynamite came to be. It's shelf life hasn't been so bad either – just this week, a photo of "middle-aged" Napoleon and Pedro made its rounds on the Web. But as they say, from humble beginnings come great things…

Napoleon Dynamite will screen at Hollywood Forever Cemetery Thursday, August 7, to kick off Sundance NEXT FEST. Click here to purchase tickets.

It’s been 10 years since the premiere of Napoleon Dynamite at the Sundance Film Festival. What do you recall most vividly from that experience?

Well I had been acting for a couple of years and I had come to a stand in regards to the business – you go out for a role, you book it, and you do your job. For me that was either a guest-starring role or a recurring role, and I didn’t really understand the whole independent world itself. I just knew that it existed, but I didn’t know how to enter that world and what it meant.  When I ended up getting [the role in] Napoleon Dynamite, one of the reasons why I really enjoyed that project was because it was a lead character role. I’m working with this group of people who had a passion for creating projects. Working with Jared Hess (director), John Heder (Napoleon), Aaron Ruell (Kip), and producer Jeremy Coon, I mean, they had gone to film school together and this is what they were doing.

As I arrived, there was all the snow and all the people and some talk of what new films were going to be there. The idea of having to pass out the ‘Vote for Pedro’ buttons and putting the original poster for Napoleon Dynamite – we would go everywhere up and down Park City and we would post it. And I remember having one jacket, and being like “Eh, it’s the snow, we’ll be out in it for a little bit but mostly indoors.” Oh no. All day and all night we’re passing out buttons going “Oh my god I’m cold. Here, watch my movie.”

What was the energy like at that first screening in Park City?

When the movie was screened for the first time, we were all getting ready, and I could feel Jared and his wife Jerusha (who co-wrote the film) – we were all nervous. I was excited because I didn’t know what the results were going to be. I just knew that they were gonna’ screen a movie, I’m in it, it’s sorta’ funny, and cool, alright, we’re at a film festival. We all sat in the last row back. Fade to black. Screen the picture. You here a chuckle here and there, you hear people start to laugh. And then things just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you start to hear and feel the positive reaction from the audience. I remember all of us looking at each other and going, “Wow, this is kinda’ cool.”

All of a sudden we’re getting bombarded by the press who are asking about Napoleon Dynamite like it was some big mind exploration film. And it really wasn’t. It was a simple story based on Jared’s life and the life that he knows. But it is his way of studying film and telling stories as a director and being able to direct us that made it great.

It’s marked in the film. And I imagine the atmosphere on set being very relaxed and liberated.

When I got to Preston, Idaho, first I go, “This is it?!” We stayed at the only hotel there. When I went to the home base and met up with John Heder, he said “Hey, are you Pedro?” [in a flawless intonation rivaling that of his misfit co-star]. And I thought, hey, maybe this will work. I was afraid of getting fired, because when I started to make choices as Pedro, you’re still wondering if this is exactly what the director wants. And when I met Jared Hess, you could tell that he was very accurate with what kind of story he wanted to tell. He had done a short film called Peluca where there are two characters, Pedro and Gale, and he said, “Watch this film. Go put these two characters together and form Pedro.” And I thought, uh, alright, you want him to be schizophrenic?

There has always been a lot of conversation around the film’s budget. Just how truly independent was Napoleon Dynamite?

We know it’s independent. At some point somebody’s going to say, “Alright, who’s paying for burgers now?” And it was rough. In the second week I found out that [Jared Hess] and his wife were sleeping on the ground while she was pregnant. They were just struggling to make it happen. Sometimes Jared would tell me, “Alright Efren, we only have one take.” And it wasn’t because of time; it was because that was all the film that we had. There weren’t any chances for errors. But he didn’t let us know that while we were shooting. He wanted us to have the freedom to trust each other as actors in the scene. And I fell in love with the group because there was that unity and bond between all of us.

You’ll be there when the film screens at Hollywood Forever Cemetery as part of Sundance NEXT FEST. Do you manage to still enjoy watching?

I’ve never watched the film in my house – it might just be too narcissistic. I’m my worst critic. But the last time I did see it was at the Academy after they did the unveiling of the Napoleon Dynamite statue by 20^th Century Fox. They screened it at the new location they’re still constructing. We did a Q&A, and I remember sitting and watching, and many people in the audience had seen it a billion times, and then there were people who had not seen it yet.  It still remains the same – this is a film you could watch a million times and still find it funny. It’s still a wonderful film. 

“These works are like our children,” says Steve James, surely echoing the sentiment of any filmmaker who’s toiled over their art. “We put so much of ourselves into them, it’s unfathomable to contemplate that they might disappear and be forgotten.” Yet somehow, the prospect still remains that independent films with invaluable cultural or social significance become lost or damaged. 

For that reason, Sundance Institute and the UCLA Film & Television Archive joined forces in 1997 to create the Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA, a groundbreaking archive that exists to protect, preserve, and restore independent work. Now closing in on two decades of existence, the Collection includes more than 1,900 films and homes the likes of Reservoir Dogs, Love & Basketball, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and plenty more. But the Sundance Collection’s most recent conquest came in the form of restoring Steve James’ legendary basketball documentary Hoop Dreams, which screened in all its digitally remastered glory as the Collection screening at the 2014 Festival.

We caught up with James recently to reflect on that gratifying experience, and to ask one simple but often neglected question: Why should filmmakers care about preservation? To boot, Steve James' stunning portrait of Roger Ebert, Life Itself, also happens to open in theaters July 4. 

The last time we spoke, you were telling the story about having to blow up Hoop Dreams at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival because it was shot on video rather than film. Twenty years later, you found yourself showing the digitally remastered version of the film at the 2014 Festival. What was that experience like?

It was poetically apt that the first screening of Hoop Dreams we attended back in 1994 was at the Egyptian Theater. I will never forget that because it was the first time we saw it with an audience, and it began at 10 p.m. at night. We were, to say the least, nervous about how our three-hour documentary would go over with the Festival audience at that hour. It went fine, and afterwards during the Q&A several people in the audience asked what we shot the film on.  The dirty secret back then was to admit that it was shot on video and transferred to film. So on the strict orders of our producers reps, we lied and said it originated on 16MM film. But I’m sure we weren’t convincing because for anyone who knows film, Hoop Dreams would have been the lowest resolution film ever shot. 

Watching the restored master 20 years later in the same Egyptian Theater was a remarkable experience in its own right. That the film has had the staying power to have been restored and shown again was one thing. But the other was just how marvelous the restoration looked.  Peter Gilbert, who shot the film, and I just stared at each other slack-jawed. Saying it exceeded my expectations is an understatement. What I was struck by as I watched is that with this restoration, I felt like I could truly appreciate what a terrific job Peter did as DP. It’s not like I didn’t know that before, but the film looked so beautiful now. I told Peter afterwards, “You really shot the hell out of that film.”

Sometimes filmmakers (and audiences, for that matter) assume that these seminal films will stay safe on their own. In reality, it takes a concerted effort to preserve negatives and prints. Were you ever remiss about preservation; what precautions did you take with Hoop Dreams?

Well, I wouldn’t say we were remiss necessarily. Not consciously so. We had one pristine print of the film which we kept in Kartemquin Films’ storage facility. And Criterion had overseen a new transfer from the video master when they created a DVD. But what we couldn’t do until the restoration is migrate the video master to the changing technology. And the film print (which is a better archival medium) was, of necessity, an inferior looking version of the film that had been blown up from the original 4X3 format to accommodate the 1:85 aspect ratio for theaters. So we did what we knew to do, but it fell well short of ideal.  

On that same note, have you experienced or heard any stories of filmmakers who have no knowledge of where their prints or negatives are? 

I’m one of those filmmakers. I have a clone of the original video master of my 2005 film Reel Paradise, but have no idea where a film print of that film might be because the distributor who released it went out of business. And given the fact that video is not a good archival medium, I worry that there may not be a film print out there still that would be invaluable for that film’s preservation.

For those skeptics, why should preservation be important to every filmmaker?

Preservation should be important to every filmmaker on a personal level because these works are like our children. We put so much of ourselves into them, it’s unfathomable to contemplate that they might disappear and be forgotten. So much of the history of cinema has been lost even when the medium existed exclusively on film. It will only be worse with digital and video if we don’t all make it a priority. One might say, “Well, all the important films will be preserved.” First, that’s not true. Many great films have been rescued from oblivion. How many more haven’t been? 

And then one needs to ask, important to whom? How does one decide that this film is worth preserving and that one isn’t? The history of cinema is full of examples of great films which were not appreciated in their time, and declared classics by subsequent generations. And beyond all that, every filmmaker’s films are a record of their time on this earth and their engagement with art and the human condition. For me, that’s reason enough regardless of how “important” those films become.  

We’re here to help. If your film screened at the Sundance Film Festival or was supported by any of our artist development programs, please help us establish the whereabouts and condition of your original materials and consider depositing them in a proper archive like UCLA along with a print, tape master and access copy. Click here to get started preserving your film!

In January, Festival Director John Cooper called Life Itself “absolutely, positively the easiest film to program.” As declarations go, that one could draw allegations of hyperbole. That is, until you view Steve James’ raw, often difficult-to-watch but nonetheless faithfully directed portrait of legendary critic Roger Ebert, which continues its journey to theaters Friday, July 4. Later this month, Mike Cahill makes his directorial return with another thoughtful and enigmatic drama that skirts the lines of drama and romance, as he reunites with the alluring Brit Marling for I Origins. More hits come in the form of actor/director and prolific Tweeter Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here, and Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making family drama Boyhood. 

In Theatres

Friday, July 4

Life Itself, directed by Steve James

Friday, July 11

Land Ho!, directed by Martha Stephens & Aaron Katz

Boyhood, directed by Richard Linklater

Friday, July 18

I Origins, directed by Mike Cahill

Wish I Was Here, directed by Zach Braff

Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory, directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett

Friday, July 25

Very Good Girls, directed by Naomi Foner

A Most Wanted Man, directed by Anton Corbijn

Happy Christmas, directed by Joe Swanberg

Video On Demand

Tuesday, July 1 

Particle Fever, by Mark Levinson and David Kaplan (iTunes only; other platforms July 15)

Friday, July 11

Battered Bastards of Baseball, directed by Chapman and Maclain Way

DVD and Blu-Ray

Tuesday, July 22

Blue Ruin, directed by Jeremy Saulnier 

Film and music go together like [blank] and [blank]. We’ll leave the platitudes to you. But if you’re stumped, today’s Sundance NEXT FEST program announcement may elicit some ideas.

We’ve just revealed the lineup of films and music acts that will headline the Sundance NEXT FEST summer festival, running August 7-10 in Los Angeles, and headquartered at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles. The festival will pair six Los Angeles film premieres with either a special music act or a conversation that brings together filmmakers with those who inspired them. So, to fill in the blanks above, it’ll go something like this: 

Life After Beth + Father John Misty

Imperial Dreams + Tinashe

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night + Warpaint

Three additional films, including the elegiac Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, the Jason Schwartzman-led Listen Up Philip, and The Guest, will be followed by intimate conversations between the artists involved in each film.

Of course, no proper festival overlooks one other exigency: a kickoff event. That’s why we’ll be getting together the night of Thursday, August 7, to resurrect Napoleon Dynamite at Hollywood Forever Cemetery for a 10^th anniversary screening. Tickets ($15-25) for all events go on sale to Sundance Institute members today and all others tomorrow at sundance.org/next.

For a bit of a closer look behind the curtain of NEXT FEST, we chatted with Festival Director John Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth about what to expect at this summer’s fest. 

Park City is synonymous with the Sundance Film Festival, and that sense of place is a huge part of the Festival experience. Los Angeles is a far cry from that environment. Why is NEXT FEST the right fit for LA, and vice versa?

John Cooper: In the last few years we’ve been actively looking for new ways to support independent artists throughout the year.  And because nearly half our staff lives in LA, we’ve been able to see firsthand how vibrant the cultural community is in LA right now. There seems to be a real, growing momentum behind creativity, which is right in line with what we’ve always done here at Sundance. It felt to us like the perfect time and place for an entirely new and different festival like NEXT FEST.  

This is the second consecutive year that Sundance Institute is hosting a summer film festival in Los Angeles, but it feels like a new iteration. Why have you chosen to expand the program to include music?

John Cooper: Our Founder and President Robert Redford has always encouraged us to consider how different art forms inspire and influence each other, and there’s been recent growth in the crossover between film and music. That encouraged us to create public events that had film and music on equal footing. And when the new Theatre at Ace Hotel opened in January, with incredible space and facilities for both film screenings and musical performances, it all added up to NEXT FEST. 

It’s a compact film program, culled exclusively from the 2014 Festival. What can audiences expect out of this program? 

Trevor Groth: The six films we’re screening at the Theatre at Ace Hotel for NEXT FEST are all from our 2014 Festival and perfectly reflect the bold attitude that the NEXT <=> section of the Sundance Film Festival is known for. The films are pretty wide-ranging in terms of story and styles, but what stands out to me is how remarkable and unique each filmmaker’s vision is.  

It’s also notable how stellar the acting performances are, including Aubrey Plaza’s hilarious turn as an ex-girlfriend who has returned from the dead in Life After Beth, John Boyega’s (who’s now acting in the next Star Wars film) breakout performance in Imperial Dreams, the bitingly funny Jason Schwartzman and Elisabeth Moss in Listen Up Philip , the mesmerizing Rinko Kikuchi in Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, and Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey fame as you’ve never seen him before in The Guest.

How do these musical performances complement the films that they are paired with? What went into those decisions?

Trevor Groth: In selecting the specific pairings, we looked for films and music acts that share a complementary artistic sensibility in terms of tone, personality, energy and style. We think those unique pairings in such a breathtaking theater will enhance the audience experience and create a new breed of festival.

Another important part of any film festival experience is the chance to engage with filmmakers and cast. What kind of conversations and/or Q&As are planned for NEXT FEST?

Trevor Groth: One of the best parts about the Sundance Film Festival are the Q&As where audiences hear directly from the filmmaker about the inspiration for and the creative process that went into making the film. We wanted to build on that idea for NEXT FEST, so three of our films will be followed by extended conversations between the filmmaker and a special guest. We’re designing these to be lively and fun and adventurous, and we’ll have more to share in the weeks ahead.  

Napoleon Dynamite will kick off the weekend with an evening screening with Cinespia at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Why is this film such an important work in the Sundance canon?

John Cooper: Napoleon Dynamite is a film that we have a real connection to. We hosted its world premiere and consider it to be one of our big discoveries. With its 10^th Anniversary this year and it fitting so perfectly into the NEXT ethos, it seemed like the perfect choice for our NEXT FEST kickoff. I think it’s a film that audiences in LA want to see again and again, and we’re going to try to get as many of the cast members there to talk about their experience with the film. Plus, I may try to learn the infamous Napoleon Dynamite dance for that screening, and would you really want to miss that?

Straith Schreder is the Director of Content Strategy, BitTorrent, Inc., which has worked with Drafthouse Films on its BitTorrent Bundle, which Chief Content Officer Matt Mason spoke on at #ArtistServices San Francisco Workshop. Below, Schreder outlines the ways in which Drafthouse Films is an indicator of where independent distribution is headed and highlights five ways that Drafthouse Films gets the new distribution model right. This article was originally published on IndieWire.

2014 started with a referendum on the indie film industry. The New York Times called for an end to overproduction. Salon called independent film America’s next Wal-Mart. The problem with the movies in the digital age, we're increasingly told, is that there are too many of them. 

It sounds like the first-worldy-ist first world problem. But it’s real. Technology has made possible an era of unprecedented abundance when it comes to creative goods. 7,500 films were made last year. The average American will only ever see one hundred of them. And, only 10 of those will be indies. Will oversupply end independent film? 

Well, it’s going change it. It’s basically inevitable that movie distribution in the post-digital age will look different. It’s possible that it might look something like Drafthouse Films. 

Alamo Drafthouse started out in Austin: a single theater, reclaimed. It has since grown up and grown into 19 theaters across the U.S. And it’s also morphed into something wholly different: a predictor, maybe, of what’s to come in indie. From a single cinema storefront, to a cross-country chain, to a distributor: Drafthouse is now home to a catalogue of titles that together make up some of film’s most challenging works. Drafthouse isn’t just surviving digital upheaval. They’re thriving.

How do they make it work? It comes down to five basic (or not-so-basic) things:

1. Run independent film like a record label. Really.

There's a common complaint about Hollywood in the Internet age: studios should be more like startups. It's a good point, when it comes to marketing. It's a bad analogy when it comes to branding. Because you don't have a single product to sell. You have a catalog. 

The better model is outside tech. It's actually in the music industry. Independent record labels are remarkable at creating  specificity and difference around a catalog. Think Stones Throw or Sub Pop. 

Think about Drafthouse:

    •    They’re anchored in a city; a scene.
    •    We feel like we know their staff.
    •    We can kinda picture their art; their offices.
    •    Each project sounds different, but shares a sensibility

A label’s curation isn't algorithmic. It's obvious and human. Because it is, each release functions as an ad for the next. Which is an idea worth stealing. 

2. A successful film company -- a successful film -- is social at its core.

The success of a catalog is closely tied to audience understanding. Drafthouse, as a distributor, isn't made for a demo; males 18-54, or whatever. It's made for a behavior-set: a small tribe of cinephiles and creatively obsessed. 

This specificity gives Drafthouse two key advantages:

    •    It allows them to circumvent big media investments -- they don’t need to carpet-bomb to connect. They can actually find these people on and offline.
    •    It gives them an advocacy network. They don’t need to be upsold. And they have an outsize influence on the conversations that will impact Drafthouse's current and future film catalog. 

In Drafthouse's case, the audience is ID'd before production begins. Then, they become part of the it–engaged from before the first day of shooting. For a film that doesn't have a big marketing budget, the goal is to make potential fans feel like stakeholders. They watch the story unfold before it hits the screen. 

3. Give your film context. 

A film is a perfect, contained universe. And it's more: a life's work, compressed down into under two hours; the start of ten or ten thousand conversations. The stuff that's bigger than what we see on screen: it already exists. You've shot and logged it. You have your campaign. In a world where emotion and in-the-know-ness drive content vitality, context is advertising. 

It's also good business. It doesn't require a significant investment to develop. And it has real value. A recent study by VHX indicated that bonus content packages drive 42% of revenue for digitally distributed films. 

Drafthouse relied on a context-as-advertising strategy to drive awareness for 2013’s The Act of Killing, making the film's research, interviews, and media coverage available to all using BitTorrent. They reached more than 3.5 million people. They spent $0 on creative and media for the campaign. 

4. Find the communities where access to the film has the most impact. 

Drafthouse started out a single theater. Which is a singular way to start. It's also a point of inspiration. Because super-targeted, micro-distribution is part of what made their 2013 campaign for The Act of Killing so effective. 

The film was made available for free in the country impacted by its subject matter: Indonesia. Making it accessible there sparked conversations about the film here -- driving up digital sales in Western markets. 

5. Build a distribution model that amplifies the story behind the film. 

The best part about the shifting distribution landscape is its flexibility. You can choose your own digital theater. You can build your own screen. You can customize it for each viewer. Part of Drafthouse's success can be tied to a distribution approach that's linked to each film's overall story. Within this model, the screen becomes the message: a way of driving and reinforcing understanding. 

Read more about Drafthouse’s BitTorrent experiment here. 

Documentary filmmaker Andrew Rossi is drawn to worlds that at first seem impenetrable. In his previous film, the riveting Page One: Inside the New York Times (which premiered at Sundance in 2011), Rossi obtained a “fly-on the-wall” look at the newspaper industry in a state of transition and turmoil. Now, with his latest documentary Ivory Tower, Rossi departs The Grey Lady’s sanctified headquarters for the hallowed halls of Harvard to find an explanation for the staggering cost faced by Americans in pursuit of higher education.

Upon learning that student loan debt has soared past one trillion dollars, Rossi decided to investigate whether higher education is actually worth the towering tuition charges. Using insightful interviews with entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel and Internet education pioneer Daphne Koller, the filmmaker takes viewers on a revealing and penetrating journey into the world of public and private colleges in crisis. Ivorty Tower opens in theaters Friday, June 13.

What inspired you to take on this particular issue?

Andrew Rossi: For me education in high school and in college and even elementary school was extremely powerful in a positive way. I had teachers my whole life who were mentors and I took advantage of every extracurricular thing I could in the 18 years I was in the educational system. I have a deep respect for American education as an institution. So when I was thinking about a project to do after Page One, which is about the New York Times and more broadly about disruption in the newspaper industry I knew I wanted to do something that is about an institution or sector that is going through a lot of change. It was at the same time that alarm bells were going off about higher education, such as student loan dept exceeding a trillion dollars and questions about what students are actually learning on campus. That just struck me as so contrary to the experience that I had had in my years of college and grad school. This was an opportunity to go on the ground of campuses and see what’s really going on and have that be the foundation for a broader analytical discussion of what is college about, what it does well and doesn’t do well.

Based on your research and what you’ve witnessed, why are university tuitions so exorbitant?

I think there are a lot of factors that have combined to raise tuition rates since the 1970s, but I think the key paradigm shift that has resulted in this is the change in society’s view of education as public good to now being a private good. Thinking about education as way to make more money vs. a way to grow as a person, to experiment, push one’s boundaries and take four years of one’s life to have an experience that can be rewarding in ways one didn’t expect it would be. Higher education has become so instrumentalist and that has driven the view that people should pay for it, that the government shouldn’t be involved in providing grants, and also that schools need to compete with one another as if they were providing a consumer good. They compete with each other as if the student is a consumer versus a young mind which can be shaped through this experience. This has resulted in a cost spiral with institutions trying to have increasingly luxurious residential facilities, student centers, stadiums and research labs that sometimes aren’t worth the amount of money required to build them and they’re required to charge the student for them.

Do you believe Americans have an obligation to assure young people are able to get access to an education?

I believe there’s a very solid argument for that. History shows us when this country has dedicated itself to providing greater access, higher education has resulted in greater positive social change and economic growth. So, yes, I do think this country should be very concerned with providing access to higher education to any one who believes it will be a productive path for them.

Peter Thiel delivers what’s perhaps the most sobering comment in the film. He says Americans who weren’t getting college educations were once seen as the victims, but now students who do get educations are also the victims. Do you agree with this?

I think it’s true that many students believe they can go to college and incur exorbitant amounts of student debt and don’t fully understand the implications of that for their life. Incurring amounts of debt that will cause them to not start a family, choose certain careers over others that they might not be as passionate about and not go through other milestone events in the American dream, such as buying a car, or buying a house because they went to college and became saddled with an untenable amount of debt. In those cases, particularly when they didn’t understand the loan contract they were signing, they really are victims.

Although the film is still very objective, you’re more of a participant here than in your previous documentaries.

When I am interviewing certain subjects you hear my questions. I think the film is still objective, but I felt that by allowing my voice to appear in certain interviews it acted as a surrogate for what the audience might be thinking. In certain cases, administrators from certain schools have a party line that they present when questioned about their specific school or how higher education is evolving in general. Frankly, I wasn’t buying it in certain cases so I wanted to penetrate the wall of spin that certain administrators provide in interviews. I thought it was important to push harder.

What sort of conversation do you want the film to generate?

I hope audiences think about their decision to either go or not go to college and which college they decide to attend in as rigorous a way as possible. The factors they need to weigh are how much debt they’re taking on, what the earning potential they might have in their community, either regionally or nationally with the course of study they’re going to pursue and generally think really hard about the decision to go or not.