Sundance Film Festival | News

The Third Act

2009-10-21T21:51:54+00:00

The Jordanian desert hills, a storybook setting in itself, provides a perfect backdrop for storytellers to gather. The RAWI Middle East Screenwriters Lab took place earlier this month in Jordan. The Lab is an initiative of the Royal Film Commission of Jordan, and is part of Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program. Seven projects from the region are selected to work under the guidance of Creative Advisors to help transform the work of emerging screenwriters. This year's Lab Fellows include Dima Hamdan, Suha Araj, Jacob Kader, Gilles Tarazi, Kasem Kharsa, Haifaa Al Mansour, and Yann-Mounir Demange. Haifaa Al Mansour is the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia and her project "Wajda," follows the story of a young girl who tries to break free of societal obstacles to pursue her own dreams. Haifaa talked about her role as a history maker and storyteller and her plans to revisit the third act of her script following the intensive Lab experience.

Insider: Talk about place. Where did you grow up? What does it mean to be the first female filmmaker from Saudi Arabia?

Al Mansour: I grew up in a small town on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. I don’t want to make it sound like we were totally isolated from the outside world, but we weren’t exactly jet-setting around. All of my young life was centered around our town. The concept of the big world ended at the cities a few hours away.

I always read books and watched films and wanted to be a part of the bigger world though. Saudi Arabia is a country without movie theaters and bans cinema, but my father made film accessible to us and we had family nights where we would all watch films together. I loved films so much, but I never thought I would be a filmmaker, let alone the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia. I’m proud to make history, but my dream is to be known more for the quality of my work. I’m working on honing my skills and hoping to earn the reputation of a filmmaker with passion, vision, and a distinctive style.

Insider: How does this "first female filmmaker" influence your filmmaking and how you tell stories?

Al Mansour: The title carries a lot of political implications, regarding the status of women in the country and all of that. Since I broke a boundary, or at least people believe I did, I hope to live up to that and make memorable films that matter and have an impact on the way people view the world. I aspire to make films that celebrate life and encourage people in my country to be more tolerant. I also want to provide a window for the world to my culture.

Nonetheless, I have no intention of sacrificing the entertainment aspect of storytelling for a political message. I always thought the balance between entertaining the audience and engaging them intellectually is what makes a film stand out.

Insider: How did you arrive at the idea for your screenplay "Wajda"?

Al Mansour: I think the conflict between modernity and the traditional, conservative values in Saudi is a very interesting topic, especially in the emerging youth culture. Putting that in mind, I tried to create a character of a young person who is full of joy, love, and laughter, and who wants to fully embrace life but finds herself dealing with conservative forces that go against all that.

Insider: Talk about your experience at the Screenwriters Lab in Jordan.

Al Mansour: It really helped me see the potential of my script and work through a lot of issues. It sparked a lot of ideas in me and inspired me to work through some of the tougher structural concerns I had, particularly in terms of the tone and pacing of the story.

Before the Lab I knew I had a problem with the structure, as I wasn't able to bring the third act together, particularly in terms of hitting the right dramatic points at the right time. The Advisers confirmed my concerns, and helped me see that the third act didn't fit in with the tone of the overall story. It appeared as a functionality to end the protagonist's struggle. I started to pay attention to the rhythm of my story and came up with an ending that flowed more naturally out of the previous acts.

The Advisers also directed my attention to how the subtext of the script could help me find the tone and add emotional complexity and depth to the plot. It wasn't easy for me to take in all of the advice I received at first. It took me a while to figure out how to show the theme of the story in a subtle and profound way without actually stating it. The Lab helped me see how the subtext is embedded in every detail. Even the characters' actions should be colored by the undercurrent themes to achieve an effective emotional arc. It is hard!

Insider: What was it like working so closely with a group of Middle Eastern filmmakers in Jordan?

Al Mansour: Being set in the Arab world, it made me feel like I’m a part of the new generation of Arab filmmakers that are changing the face of Middle Eastern cinema. Every one of them is full of energy and there is a great sense of excitement. Every one of them has something to say about where they came from and where they are heading to.

The serenity of the surroundings really gave me time to think. Jordan is such a friendly country, and at peace with all its neighbors. It has a sense of calmness and tranquility that’s rarely felt in other Arab countries.

Insider: How are you thinking differently about your screenplay now?

Al Mansour: I’m changing the whole third act! Writing is such an emotionally straining process, because, as a writer, you want to give your characters the lines they deserve and actions that truly reveal who they are. Sometimes a writer is too close to his or her characters and having someone else with experience read it, and point out what is working and what is not, is really priceless.

Insider: What's next for you and your first feature film?

Al Mansour: My plan at the moment is to explore the full potential of the script. I feel like getting a good working draft will be a real milestone. Then I’ll shift my efforts into finalizing co-production deals and moving into pre-production.

Where’s My Film Now?

2009-10-21T21:42:59+00:00

You skipped a week of sleep to fine-tune your film to submit by the deadline. After you've slept, eaten something other than take-out, and rejoined the waking world, you may be wondering what's happened to your film. It's peak time in the film selection process for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, so The Insider lurked into the cave of the Programming office to check the status of your submission.

Insider: What happens when a film is submitted?

Programming: Assuming that the film was registered online and the tracking number is written clearly on both the face of the DVD and on the envelope it was sent in, we sort all films by category (U.S. Narrative Feature, U.S. Documentary Feature, International Narrative Feature, International Documentary Feature, U.S. Short, and International Short), place each disc in our own proprietary sleeve and process them as soon as possible.

Due to the sheer volume of submissions we receive, it can sometimes take more than a week to process all films received on any given deadline, and we ask that all applicants monitor the film's status on Withoutabox to ensure that the DVD was received by us. The only difference between our various deadline dates are the fees-- the review process is the same, but we definitely encourage people to submit as soon as possible and save on application fees in the process.

Insider: What's the craziest excuse you've received for why a submission arrived after the final deadline?

Programming: This year a filmmaker contacted us because they had been editing for five days straight with no sleep in order to get their film in on time, but they tripped and fell in front of the mailbox, smashing the DVD in the process, and then had to go to the hospital. I don't think we really believed the whole story, but the effort warranted us giving them a short extension to get the film to us after the deadline. Hopefully they have made a full recovery!

Insider: What happens if a film doesn't arrive in one piece?

Programming: If a DVD is broken or doesn't play properly, we will contact the applicant to request another copy. Because this process is so time sensitive, we ask that all filmmakers ensure that their DVDs play BEFORE they send them to us, but obviously it's not uncommon for them to get cracked in transit.

Actually, a couple years ago there was a filmmaker who needed some extra time to finish his short so he intentionally sent us a broken disc, but it was so obvious that his DVD had been purposefully stomped on, and it didn't help that he wrote a blog entry about this scheme. We still let him send us a new disc because we're nice people, but please don't try this method to get a few extra days!

Insider: You don't actually watch all of those films, do you?

Programming: Every single film is viewed in its entirety at least once. We take this process very seriously, and although it seems like watching 9,500 films might be an impossibility, we have a very large and dedicated Programming staff who makes it happen. As long as you have paid the submission fees and your disc was received by us in time and in working order, your film will be given the same level of consideration as every other film that was submitted to us.

Insider: Do bribes help? What sort of goodies have you received this year?

Programming: With the economy in the state that its in, starving filmmakers seem a little less inclined to include bribes and other goodies along with their submissions, which is mostly a good thing. The best item we've received this year was a bag of candy corn, which is kind of sad considering that in the past we've received such zany items as a unicycle, a fondue machine, a giant boot that was spray painted gold, and some amazing sneakers that had the word "Hustler" bedazzled all over them. We ask that applicants not send anything other than their DVD, but we do miss the copious amounts of candy we used to get every week (hint, hint).

Insider: When will we know what films are selected?

Programming: All applicants will receive an official notification no later than December 2, 2009.

Insider: Any "trends" in films you're seeing this year?

Programming: There are always recurring, unexpected themes that pop up each year. Last year it was boxing. We had so many documentaries submitted about boxing that it was hard to remember which was which. This year there seems to be an unusually high number of films about the equine species. Although the Chinese Calendar has attributed 2010 as the year of the tiger, we think it's the year of the horse.

Insider: Anything good to know for future applicants?

Programming: Register online before you submit your film, and please remember to write your tracking number on your DVD! Also, we do accept works-in-progress, as long as the film is complete enough for our Programming staff to make an informed decision.

Winding Down From the Pitch

2009-10-07T18:49:10+00:00

Despite Michael Moore's continued box office success, the majority of documentary filmmakers are increasingly challenged to find their audiences. And as resources for production and distribution steadily decrease, the answer for many is found in creative alliances, such as the Good Pitch, a partnership between the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and the UK's Channel Four/Brit Doc Foundation.

Launched at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, the Good Pitch was created in response to what Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Director Cara Mertes sees as a critical need for more and different resources in the sector, and a new focus on audience and impact with long-form documentary storytelling.

For the most recent New York edition with Independent Film Week, eight films in various stages of production and distribution were selected to pitch their plans to invited supporters, including NGOs, foundations, individual donors, and media outlets. Combining all of this year's Good Pitch events, over 1,000 NGO's, foundation, and individual donors have participated, more than 900 films have applied for 24 slots, and almost $1 million dollars worth of new resources have been leveraged.

“Unlike most Hollywood networking gatherings, participants at the Good Pitch are called on to literally put their money where their mouths are, " said Sundance Film Festival Programmer David Courier. Courier attributes part of this unique vibe to the Moderator Jess Search from the Channel4 Foundation. "She leaves no elephants in the room, literally asking funders to cough up the bucks. It’s a win/win for all involved.”

This win was clearly the case for Documentary Lab Fellow and Skoll | Sundance 'Stories of Change' grantee Gayle Ferraro. After three years in production on her film To Catch A Dollar, a portrait of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the launch of the micro-lender Grameen Bank America, Ferraro had the spotlight turned on her. Dr. Yunus, also in town to meet with world leaders and activists at the Clinton Global Initiative and at the UN, made his first public appearance with the film as he introduced the Good Pitch audiences to Ferraro's new work and stayed for Ferraro's pitch.

Gayle talked about this culminating experience as she headed back into the edit room to finish her film for a 2010 release.

Insider: Muhammad Yunus has been promoting micro-finance around the world since the 1970s. How did you meet him and decide to make a film about him?

Ferraro: I met Yunus ten years ago when I was making another film in Bangladesh called Sixteen Decisions (about micro-lending in Bangladesh). The film wasn’t really about him but we met anyway and he really liked that film. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and we happened to meet a few months after that and I broached the subject of making a film. He wasn’t interested!

When he addressed the crowd at the Good Pitch he said, “She made [Sixteen Decisions] and then she started following me!” After a year of “following him," I cut a trailer to show him and he started looking at it in a different way. He agreed to fully participate!

Insider: Yunus is a larger than life figure but he really represents a global movement of people on the ground. Who are the other voices in the film besides Yunus?

Ferraro: There are a lot people working to launch Grameen’s first American branch in Queens, New York. The film highlights Shah Newaz from Bangladesh who’s been working for Yunus for 25 years and is the head of the Queens program and eventually the U.S. program. There is also Alethia, Grameen America’s first employee, who works full-time and goes to school full-time. The film follows the opening of the bank and the lives of the borrowers as well as Yunus’ story.

Yunus’ struggle is convincing people that this can work. He’s often met with, “you gotta be crazy!” He has to raise money to convince the government to give him a banking license to set up savings deposit. It was a creative choice in the film to show how the bank works on the ground and also convey Yunus’ story.

Insider: Micro-finance is a more common lending system outside the United States. What do you hope an American audience will take away from this film?

Ferraro: I hope people leave feeling that we don’t have all the answers. Just because you’ve made some money it doesn’t mean that things are complete. Most people are reevaluating and the film hopefully pushes people to think beyond the current system based solely on collateral. Also, if we tried to build a different kind of community among people who are locked out of financial services it could be a model for the rest of the world and an example that change is possible.

Insider: You’ve followed Yunus to meetings with major world leaders from Nelson Mandela to President Obama. The Good Pitch in New York was the first time Yunus met with the film industry. What does he want filmmakers to know?

Ferraro: He talked about how important it is for filmmakers to be supported. He told them a story about a 60 Minutes piece done in 1987 that followed his team and shot 200 hours of footage for a 14 minute piece. He said they were really getting on his nerves! However, he couldn’t believe how much that one news piece changed things for him and for Grameen.

His message for filmmakers was that it might seem like you’re working forever and you’re not Morley Safer but it so matters that you’re doing this. It’s a powerful thing to hear from a Nobel Laureate.

Q&A: The Yes Men Fix the World

2009-02-25T19:46:59+00:00

They’ve been called everything from heroes to troublemakers and harbingers of false hope – but to those companies of the less scrupulous variety, The Yes Men are quite simply a royal pain in the backside. Riding the success they received as the subjects of an earlier Festival documentary (The Yes Men, 2004), activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno took the reins themselves on The Yes Men Fix the World as the daring duo continued to kerfuffle corporate baddies with well-planned hoaxes and civil disturbances. After the film made its premiere at the Festival, Bichlbaum and Bonanno answered the audience’s questions.

Q: Do you have any outstanding warrants at this time?
Bonanno: No. In fact after the scene where we were taken away, the Canadian police took us away from private security and told them that they couldn’t do anything to us. We did get a trespassing ticket but they threw it out. The crown refused to hear it.

Q: Obviously the press was saying you guys were doing wrong or giving false hope. It should be shown that what you were doing was good and right. What are your plans to get that out there?
Bonanno: We need distribution. We want this to show on TV and in movie theatres. We want to work with organizations to see what ways we can collaborate on their campaigns.
Bichlbaum: This is the beginning of that. We don’t know where it’s going to go yet. If you have ideas, please do come tell us.

Q: What was the experience of making this film yourself?
Bichlbaum: Working with Chris Smith on the first film was a great experience. This movie was an arduous experience and quite exhilarating at times, but far more difficult than we imagined. But we discovered a lot of stuff along the way. Hopefully it was worth it.

Q: How did you decide you wanted to direct it yourselves?
Bichlbaum: We wanted to get in a lot more documentary material and actually give voices to the people that were directly affected by the policies we were going after. So we figured we would just do it ourselves.

Q: How much research did you do in advance of each individual story you told?
Bonanno: It depended on how quickly we had to do the thing. Our research is based on hard work that’s done by journalists and by environmental organizations. With Dow, Greenpeace had made it a major campaign issue partially because of Dow’s history as a large chemical company and also because of their refusal to pay for Bhopal (India). Greenpeace was seeing Bhopal as a real test case because it was the largest industrial accident in history and hasn’t been cleaned up. So it’s always a challenge to learn enough about the issues we need to address before we go on a stage.

Q&A: Earth Days

2009-02-19T16:47:19+00:00

Robert Stone’s Earth Days is an enlightening but sobering journey through the history of the environmental movement from the perspective of its earliest pioneers and activists. Filled with rare footage that gives careful historical perspective and insightful commentary by the self-proclaimed “environmental radicals” of the 60’s and 70’s, Earth Days reminds us all how human activity (and inactivity) defines our tenuous relationship with the world. The film premiered as the Closing Night Film at the Sundance Film Festival, after which Stone hosted a Q&A along with activists Dennis Hays and Stuart Brand.

Q: In the movie you recognized how the power of personality makes a major difference in the environmental movement. Do you see strong personalities in environmental leaders today?
Hays: I think our current president has an opportunity to be truly transformational, in addition to restoring intelligence to prominence in America. It’s profoundly powerful if you can get presidents to reach over Congress and mobilize a public. I think he’s going to do that. But the President and Congress can’t do anything without a really strong basis of support from the country.

Q: You had so much archival footage. How long did it take to compile it all?
Stone: It’s been two years, which is kind of a short time for me. That was because of (executive producer) Mark Samels. We had a conversation about doing this movie shortly after Sundance two years ago and he got it right away and has been incredibly supportive. I didn’t have to worry about where the money was going to come from; I could immediately get to work.

Q: I would like to get your opinion on nuclear power.
Stone: I’d like to throw this to Stuart, who provides a different view on this because I think it illuminates the complexity about this issue. The first film I brought to Sundance was about the dangers of nuclear power, but I don’t know where I stand on it anymore. I listen to both of these guys and they both make perfect sense.
Brand: For me, to do a 180 on nuclear has been pretty jarring. It’s abundantly clear that if you don’t want to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and you want good power, nuclear is a major part of that. All renewables are a major part of that.
Hays: Stuart is a cherished friend and the nice thing is that we’ve learned to disagree about things. Stuart says he has made a 180 turn on this, one that I haven’t yet been able to make. With regard to nuclear power, we’re in this terrible crisis right now but world trade is still a huge part of the global economy. I don’t see it as being possible for the United States to rely on a technology that we’re unprepared to share with the rest of the world.

Q: What are some of the resources we can look to for more information?
Hays: A very good first start would be the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s website, http://www.nrel.gov/.

Physician, Heal Thyself

2009-02-12T20:51:54+00:00

Intelligent, confident, protective against mood swings and other melodramatic moments in life, therapists represent pillars of society, helping those who can’t fully help themselves. So when you hear about the things therapists are doing in films in this year’s Festival, you may be surprised how far depictions of therapists have come.

A shrink in trouble is portrayed by Chazz Palminteri in director Jeff Lipsky’s Once More with Feeling. Palminteri is a successful therapist, but suddenly realizes he never followed his dream – becoming a lounge singer. Where else to fulfill this wild dream but a karaoke convention! (Shrinks are human, too.) “It's a time honored profession in film,” Lispky points out. “From Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound to Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob? to Alan Arkin in Gross Pointe Blank. It's a cracker jack, shorthand opportunity to explore every other profession in the world. It's a profession that seems to lend itself equally well to dramas and comedy and our film is both.”

In director Jonathan Liebesman’s extreme film The Killing Room, Chloe Sevigny plays a military shrink hired by a mysterious firm to watch four people trapped in a room, giving her interpretation on the subjects as they are forced to kill or be killed. Will she intervene? Within the tense genre film, the shrink plays the most multifaceted character, partly because we place so many expectations on Sevigny’s character to know what’s best, and to act accordingly.

In the drama Helen, the vast canyons of bipolar disorders are explored and humanized by writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck, with a powerful performance by Ashley Judd as Helen. Even though Helen’s life seems well-ordered and successful – she’s an accomplished academic and appears to be happily married with a wonderful daughter – she has a sudden breakdown. Nettelbeck doesn’t offer easy answers to Helen’s debilitating bout with bipolar disorder.

Overlapping stories reach a boil in director Jonas Pate’s Shrink. Kevin Spacey is the title character with an ensemble cast, a therapist who is so worried about actually helping his clients, he himself slips out of control, affecting others around him connected in an unseen web.

“I think that we very much live, at least those of us in cities, in a psychiatry age,” says Jonas Pate, director of Shrink. “The stigma of depression, for instance, and the struggles found in William Styron's Darkness Visible or in the private battles of Larry McMurtry have given way to a cultural openness about therapy.

“What motivated the story wasn't an idea to take our shrink down a peg or pull him from some type of exalted position,” Pate says. “It was really just a character study of a specific person who was in mourning and the unpredictable results of that grief. In other words, there wasn't a larger comment on the industry of psychiatry as much as lining the behavior and world of a specific individual who happens to be in that field. He should have all the tools to deal with his emotions, but when a tragic event occurs, then his ability to deal with life is completely disrupted and he suffers like anyone else.”

Opinion: Mark Duplass

2009-02-04T16:36:28+00:00

When two lifelong buddies decide to take their friendship into unchartered sexual territory, homo awkwardness gives way to a philosophical gabfest in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday. As the shlubbier half of the pair, Festival regular Mark Duplass helped devise the film’s treatment, improvised much of his own dialogue and gamely swapped spit with his male co-star, Joshua Leonard. In a series of conversations with the Daily Insider, Duplass discussed Humpday as well as his role as one of the “founders” of the mumblecore aesthetic.

Insider: Were you ever concerned that the premise of Humpday would stretch the limits of credibility?

Duplass: I was worried about that the whole time. I’m really curious to see it with an audience. Everything is about making it as real as possible. We had to hold a strong laser on realism. It is an extreme story – and we didn’t want to play it as a farce or a spoof.

Insider: What propels these straight characters into trying gay sex?

Duplass: A lot of latent issues left behind, I think. A lot of white middle-class frustration. But there’s also competition and jealousy going on. These guys are jealous of each others’ lives.

Insider: Tell us what it was like improvising the dialogue on the spot.

Duplass: The movie was shot in less than two weeks so we were moving quickly. But this film was painless for me. Just being an actor was very free-ing, I have to say. The challenge was getting the realism right. You never get it at the script phase. You don’t know until you meet the actors and you can start doing a structured improvisation.

Insider: How do you think audiences will react to Humpday?

Duplass: What I like about the movie is you get to watch two people go through something that most people like them would never do themselves. But I think audiences will have more connection than you might imagine. There’s the element of suspense – are these guys really going to do it?

Insider: You were one of the “founders” of the mumblecore aesthetic, with your film The Puffy Chair. What do you think of all of the attention mumblecore has received?

Duplass: Yeah, we got a lot of attention for that, with The Puffy Chair and Baghead. Any time anyone wants to write an article about small movies, that’s great. I see some big differences with mumblecore and the films I make with my brother [Jay Duplass]. We have one foot in and one foot out of it. Ultimately, I want to make movies of all kinds.

Q&A: Cold Souls

2009-02-04T16:12:20+00:00

Sophie Barthes' haunting comedy Cold Souls takes a literal cognitive journey into filmmaking. Paul Giamatti stars as himself, an actor in the midst of a Chekhovian breakdown; he suffers from an indefinable throb, a pressure, a pain. He turns to the new technology of a glossy white soul-extraction machine to escape his spiritual crisis. It takes a few borrowed souls, some awkward play rehearsals, and a mission to Russia for the actor to find his way back to the value of his own soul. After a Festival screening, director Sophie Barthes, who developed the film at the 2007 Sundance Directors Lab, answered questions from a packed audience along with cinematographer Andrij Parekh and other producers, including Elizabeth Giamatti, Paul Giamatti’s wife.

Q: How did you get Paul Giamatti involved in this project?

A: The whole idea for the script came from a dream I had in 2005. It was this strange place – Woody Allen was there with a white box where people could store their souls. When it came to Woody Allen's turn, he stored his soul and it came out as a chickpea. He was very upset because he had made 43 movies and how could his soul be a chickpea? Woody Allen is my filmmaking idol, so what was my soul going to look like? I got into the box and then the dream ended, so I didn't get to see my soul.

I used my dream to write this screenplay and I wanted to write it for Woody Allen. But then on second thought I knew if I got him he would want to make the movie. And then I saw American Splendor and completely fell in love with Paul Giamatti. He has such an amazing emotional charge with an incredible range, so I wrote it for him. Then by a twist of fate, I won this competition at the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony. I had never applied for this type of thing and then six months later they called me and told me I won. They flew me to the island to get this award and Paul Giamatti happened to be there to give an award with Alexander Payne. I told him about the dream. He might have thought I was nuts, but he loved the idea and he read the script. His wife was there too, who was a producer, and she also liked the idea. And they said yes very quickly.

Q: What portion did you shoot in Russia and what was that experience like?

A: We shot in St. Petersburg in Russia. We shot 25 percent of the movie there. We heard all the crazy stories about problems with shooting in Russia like I would have to bribe people or be caught up in corruption. We didn't have any problems – at least not that we know of.

Q: Who came up with the look of the soul-extraction machine?

A: A friend of mine who is an artist who I met at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. He started sketching machines when we were at the Lab together. And then he went home and made the machine in his garage with his brother. They put the machine in their truck and they crossed America with a soul-extractor. We wanted to do a cross-country documentary about this, but we didn't have time.

Q: This is a transcendental story grounded in the real world. How did you make the creative decision to portray this soulful story as a reality?

A: That's what really interested me about science fiction that takes place today. If I had read an article in The New Yorker about soul extraction I would check it out. The short I did two years ago [Happiness] was also a realistic interpretation of the abstract. The main character bought a box of happiness, but she didn't know what to do with it, so tried to return the box. The audience responded very strongly because even if it's abstract, it's very real. The chickpea in my story is real. It's a playful way to be philosophical about the body, mind, and spirit.

Q: When one thinks of the soul, one often thinks of a religious spirituality. Was it a conscious decision to leave religion out of this story?

A: At the beginning of the film, Paul's character says he doesn't believe in any religion, so I didn't include religion. Several religious people say it and they saw spiritual things. We don't give answers about where the soul is, where it goes, so you can see it in a religious way or not.

One on One: Natalia Almada and Dana Perry

2009-01-25T00:32:59+00:00

What makes a person want to reveal private family history to a wide public? What makes us want to watch a movie that accomplishes that act? Natalia Almada (El General) and Dana Perry’s Boy Interrupted) documentaries are unflinching, brooding, unapologetically dark, and personal. Almada, who won the Festival’s Directing Award: U.S. Documentary for El General, is the great-grandaughter of Plutarco Elías Calles, a controversial general during the Mexican Revolution and president of Mexico from 1924-1928. Calles’ daughter (the filmmaker’s grandmother) left behind audio tapes of her thoughts about Calles, tapes Almada uses as a beckoning, hypnotic narrative frame for the range of questions she articulates in the film about her family’s memory of Calles and Mexico’s collective memory of him. Boy Interrupted is Perry’s reconciliation with her 15-year-old bipolar son’s suicide. The film achieves closure not just for Perry, but for her audience as well. The Insider asked Almada and Perry to watch one another’s films and then talk to each other about making personal documentaries.

Insider: You both had a limited amount of archival material you could use in your documentaries. Was that frustrating?

Almada: It’s a different question I think I ask myself: I like having a limitation.

Perry: I agree.

Almada: There’s something very interesting about absence and especially when you’re making a film about someone who’s not there, absence is what the film is about in the end. And how we live with a limited memory or a fractured memory or an absence of images. How do we either create new ones for ourselves or how do we live with the absence of what’s there? It’s not a lack of something; it’s actually a kind of content.

Perry: Absolutely. I totally agree that having restricted material is often more conducive to creativity because you have to solve problems, you have to box your way out of it, as it were. My film is very much about absence, of course, although the images of my son are all over it. You’re piecing together a portrait from a limited palette, really; you don’t necessarily have all the colors. I think in both films we’ve created a memory now by putting in a context and applying a narrative to somewhat random images. Everyone who sees El General will have an image of her great-grandfather now that they didn’t have before and people who did not know my son, [Boy Interrupted] will be their image of him, because this is all there is, and it’s been put in a storytelling form so you can digest it in under 100 minutes.

Insider: Was it always the plan that you would put yourselves in your documentaries?

Perry: I had no intention of being in my film, absolutely not. I was definitely never going to do that and that became a little bit of a problem pretty early on when it was apparent that we had everyone except for the mother in the story and I guess I knew on some level that I was going to have to be interviewed and that was an awkward situation because I’m the filmmaker as well. For me, because the basis of the film is honesty, I really couldn’t leave myself out, because that would have been short-changing the story.

Almada: I never thought I’d have a narration in the film. That was a hard thing for me to do, inserting myself that way.

Insider: How did you get over that?

Almada: I’m not sure I did. It’s more like trying to get each word out. There were parts of my grandmother’s tapes that were really hard to let go of, to edit out of the film for narration. It’s a hard process to evaluate the difference between what I think she should say and what she might have wanted to say.

Perry: I struggle with this a lot. In all honesty, I feel like my son’s right to privacy went away when he chose to kill himself. But obviously, if I was not willing to show him in his illness, then why make the film? That would just be a memorial, a mere puff piece. And one wrestles with that danger of falling into a puff piece or a biography as opposed to a portrait of the illness and the person. I didn’t want to portray him as only sick because he wasn’t like that all the time. I’m still nervous about showing it to audiences and possibly betraying his privacy, but he was pretty dramatic and I feel in a way that he would have loved this.

Insider: Do you think of the mother we see onscreen in Boy Interrupted or the person narrating El General as being yourselves or a construction of yourselves?

Perry: You can’t reduce a life to 90 minutes or reduce an experience as profound as this. What you see in the film is a grieving mother and that is me, but it’s not all of me. I’m not just that. And part of the process of making the film is providing me the ability to be more than the suicide survivor and the grieving mother, because I feel that’s very much been my whole self for these past three years.

Almada: Watching Dana’s film and my film, it’s easy to say when you’re the narrator or when you’re visibly in the film that that’s who you are in the film, but I would say more that the whole film itself is a reflection of who one is. In my case, my interactions with people on the street, or the way the film moves, or the way it’s structured, is where I am. It’s not just in the words I say in the film.

Q&A: Barking Water

2009-01-24T21:52:11+00:00

In Barking Water, the latest film from Sundance Institute Lab alum Sterlin Harjo, Irene (Casey Camp-Horinek) takes Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) on one last road trip, driving him from the hospital across Oklahoma to see his daughter and grandchild. Along the way, they meet and spend time with friends, family, and random strangers, each encounter shedding a bit more light on the couple’s on-again, off-again relationship and the complicated nature of love and regret. After a recent screening of the film, the director and actors gathered to answer questions from the audience, offering insights into how and why the film was made.

Q: How much did this film cost to make?

Sterlin Harjo: It cost less than Batman. And more than El Mariachi.

Q: I was truly knocked out by the two lead performances. I thought their depth and range were just amazing. What kind of training did they have?

Harjo: The school of hard knocks. No, actually I’ve worked with them before. Casey, she usually gets “spiritual” roles, and Richard is in the background on a horse. So no one ever gets to see their talent, so I wanted to write these two roles for them, because I knew how cool they were. What I really love about them is they treat acting like, “Oh yeah, I do that sometimes,” but Casey is also an environmentalist and activist, Richard is an activist – he was at Wounded Knee – and he’s an artist. They’re both these hardcore Oklahoma American Indian Movement members.

Casey Camp-Horinek: I don’t know about that “old” part – we’ve got relative youth talking over here [points at Harjo]. I started acting a bit in the 80s, in a spiritual piece called Black Oak Speaks….At that time, they’d brought in Hawaiians and Mexicans and Italians, and David Carradine was doing red face…and then they’d put the Indians in the background with a teepee and a bush. Our message was being conveyed by non-Indians, with non-Indians writing it. So it’s interesting now – as an activist, as an AIM member, as a person who was trying to bring out story to the world, like “We’re still alive! We’re in this century!” – to have a young man like Sterlin come along who has the ability to write from our experience, and understand how to direct from our experience. But I’ve been talking a long time, so I’ll let Rich add his “Uh huh.”

Richard Ray Whitman: [Nodding] I’ll just take all the animal husbandry questions. No really, I’m thankful to Sterlin for taking a chance on us, for always having us in mind.

Q: What gave you the idea for the story?

Sterlin Harjo: I’ve always wanted to do a story with an older couple, because it’s never really done right. It’s always kind of fake. And back home, my whole culture – and I’m sure other cultures too, but I can only speak for mine – doesn’t want to die in hospitals, they want to die at home.

Q: I thought the film was just a lovely…all the messages that were conveyed in complete silence, with no talking. I was wondering if you could comment on that?

Camp-Horinek: Actually we did a lot of dialogue. We filmed for 17 days, and Sterlin redid a lot of stuff, and took a lot of our dialogue out. And Mr. Editor David, who didn’t know us well – [in stage whisper] you should see some of the stuff he cut – but as actors, we did what we were told. We had the script; we also improvised some parts. When we got to see it for the first time [at the Festival premiere], I was kind of surprised to see how spare it was, and how powerful the message was without the words. So, we just have a wondrous director, and a great editor. And we know how to act.

A Spoonful of Sugar

2009-01-24T02:11:01+00:00

Films about activists and their causes may carry with them that icky, about-to-ingest-cough-syrup feeling that you’re going to be “educated” – not actually inspired, but “inspired,” in that earnest, cloying, and didactic way – but they also have the power to change viewers’ consciousness about the issues they address. The filmmakers at the Festival whose documentaries are about one individual attempting to right large-scale wrongs still want us to feel so moved by their heroes’ actions that we leave the theatre and get involved in the cause to one degree or another.

“We’re not making a movie – we’re trying to change the world,” Louie Psihoyos, the executive director of the Oceanic Preservation Society says about his documentary The Cove. If there’s any documentary at the Festival this year that could be called an advocacy film, The Cove is it. But The Cove is also something of a revelation; it’s about Ric O’Barry, the dolphin trainer who taught the five dolphins who variously starred in Flipper, the ‘60s TV series. Just after the series ended, O’Barry became a tireless activist fighting people who trap bottlenose dolphins and send them off to amusement parks or swim-with-dolphins programs.

Psihoyos knows that audiences may think of watching a movie about a dolphin activist as akin to “taking medicine,” as he puts it. “We’re trying to make a film that’s entertaining and educational,” he says. “This movie is the product of watching too many Jacques Cousteau and James Bond movies.”

Like some other films in the Festival lineup, The Cove subverts expectations about what a documentary profile of an activist has to be. “I make a certain kind of film,” says veteran doc maker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). “They’re ambiguous, they allow all parties to have their say, and to me that’s a more accurate way to make a film, warts and all.” So when he realized that one of the subjects of his new film Crude, the persuasive and larger-than-life activist attorney Steven Donziger, wanted a film touting the David-vs.-Goliath fight in Ecuador to make Chevron pay for years of environmental damage, he had to think twice about whether he wanted to participate in the project at all. “It was difficult to take on a film whose subject was wanting an advocacy film,” Berlinger says. “And that’s what [Crude] is – there’s a need to help these people in Ecuador – but I try to subvert that to some extent because I do quote Chevron.”

“I feel like one of the things about activism is that you end up feeling really disillusioned and you don't have a voice, or you have a voice and that voice isn't enough,” says Emily Kunstler. She should know: her father was civil rights attorney William Kunstler, the man famous for flamboyantly defending the Chicago Seven, the American Indian Movement leaders, and Lenny Bruce, among many others. Emily and her sister Sarah Kunstler, the directors of William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, realized after making their early advocacy films, some of which have helped to stay imminent executions, that “to make a film gives you such a greater voice” than what one person’s activism alone can do.

Ngawang Choephel also compels us to care about a cause by making the cause personal. Watching his documentary Tibet in Song, it’s clear the cause could be nothing less than personal for Choephel, who is Tibetan, but grew up in exile in India. Music, and in particular native Tibetan music, is Choephel’s life. Choephel opens a new window into the depths the Chinese government has gone to to eradicate Tibetan culture. The Chinese effort to outlaw the public performance of Tibetan music – a vital element of Tibetan culture – and substitute it with syrupy Tibetan-like songs that praise China has been irrevocably successful. In fact, Choephel went to prison for performing Tibetan music.

The nervy videographers at the heart of Danish director Anders Østergaard’s Burma VJ also battle a totalitarian state whose spies may be nowhere or everywhere at once. If that sounds paranoid, try imagining the life of a Burmese activist attempting to document the military government’s abuses: using small video cameras, the activists in Burma VJ record government injustices and get the footage smuggled across the border into Thailand. A leader there then ships the footage to Norway, where the footage is then broadcast to the world and also back into Burma, where hopefully the citizens will see it and rise up against the injustices. If one step in the process goes awry, the videographer is likely to be arrested. “What the hell on earth drives them?” Østergaard wondered when he began the film. “There’s no prospect of changing regimes. I was fascinated. It’s kind of existential: they need to do it, to feel they’re alive, to feel they have a life to document while the rest of the world has forgotten them.”

The hopeful premise at the heart of these documentaries is the conviction that if viewers are shown compelling footage of the injustices happening around the world, we might even act to nullify them. But two other documentaries at the Festival profoundly question that notion. It’s no surprise they’re both about reporters who have spent their lives trying to effect large societal change. Reporter is Eric Daniel Metzgar’s thoughtful analysis of the work of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof is credited with alerting powerful leaders through his ongoing columns about the genocidal crisis in Darfur. (One of the warlords Kristof interviews in the film, Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, was finally arrest on Thursday night.) Metzgar asks why we feel drawn to the story of one person’s suffering while ignoring large-scale injustice. “We're not bad people if we get numbed by statistics,” he says. “It's a biological reaction that stems from the reality that we didn't know how to evolve to care about massive numbers of people on the other side of the world suffering.”

Anna Politkovskaya, the 211th journalist killed in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, was a crusading reporter who also told the stories of those who suffered political injustice. But when she continued to expose the Russian government’s brutal tactics to quash the Chechen people’s attempts to break away from Russia, she paid for that work with her life. The most unforgettable moments in 211: Anna, Giovanna Massimetti and Paolo Serbandini’s elegiac film about Politkovskaya, occur when it’s revealed that Politkovskaya felt an acute sense of despair after subscriptions to the newspaper she was writing for dropped as she continued to write about the war in Chechnya. “The population didn’t want to know,” her editor says in the film. “She was devastated by this and wondered if she should give up.” “The most important thing is that in a country like Russia, where public opinion never existed, Anna with each of her articles and by her own life contributed to the development of a civil society,” Massimetti says.

Sometimes it feels like even that isn’t enough. “I'm always questioning the value of documentary films and how impactful they are versus dropping the camera and trying to focus on human rights work,” Reporter filmmaker Metzgar says. “But I guess I see the world in such a way that making art is kind of my activism, I guess – not to sound pretentious about it. I have to reorganize what I've seen to better understand it.” The Cove director Louie Psihoyos would agree: “Once people have the information, it’s really difficult to not have that information any more.”

Q&A: Black Dynamite

2009-01-23T21:19:59+00:00

An affectionate spoof of Shaft, Dolemite, and just about every other blaxploitation film from the 1970’s, Black Dynamite fumigates the much-loved genre with a healthy dose of nitrous oxide.

Michael Jai White stars as the title vigilante – an Afro-sporting, shamelessly womanizing kung fu master who is investigating the death of his brother and discovers a nefarious plot involving the distribution of Anaconda Malt Liquor in seedy Los Angeles.

Directed by Scott Sanders, Black Dynamite apes the low-budget, threadbare quality of blaxploitation cinema, down to the bad dialogue, crude editing, and occasional intrusions of the boom mic. In tone, the movie alternates between Tarantino-esque homage and Naked Gun-style site gags.

Sanders and White, who collaborated on the screenplay (with Byron Minns), answered questions following a packed midnight screening.

Q: Michael, did you have to go through martial-arts training for the movie?

White: I’ve been doing martial arts for 27 years, ever since I was a kid. The style was a little different from what I’m used to. But the ’70s style choreography is straight-on and easy.

Q: Where did you shoot the film?

Sanders: We shot it all in L.A. We really lucked out. There’s an area around Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the ’70s. We also shot in Ladera Heights where there are still a lot of ’70s houses. It was a 20-day shooting schedule during the Christmas season. It was tough on Michael.

Q: Did you reach out to people like Richard Roundtree to do cameos?

White: We didn’t want to go in that direction. Roundtree would take you out of the movie. It would disturb the faux truth we were trying to create.

Q: How do you think the movie should be marketed?

Sanders: I think there are a lot of people out there who will love it. But it’s definitely a comedy. We were cracking up the whole time we were making it. It’s really just a little idiosyncratic comedy.

Q: What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

Sanders: The penis scene. That was a pacifier from an erotic store and I had to adjust it.

Q&A: Sin Nombre

2009-01-23T18:53:53+00:00

Sin Nombre, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s harrowing first feature, is one of the most emotionally devastating films in the Festival lineup this year; it is also one of the most thrilling and emotionally redemptive. Sin Nombre, which was supported by the Sundance Institute Labs, is the story of two Central American immigrants, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) and Casper (Edgar Flores), whose journey from Honduras, through Mexico, and into America is the same one an estimated 70,000 Central Americans take every year in an attempt to leave behind the numbing poverty of their lives. They perch uneasily on top of Mexican freight trains, and it’s far from a safe passage. Casper is an increasingly reluctant henchman in the vicious La Mara Salvatrucha gang that mines the trains for immigrants’ money, and sometimes their lives. The appearance of Sayra, traveling with her family, offers Casper an opportunity to irrevocably alter his life for the better, though she also needs his protection, a prospect he doesn’t exactly relish even though he begins to love her. At the film’s world premiere, after two standing ovations and with the movie’s cast and crew onstage, Fukunaga answered the audience’s questions.

Q: What does the title mean?
A: “Sin nombre” means “without a name,” or “nameless.” And that in all honesty came because there was a scene with one of those crosses on the border that said “Sin Nombre,” and it has to do with people who died on the border and they don’t know who they are, like a John Doe. That’s in a different geographical region from where this story takes place, so I just stole that. But I also thought that thematically it had a lot to do with immigrants and the gang members not really having an identity besides what their group is.

Q: If you got any technical support, was it from La Mara Salvatrucha?
A: It took about a year and a half to get at least one group of La Mara Salvatrucha that I interviewed most often to give me contacts outside of prison. I didn’t get the “seal of approval” necessarily – I sent that in and I’m still waiting for a reply – but I tried to make it as authentic as possible. My one concern is to misrepresent anything. They told me that as long as I wasn’t lying, I’d be okay probably.

Q: Could you talk about riding the trains for research?
A: I just felt like I needed to see the journey for myself in order to tell it authentically. I went down with a couple of friends... the whole idea was to ride the train after I researched the shelters and the prisons. After doing research hearing how terrible the trains were, my friends didn’t want to get on that train anymore, understandably. But I still wanted to do it and felt like I had to do it, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the smartest decision because that first train … to the Oaxacan border takes about 30 hours and we got on in the middle of the night and within three hours, in the middle of nowhere, there was a bandit attack and a guy got shot and thrown off the train. So it was a pretty intense experience that I didn’t tell my parents about, obviously. But I think it was on that train ride that I really decided that I could tell this story, because before that, I felt like it wasn’t my experience, so how can I tell this?

Meet the Artist: Big Hopes for Big Fan

2009-01-23T02:25:59+00:00

When writer-director Robert Siegel was growing up on Long Island, he used to listen to local sports radio station WFAN under the covers at night. “I would hear these voices, these callers,” he remembers. “I’d get to know their voices and wonder who they were and what their lives were like. And that always just stuck with me.”

After heading off to the University of Michigan for college and spending a decade as an editor at The Onion in Madison, Wisconsin, Siegel started doing what he calls “messing around with screenplays.” Five or six years ago, he wrote Big Fan, a drama about Paul (Patton Oswalt), a parking garage attendant who regularly calls into a sports radio station to sing the praises of the Giants. After being beaten up by their star player at a strip club, Paul’s team loyalty is put to the test.

While Big Fan sat on the shelf, Darren Aronofsky decided to direct another of Siegel’s scripts, The Wrestler, which won the Golden Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival and earned Mickey Rourke an Oscar nomination yesterday as Best Actor. “The big thing I did while on the set of The Wrestler is that I poached apprentices,” says Siegel. “I’d go to the costume designer and ask if she knew anyone who was good who would work for cheap. My sound guy I got from the sound guy on The Wrestler, and makeup. I started my pre-production [for Big Fan] on The Wrestler set, I guess you could say.”

When it came time to assemble his cast, Siegel also took a cue from The Wrestler and used a mixture of professional and amateur actors. Siegel cast Serafina Fiore, who manages the headquarters of a strip club where the production filmed, as Paul’s sister-in-law. Siegel discovered Queens-born actor Gino Cafarelli, who plays Paul’s brother, by doing a YouTube search using words like “Italian,” “New York,” and “Sopranos.”

Many non-actors also appeared as background players, since the production didn’t have the money to hire extras or shut down businesses for filming. For one scene, Siegel recalls shooting in a sports bar covered in Giants and Jets and Yankees posters. “We had to cover them all with Philadelphia stuff and transform it into a Philadelphia bar, which was very awkward,” he recalls. “And there were no extras, just bar patrons. We couldn’t even shut that place down. We really had to shoot while things were open.”

Although Siegel is a first-time director, he didn’t find taking the helm to be a completely foreign exercise. “It was a throwback to muscles that I used at The Onion in terms of delegating and decision-making and leadership,” he says. “So even though I didn’t really know anything about directing, I had a feel for what made a good director. I worked harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, but it was thrilling, and it was new. I was just running on adrenaline.”

Opinion: Sam Rockwell

2009-01-22T22:47:14+00:00

Sam Rockwell is everywhere at once this year. He’s pulling a double-shift as both producer and star of The Winning Season, which tells a story about the coach of a women’s basketball team who’s shooting for redemption. He also can be found a whole world away, playing starring roles in another Festival film, Moon, a self-reflective sci-fi film about the hardships of lunar mining. Earlier this week, Rockwell took a break from his break-neck schedule to talk to the Insider about his creative process, the perks of independent filmmaking, and the mechanics of talking to himself.

Insider: You’ve been in some big-time studio movies, but you keep returning to independent film. What is it about indie films that keep you coming back for more?

Sam Rockwell: Independent films allow me to do stuff that I wouldn’t normally get to do, and I get more creative control. Plus I tend to do more leads, which means I get to act more, which is more fun. You also have to move faster – maybe two or three takes, as opposed to the twelve takes you’d do in a studio movie, which certainly keeps the adrenaline flowing. You get that fear sense, and exhaustion, and it’s all in a bubble of a month or six weeks, where you just work, work, work, work, work. And then it’s over. Whereas a studio movie just lingers on and on and on. … I also like to do supporting roles in studio films because it gives me the chance to work with wonderful people, like Ron Howard and Oliver Platt (Frost/Nixon), and I learn more about filmmaking then I go back and apply that to the independent films that I do.

Insider: How would you describe your creative process?

Rockwell: I tend to do some research. For Snow Angels, I got really immersed in Christianity and born again stuff, which I found pretty fascinating. And for The Winning Season, I took basketball lessons. I trained with a guy who used to be on the Pacers named Sean Green, who coordinated all the basketball sequences in the film. Philip Seymour Hoffman recommended him to me. Phil Hoffman’s a big basketball player – he’s got a great shot.

Insider: In Moon, which is also at the Festival this year, you spend most of the film talking to yourself. What was it like spending so much time in your own company, from a filmmaking perspective?

Rockwell: It was very difficult. I was improvising a lot, but I had to plan my dialogue ahead of time. I’d watch my last take on an iPod, and listen to myself on an earwig. It was technically the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.

Insider: Was it lonely?

Rockwell: It was. But the character’s lonely, so it kind of works.

Insider: This is going to be your sixth year coming back to the Festival, so you know how hard it can be to choose between all the films, events, and music there is to see. If you had the power to clone yourself, where would you have the Alterna Sam Rockwell be on your behalf?

Rockwell: Movies. I would go see even more movies.

Insider: And if you were interviewing yourself right now, what would you ask?

Rockwell: I’d ask myself, “Do you think I’m sexy?”

Insider: And what would your answer be?

Rockwell: I’d answer, “Let me think about it.”

Insider: I don’t think that’s the kind of question a person gets to think about…

Rockwell: I guess you’re right – that’s playing coy. That’s me, playing coy with myself.

One on One: Ondi Timoner and Nasty Nets

2009-01-22T00:50:11+00:00

The Festival is host this year to two unique insights into the Internet. Ondi Timoner returns to the Festival with We Live in Public, a documentary about the life of the early Internet guru Josh Harris, an instant millionaire in the Net boom who then explored artificial societies by creating a bunker where people lived for a year, while being filmed and watched online 24 hours a day. Nasty Nets is an online art collective that curates, promotes, and trades virtual culture – making art in variable forms, and finding an art in sharing it and other found “footage.” Two Nasty Nets members Joel Holmberg (from Berlin) and Chris Coy (from Salt Lake City) met each other for the first time here at the Festival, and met with Ondi Timoner to talk about something they’re all invested in: virtual worlds and how they affect people in the real one.

Insider: How would you describe Nasty Nets in your own words, and what do you get out of it personally?

Joel Holmberg: We don’t know what to get out of it, what these interactions are. We were sharing links and files; it doesn’t come out of a tradition of exhibitionism, like what’s explored in Ondi’s film. More like a bulletin board. It’s more like a formal language that develops with imagery and MIMEs. Things that become popularized through doing it.

Ondi Timoner: So you are coining things, burning culture.

JH: Yes.

OT: Nice. … The virtual world is even with, if not over and above, the physical world now, don’t you think?

JH: I think in this instance it’s really democratic and super-generous with all the users.

OT: Yes, not a negative thing. Just a way of being. You know each other and are involved and doing work together. Ten years ago it would have been impossible and now it’s standard operating procedure. There are all sorts of people I’m friends with that I don’t really know. It’s pretty wild. Do you feel like the Internet is old enough that there have been two generations using it different ways?

JH: Absolutely two generations in that the first generation had more development on the user end. It wasn’t just corporations and the web services deciding what feature they would let you work with. I guess now there is more conscious agreement between web creators and the users. You have to give up this privacy when you open up a Facebook account. For us, our practice is centering on these services giving you tools in order to have impromptu moments of creativity. Was there a wave that happened that these tools became available for everyone? When We Live in Public starts, it’s this main guy who has incredible resources.

OT: It wasn’t democratized yet. At that point access to that type of technology – you could do it, if you were really, really dedicated to it. [Now] the option of ceding your privacy for connection, recognition, fame, all these things that the Internet provides on a daily basis gives you that free opportunity to go for it. Open your life and you’ll get all sorts of attention. We as human beings crave that attention, so we jump on it. We create that connection – even if it’s not attention, it’s that feeling of not being alone. Like moths to a flame. Now people don’t think you exist if you aren’t online.

JH: There is a level of consciousness that happens, especially when you are working in a group. Even with updating statuses. We arrived at this point three years ago when I felt like my consciousness was really tied into this community. People that don’t have as much experience with the Internet have gone through this in the last six months. All I can think of is what am I doing now – I can put that on Facebook. And in your film the people have totally different intentions.

OT: I was worried and concerned that people would think I was down on the web. I’m actually twittering from Sundance. We should live in public. It’s fun; why not? It’s fun to feel connected, and you learn so much minute by minute. I just did a thing about kids in Ethiopia. These schools get online and it’s completely altering their worlds. The Internet is the best and most amazing invention of our lifetime.

JH: Part of what I do [as a form of art] is ask questions on Yahoo Answers. I asked the question, “Are you comfortable with other people seeing the files on your computer?” I was surprised that no one really cared. “I don’t have very much.”

OT: One thing that didn’t make it into my film was people talking about their children. And how their kids are living in public and would never conceive of anything else. “No problem, Mom and Dad, you can see everything I did last night.” It’s a completely different mentality from, say, Gabriel Snyder from Variety, who feels like a dinosaur, wanting to close his door and have privacy at night. I think it’s fading for me. At the end of the day it’s a need for love.

The New Man’s Land

2009-01-21T23:15:41+00:00

Quentin Crisp once theorized that certain people dislike homosexuals "because they can’t help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don’t like that."

Talk about a gag reflex. There are few things that make a straight dude queasier than the image of two guys getting it on and enjoying it. When there's more than one penis in the room, awkwardness and defensive behavior are quick to follow.

The Festival is no stranger to queer cinema, but this year's line-up features movies that disrupt the queer paradigm by taking the straight guy's perspective. The hetero men in these films react with predictable revulsion to the homo vibes surrounding them, but they also show curiosity andconflicted fascination. Masculinity becomes slippery terrain once dudes start questioning their dudeness.

Humpday, directed by Lynn Shelton, takes the idea of a platonic bromance to its irrational extreme. During a drunken party, two lifelong friends – both straight and in their early 30’s – dare each other to make a gay porn film and enter it into Seattle's HumpFest film festival. The catch is that the friends (played by Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard) will also star in it, with each other.

The director says the film was inspired by her real-life straight friend who went to HumpFest. "He couldn't stop talking about the gay porn," Shelton recalls. "He was obsessed but he wasn't turned on by it. He said he was compelled by the imagery."

Humpday is a serious-minded comedy about how straight men form reactions to gay sex. It's also about the homoeroticism implicit in hetero male bonding. "Straight guys are scared they may be gay. They're terrified by that," says the director. "Women aren’t that way. If a woman's a lesbian, it's no big deal."

Most of the film's dialogue was improvised on the spot by the two lead actors, who followed the broad outline of Shelton's script. "It's a high-concept movie so we tried to make the dialogue as naturalistic as possible," explains Duplass, who plays the shlubby Ben. "Improvising is the most freeing thing in the world. We tried to mine the comedy of the situation but the movie isn't a farce or a spoof."

Leonard, who plays the bohemian Andrew, says his role made him interrogate his own sexual identity: "Homosexuality for a straight guy is really scary. Could it happen to me? I know I could snuggle up platonically with a girl I'm not romantically attracted to. But I probably wouldn't do that with a guy. Is that programmed by society, or is that part of me?"

Equally ambiguous, Dare steers the high school teen drama into polysexual territory. Directed by Adam Salky and written by David Brind, Dare is adapted from a 2004 short film that Brind wrote and that appeared in the anthology Boys Life 5.

Three students at an elite prep school become friends despite their seeming incompatibility: Johnny (Zach Gilford) is a popular athlete; Ben (Ashley Springer) is a shy nerdy type; and Alexa (Emmy Rossum) is the drama student who orchestrates an unconventional romantic arrangement between all three.

The über-jock Johnny is a blank-slate beauty whose unreadability is intended, in part, to mystify viewers. His sexual choices seem like the meanderings of an unformed consciousness: at times, he's disgusted by the idea of homosexuality; at others, he's the most compassionate character in the movie.

Nonetheless, being called gay is still the ultimate insult to a dude. In one scene, a fellow athlete calls him "a fag" and Johnny responds by threatening to tell about the time "you dared me to rub my hard-on against yours in eighth grade."

"The cultural perception of masculinity has not changed a lot," says Brind, the screenwriter. "There's still a taboo around homosexuality."

That lingering sense of taboo is explored with full force in La Mission, Peter Bratt's film about a father's coming to terms with his teen son's sexual identity. Set in San Francisco's Mission district, the film (which plays in the Spectrum section) ponders how homosexuality upsets the patriarchal culture of the Latino community.

Che Rivera (Benjamin Bratt, who is the director's brother) is a neighborhood grand Pooh-Bah who runs a car garage by day and indulges his passion for low-rider vehicles by night. Known for his generosity and kindness, he nevertheless throws a violent fit when he discovers that his only son, Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez), is gay.

The director, who hails from the Mission, says that societies of color see homosexuality in men as a feminizing trait, which is anathema to a culture that places macho, patriarchal figures on a pedestal. (A portrait of Al Pacino as Don Corleone hangs in Che's garage.)

"There's a homophobia in people of color that's more present than in the mainstream," says Bratt. "Religiosity has a great deal to do with it. But I think people want to change. We're perhaps moving past those patriarchal ideals."

Just as homosexuality is mined for its impact on the masculine psyche in this year’s queer-themed films, macho-ness can seem like a sociopathic state of mind in some of the Festival’s non-gay themed films. Manly swagger assumes pathological dimensions when straight guys allow their egos to go unchecked, blindsiding the women who happen to be in their path. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, adapted by John Krasinski from the novel by the late David Foster Wallace, surveys a cornucopia of atrocious, misogynistic behavior emanating from horny bachelors in and around New York City. After her boyfriend leaves her with little explanation, Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson), a doctoral candidate in anthropology, sets out to assuage her heartbreak and her curiosity by conducting a series of interviews with men who harbor pathetic and often creepy fantasies.

Similarly, The Vicious Kind tells the story of a self-pitying loner (Adam Scott) who develops a strange obsession for his younger brother's girlfriend (Brittany Snow). The movie details how he succumbs to sexual urges even though he desperately wants to be a responsible big brother.

"Most men have strong territorial instincts," says director Lee Toland Krieger. "There's something primal in us, like a monkey or a tiger. We're really just animals."

Still, it's the looming specter of homosexuality that brings out the most extreme behavior in the masculine universe. James, a short film by Connor Clements, portrays a teenage boy who decides to reveal his sexual orientation to his teacher, only to have it backfire when the teacher responds in an unexpected way.

And anal panic rules the day in Chadd Harbold's short film Asshole, in which a a rude man protests every step of a routine physical examination. "I'm not going to put on your little ass dress and have you squeeze my nuts while I cough on you," he tells the doctor.

The unspoken insecurities of heterosexuality are many and unknowable. In "Asshole," as in the other Festival films that confront masculine phobias, the ultimate irony is that a straight man's fear of the anus should turn him into one.

Opinion: Nick Hornby

2009-01-21T01:36:43+00:00

Those who know that British scribe Nick Hornby, wrote the male-centric books About a Boy, High Fidelity, and Fever Pitch, a book about his obsession with soccer, may be surprised to know that he is also the screenwriter of An Education, the beguiling and knowing story of Jenny, a bright 16-year-old girl in 1961 London stifled by her boring, boxed-in life and what she regards as her staid country. Hornby’s range extends beyond what he’s most known for, however. He got his start in journalism, has been the pop music critic for The New Yorker, and executive produced Fever Pitch and About a Boy. But his ability to adeptly shuttle between writing books and being involved in film is also admirable, even if he attributes it to nothing more than knowing how to let the right project “take over” the other one.

Insider: You once told an interviewer, “I'm looking for people in very ordinary situations in cities, whose lives get bent out of shape by something kind of big happening to them.” Isn’t that the story of An Education?

Hornby: It’s pretty much bang-on for that; it’s a girl standing at a bus stop who’s taken into a different life. It’s a mundane situation and in her own terms, at least, something fairly extraordinary happens to her, so that was one of the things that grabbed me about the material. I’m kind of interested in that period of British life anyway.

Insider: Why?

Hornby: Even though maybe Britain and America ended up roughly in a similar place by the end of the Sixties, certainly our experience of the Fifties was incredibly different to yours. When you think of the 1950s in American popular culture, it’s big cars and rock & roll and Elvis Presley but of course this was still a very depressed and war-torn country. The idea that teenagers could drive big cars in the Fifties was a fantasy; teenagers here waited for the bus. And there was food rationing pretty much throughout the decade. There really wasn’t very much money going on; the place had been bombed to bits. And I think our relationship with our parents was actually very different. Your 1950s was about a schism, really, between teenagers and the adult world, whereas our kids had kind of been through this enormous experience with their parents. They’d been sitting in the same rooms with their parents for a long time, so it really wasn’t until the mid-Sixties when we started to become a little bit more affluent, that any of that kind of rebellion was possible. So it was an altogether grayer country.

The Beatles, which was several years later than your rock & roll, really did introduce something else, so this is a country right on the cusp in An Education; it’s pre-rock & roll, as far as we’re concerned. Also, I think all the smart kids looked at the time to Europe and not to America, and again, that was something that changed later. They were listening to Juliette Greco, reading Camus, and I think that the American stuff was probably regarded as pretty teeny-bop and déclassé compared to the French stuff. There was jazz, of course, but I think Europe had much more of an influence than it would probably ever have again.

Insider: The original memoir behind An Education, by Lynn Barber in Granta, is only about 12 pages long. What was it like adapting a 12-page story to a feature length film?

Hornby: Well, it was fun. I think it’s the way forward for all of us, really. It seems to make much more sense to me that you’re adapting something that’s too short for a movie that maybe has a solid story structure that you can be imaginative with and introduce characters to and situations to. And of course the dialogue’s mostly my own. It’s kind of a more liberating way to go, I suspect, than having to reduce 350 pages into a screenplay. It was not so much making things up but really making the most of everything that was in there.

Insider: You’ve adapted your own work for the screen and adapted other people’s work as well – which do you prefer?

Hornby: I think I prefer adapting other people’s. I think by the time I get to the end of a book, I’m pretty much done with it. You spend a lot of time putting all these things in and then taking on a job where you have to take them all out again. It probably seems more of a grind than adapting other people’s work.

Insider: Your most recent book, Slam, is also about a contemporary adolescent confronting an unplanned pregnancy. Did writing that book give you insight into writing this script?

Hornby: The two things went side by side, actually. I started the script before I started Slam but I guess there was a certain zone that I was in for both of them and it’s dealing with young people and the decisions they made and sexuality to a certain extent, or the love lives of young people. They’re quite tangentially connected because the period of An Education obviously provides a whole different set of disciplines compared to something like Slam. But I’m sure that the one helped the other in some subterranean way.

Insider: How do you organize your writing life – do you set aside specific time for writing novels vs. writing screenplays?

Hornby: Things just tend to take over, really. The deadlines for books are fairly moveable most of the time. There comes a point where you decide, “Yes, that book’s going to be published at this time” and you work towards that, but if you’re a year late with a book or six months late with a book or six months early with a book, no one’s really amazed or bothered. Whereas movies, they have a pragmatic timetable. It’s a miracle, really, that movies – independent movies, especially – get made at all and I suppose my decisions are governed by what the chances are of anything happening at any given time. If a director became available to work with, then whatever prose I was writing at the time got shelved for a couple of weeks because it was somebody else’s timetable. My timetable’s pretty flexible. And then the movie starts heading towards production and I did a few polishes then. You can’t just say at that point, “I need to get on with my novel” if you want the movie to be made.

Meet the Artist: Bobcat Goldthwaitâs Worldâs Greatest Dad Isnât Your Average Indie Comedy

2009-01-21T01:16:00+00:00

If you recognize the talents behind World’s Greatest Dad — written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, and starring Robin Williams — you may think the film is a studio comedy on its way to a summer release. But the film premiers in the Spectrum section as an independent film, made without a studio and without distribution.

“I don’t think of Sundance as a launching pad or stepping stone,” director and veteran standup comedian Goldthwait says. “I view it as a destination. I consider myself extremely lucky to get in. Even if you are lucky enough to sell your movie and get it to theaters across America, you will never get the chance to watch it with a sold-out audience that loves movies and stood out in the snow to see your film.”

The story of frustrated writer Lance Clayton (Williams), his modest love life, and his dickhead teenage son, Dad explores what happens when the single father receives a second chance, wrapped up in the worst imaginable situation that could happen.

“One of the themes in the movie is that people have lost the ability to not make everything about them,” Goldthwait says. “Because of Robin’s and my involvement, you might think it’s going to be a wild comedy.”

But halfway through, you may not know whether you’re supposed to laugh or cry, which is refreshing. Your expectations are up in the air. Goldthwait won’t necessarily tell you how to react, either. The term “comedy of the awkwards” was used on the set.

“I feel like Robin is taking a big risk,” Goldthwait explains. “I’m glad he’s in the film because he’s a great actor. In the middle of filming we realized that Lance is a hybrid of both of us. People will be surprised to see Robin as this guy. I do think it’s more subversive for me to make an indie movie with life-reaffirming elements. If a comedy is indie, it’s supposed to be nihilist.”

With a known comedian writing and directing a big movie star, Goldthwait could have sought out more traditional financing from a studio. But he would rather make an independent film.

“I try to make my movies without getting notes,” Goldthwait says. “That’s why I avoid the studio system. The films I make are personal and I don’t need an executive’s interpretation of my brother.”

Don't get him wrong — Goldthwait doesn’t hate the system. “Just because a movie is an indie doesn’t mean it’s good, and a studio movie isn’t automatically a pile of crap," he says. "It’s just that the way I wanna make movies is different than a studio film, so why waste anyone’s time? I never expect to see my movies projected anywhere, let alone in front of an enthusiastic crowd of people I would actually hang out with. If I’m fortunate enough to keep making movies, I will keep making small movies. There are enough jackasses out there trying to appeal to the masses.”

But then Goldthwait divulges his real reason for seeking out the Festival. “I really love those candy apples on Main Street, man. They’re the bomb.”

One on One: Najwa Najjar and Cherien Dabis

2009-01-20T02:56:59+00:00

Palestinian filmmakers Najwa Najjar and Cherien Dabis met at Sundance Institute’s 2005 Middle East Screenwriters Lab in Jordan. Najjar, who is based in Ramallah, was working on her first feature project Pomegranates and Myrrh, about Kamar, a dancer whose husband is imprisoned soon after they are married because he refuses to give up his land. Dabis, who is based in Brooklyn, was also at the Lab writing a first feature, Amreeka, the story of Muna Farah, a Palestinian single mom fighting to maintain hope amidst the daily grind of life in the West Bank. When she receives a letter informing her that her family has been granted a U.S. green card, she visits her relatives in Illinois to see what life in a new land would be like. The Insider recently asked the two filmmakers to watch one another’s films and talk to one another about them. They had the following discussion, which took place over crackly phone lines due to the current bombing in Gaza.

Najwa Najjar: I couldn’t wait to see Amreeka!

Cherien Dabis:I loved Pomegranates and Myrrh; I was watching it and I felt like I’d seen it before. There was such familiarity, partly because I knew the script, but also because we shared some actors.

I really liked the way you portrayed the family; It’s like Kamar [Yasmine Elmasari] becomes the wife of a prisoner, and she’s really just trying to live her life despite that. And the pressure from the family to be a certain way felt so real. You really did a great job of capturing the daily frustrations and we don’t see that often enough. You’ve also done a great job telling a story of the land, of land confiscation. It’s such a powerful scene when the Israeli soldiers show up at the house, and then the scene that follows it where the family is looking through all the paperwork to prove that they’re the rightful owners. It’s so matter-of-fact.

NN: With Amreeka, I thought you captured the essence of Arab American life, as well as the gritty realism of the new immigrant’s life, but at the same time with affection and dignity; it was unbelievable. It was exactly it, as it is. And similarly the frustrations here, at home, Muna’s [Nisreen Faour] worry about her son, and then the breaking point. It was really well done.

CD: Thank you. A lot of love went into it, because it’s inspired by my family. And it’s definitely a world that I know.

NN: This was kind of your story, right?

CD: Yes. I grew up in Ohio, and we’d go back to Jordan for three months every year, so I moved back and forth all my life. And I felt like I was never American enough for Americans, and never Arab enough for the Arabs, and the question of who I was really haunted me for a long time. Where do I fit in? But I think you get to a place where you realize that you’re lucky to have these two very different perspectives.

Tell me what it was like to bring in your lead, Yasmine [Elmasri].

NN: She was born in Beirut.

CD: I know. So how were you able to bring her in to Palestine?

NN: She had a French passport. But still it was very dramatic when she arrived. We were crossing the bridge, and the Israeli soldiers came on the bus, so here it was her first time on Palestinian soil, and I said, “Yasmine, don’t cry.” I was worried that if she broke down we would be forced to go back to Amman. I couldn’t let her break down – it was very hard on me to do this to her. But despite the risks I felt she could do the role even better because she had never been to her country, because of this firstness for herself and for the film because she is a bride, coming to a new city, and I wanted her to have this experience.

For you, I wanted to ask, how was the relationship between the Canadian and Palestinian crew members?

CD: It was pretty incredible, actually. We shot in Winnipeg, Canada for rural Illinois. I wanted to find a Palestinian community in Winnipeg, but it was a challenge because it’s almost nonexistent. We found two Middle Eastern bakeries, but they were Lebanese. After some more searching, we found out about one Palestinian family originally from Ramallah – they and their relatives made up the whole community in Winnipeg! We ended up shooting in one of their homes – the idea was that this would be the most authentic and cost-effective way of creating the Palestinian home interior that we needed for the film.

And the crew in Canada was great. Overall, they just wanted to know more, and many of them wanted to come to the Palestinian part of the shoot. Production had a lot of concerns about shooting in Palestine, but to me as a Palestinian, I wanted to help create a film community there. And I wanted to spend money there, where it’s needed most. When we got there, it was such a victory for me, because all the non-Palestinians on the crew fell in love with it. So that was amazing.

I wanted to ask you a question that I get asked a lot: Who do you make movies for? Yourself or an audience?

NN: For both, I suppose. For me, making movies only for yourself could become very self-centered. And making a film only for an audience, adhering only to their needs could deplete the story of its passion, and I don’t think that works either. So a combination – a kind of dialogue between art and society – being driven to tell a story that you feel needs to be told as honestly and passionately as possible, but in a way that is accessible to audiences.

CD: I agree. It’s all about the balance. You are your first audience. So you have to make something you want to see. And hopefully if you want to see it, other people will want to see it too.

Meet the Artist: Tommy Wirkola Creates a Lot of Life from Dead Snow

2009-01-20T00:45:28+00:00

Director Tommy Wirkola’s second movie Dead Snow, stars a lot of Nazi zombies eager to munch on a group of eight Norwegian medical students spending Easter vacation at a cabin in the woods. The Nazis belonged to a particularly vicious battalion during World War II; after the Germans had ravaged a village in the north of Norway, the brave residents fought back and hunted the soldiers and their soulless leader, Colonel Herzog, up into the mountains, where the Nazis were believed to have frozen to death. It turns out that being a medical student can really come in handy when undead Nazis want to eat you. “They taught us amputation, remember?” one character reminds another.

Not only is there no Norwegian tradition of zombie movies, but there is no real tradition of horror movies there, period. Wirkola is out to change all that.

“Until recently, there weren’t a lot of genre movies here,” the 29-year-old director says. “I think a lot of Norwegians felt frustrated with it.” He says the Norwegian film industry has been more interested in period, arthouse dramas than in zombie movies. “The movie elite here thought American films in general were a step down but in recent years, there have been more pure genre movies. Norway has a really slow way of developing new culture; Sweden and Denmark have been faster than us but we’re catching up.”

Wirkola’s first film, Kill Buljo, a spoof from 2007 that uses Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill as a taking-off point, became a cult classic in Norway. “I’m American in my tastes, you could say,” Wirkola acknowledges. The profits from Kill Buljo financed Dead Snow, but the budget was still tight.

Shooting an entire feature in the snow didn’t make things easier. To move the camera, “we had one sled that we put behind a snowmobile with good shocks,” Wirkola says. And for every shot that required a Steadicam, “we used these big wooden plates so [the cameramen] could run on the snow.” But Wirkola says it was all worth it: “The snow makes everything seem a little more horrifying.”

He’s not kidding. When zombies suddenly and viciously emerge from the still, unbroken snow, it seems like it’s not only a crime against humanity, but against nature. Blood looks a lot bloodier when it’s spilled on snow. Not to mention that Wirkola’s zombies break a central rule of zombiedom: they run, fast. Wirkola says that’s because the heavy snow naturally slowed the zombies down, “so we needed them to run.” Besides, he says, “Germans are fast and efficient anyway.”

The Bearers of Bad News: Doc Makers on How to Engage Viewers While Delivering Dire Facts

2009-01-19T00:56:14+00:00

How do you convey very, very bad news? And how do you do it in a way that’s inspiring, provocative, perhaps even uplifting; in a way that engenders a positive, active — and even activist — response?

These are the questions that faced Festival documentary filmmakers this year, who arrive with a roster of films that chronicle environmental devastation and its dramatic implications for our all-too-near future.

For co-directors Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein, the key was character and conflict. No Impact Man follows Colin Beavan, his wife Michelle, and their daughter Isabella over the course of one year as they try to bring their net impact on the environment to zero. This task involved radically reducing their garbage output, buying only food produced within a 250-mile radius of their New York City apartment, and giving up electricity, among many other things.
The power of the film centers on the engaging dynamic between Colin and Michelle, who initially have very different levels of interest in environmental activism as it comes into their home.

“For me, and my work with social issue documentaries, the character provides the emotional road in to the subject — that’s the way I like to explore social issues,” explains Gabbert, whose 20-year acquaintance with Michelle allowed the filmmakers a special kind of access from the start.

Schein says he and Gabbert worked hard on building trust to get the kind of intimacy they sought. “The filming was usually just one person with the camera — usually me — and I became part of the family, and they became accustomed to the process,” he said. “You have to give your subjects the ability to turn the camera off, and with that there is some trust.”

That trust resulted in a deeply personal portrait and an intense struggle, especially for Michelle as she relinquishes beloved habits, faces ridicule, and sacrifices many of the niceties of contemporary life, including toilet paper. Initially, she’s pretty unhappy, which is understandable. “Because Michelle is the point of access for people,” said Gabbert, “her gradual change gives the audience permission to change.”

No Impact Man reveals troubling facts about environmental devastation through the heartening experiences of a single family. Dirt! The Movie, an engaging examination of the title namesake's role in the global ecosystem, opts to use colorful animations to enliven the film’s more technical moments. The film, directed by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow and inspired by William Bryant Logan’s book, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, includes interviews with a long list of activists whose work is literally grounded in the earth and soil increasingly encased in cement and polluted with toxins.

“What we found is that there are sequences for which you would either have to use time-lapse photography or giant aerial views of the land to explain,” Benenson says, “and instead, to describe something like nitrogen poisoning, we used simple, graphic animation. There really is no other way to convey this in a visually interesting and engaging way.” The sequences add texture and variety to the film, which also builds on the energy and passion of its subjects, who are nothing short of inspiring.

Robert Stone’s Earth Days hovers between No Impact Man and Dirt! with its use of memorable, compelling subjects — nine key voices in the history of environmental activism from the 1970s onward — and a sophisticated visual style that sustains interest throughout.

Similarly, The End of the Line, a gripping survey of over-fishing based on Charles Clover’s book The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat, also gains momentum from the passion of its subjects, who are mainly scientists studying the links in a chain of destruction currently being encountered at different phases all over the world. For director Rupert Murray, the key was to bring together these scientists and his own self-described “strange passion” for the sea.

“I didn’t want to make a natural history film,” Murray says. “They lie essentially. They tell a story about a perfect primeval system, excluding the one key element that is affecting the whole thing, which is man. A story about the oceans without man is a fabrication. I wanted to tell the real story. But when I say the ‘real story,’ I have to add that with the ocean, you never have the whole story. It’s impossible to really know the ocean because it’s so huge, so vast. So the process of making the film was also a process of trying to understand something virtually unknowable.”

The End of the Line unites exotic sea creatures from all over the world and many interviews, as well as plenty of images of fish struggling in nets or at the ends of massive lines. The result is a passionate plea for people to do one simple thing: stop eating so much fish before they’re all gone.

Murray traveled the world shooting incredible footage, but filmmaker Richard Knox Robinson stayed closer to home and used experimental filmmaking techniques to illustrate the plight of bees which, says Knox, are our canaries, our environmental monitors. Thanks to pesticides and environmental pollutants, bees are suffering Colony Collapse Disorder, which in turn affects pollination and our food supply.

The Beekeepers opens with striking black-and-white photographic negative of a bee, along with the music of an Ambrosian Chant. “Documentaries can be very didactic,” says Robinson, who cites Jem Cohen and Chris Marker among his influences. “[Documentaries] get stuck in this procedure in which they talk about something and then they show you the same thing, and there’s a sense that they can’t be poetic.”

The Beekeepers features lyrical imagery depicting bees and hives, crafting a visually provocative artwork that captures Robinson’s own awe for bees. “I was intrigued with the idea of putting together seemingly discordant formats,” Robinson says. “Rather than lure my audience into a comfort zone, I wanted to keep reminding them that they're having a media experience and force them to put things together themselves.”

Louie Psihoyos went in a decidedly different direction for The Cove. “I didn't start out to make a horror film, but we did,” he acknowledges. “Our story involves dolphins, and the horror story happens to them. But the bigger horror story is that we're polluted.”

Psihoyos ratchets up the suspense as he engages viewers in his attempts to uncover the truth. It’s nearly impossible to not want to take action alongside the film’s gutsy activist and subject, Ric O’Barry, who was the trainer for the dolphins used in the Flipper TV series. O’Barry’s guilt about how those dolphins were treated has compelled him to become a forceful activist fighting dolphin capture across the globe.

“The whole idea of our film, hopefully, is that we get people to become activists,” Psihoyos says. “There's a line in the film that says, ‘You’re either an activist or you’re an inactivist.’ I wanted to be active on the subject, to make a change. I think everybody who looks at this film is motivated to make a change.”

Other filmmakers experienced similar transformations. “I’d love to make a romantic comedy next,” says Rupert Murray, “but in my mind, it’s quite difficult to go from something like The End of the Line and have the same level of engagement. There’s something very invigorating about working on something of this scale — it’s global, it affects the world and history and time. It’s incredibly rewarding. Not to continue to do that would be really hard.”

Justin Schein agrees. “You start asking questions about how you live your own life, and I can list a number of changes that I’ve made,” he says. “But it has also crept into our filmmaking. What’s the most low impact way to make a film?”

Meet the Artist: Bronson Attempts to Explain the Unexplainable

2009-01-18T20:16:59+00:00

Nicolas Winding Refn is trying to describe the shape-shifting protagonist of Bronson, his new film about the notorious British prison inmate Michael Petersen who adopted the name of Hollywood action star Charles Bronson. But after a few attempts, the director sighs and gives up. "How the hell can you explain him?" asks Refn. "If you try to explain him, you're not taking advantage of his full potential."

A strange and brutal anti-biopic, Bronson elides many of the key events in its hero's life in favor of hyper-theatrical vignettes that encapsulate crucial aspects of his schizoid personality. Serving as emcee to his own story, Bronson (Tom Hardy, in a galvanizing performance) takes us on a journey through his fractured mind, showing us how he went from working-class lad to one of Britain's most violent prisoners.

Refn, who is best known for the Pusher trilogy (and who came to Sundance with Fear X in 2003), was brought on board by producer Rupert Preston, who already had a completed screenplay by Brock Norman Brock. Eventually, the director ended up re-writing much of the script to better reflect Bronson's peculiar mindset. "When I read his autobiography, it was not about getting out of prison, but staying in," explains the director.

Refn only spoke with Bronson once by telephone “and it was only to clarify a few facts about how he got into prison.” Mostly, the director relied on published accounts as well as his own imagination.

The movie was shot in Super 16 over a five-week period. Refn kept revising the screenplay during the filming (his usual method of work), which meant that 40 percent of the footage had to be re-shot. "We would film during the day and I would re-write during the night," he explains. For the scenes in which Bronson addresses an imaginary theatre audience, the director wrote the lines on a Friday night and shot them the following Monday.

To prepare for his starring role, Hardy worked with a personal trainer to transform himself into the hulking, menacing bulldog who became a household name to British tabloid readers. He visited Bronson in prison several times and developed a letter correspondence with him.

The movie couches Hardy's realer-than-real performance in a postmodern narrative that indulges in weird tangents and detours. Most notably, Refn devotes substantial running time to Bronson's transformation into a visual artist while in jail. "My approach was to use his life as an allegory of what artists go through," says the director. "In a way it's an autobiography of my own life."

Refn says his main aesthetic influence for Bronson was the work of Kenneth Anger – Scorpio Rising and to a lesser extent Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. The macho homoeroticism that pulsates through Anger's films is evident in Bronson, especially in the fight scenes (Bronson was a boxer before he went to prison) and in several scenes near the end that feature an abundance of full-frontal nudity.

The director recalls having spent time with Anger several years ago. "I told him I wanted to steal everything I could from him," Refn says. "He turned to me and replied, 'Be my guest.'"

Far From Our Town: Stew Exposes the âFilter of Decorumâ

2009-01-18T01:11:55+00:00

Mark Stewart, aka Stew, isn’t exactly a boy from the ‘hood. After growing up in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, he moved to Amsterdam and Berlin, where he pursued his career as a singer-songwriter. In 2004 and 2005, he and his musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald brought what he calls a “wild stack of papers with coffee stains” to the Sundance Theatre Lab and transformed it into the rock musical Passing Strange, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an artist coming of age in Europe that won the 2008 Tony for Best Book and inspired Spike Lee to document the final Broadway performances on film. At Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab, Stew also developed a companion screenplay to Passing Strange called We Can See Today. “He talks about the bourgeois African-American experience,” says Michelle Satter, Founding Director of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, “and it’s a world that I haven’t necessarily seen before.” During a brief stopover in Los Angeles in the days before the Festival, Stew talked to the Insider about “black folks passing as black folks” and other essentialist curiosities of American life.

Insider: How did you get the idea?

Stew: Our departing president was the inspiration for Passing Strange when I found out that George Bush the Second hadn’t ever been to Europe. It had a profound effect on me because I thought, “Okay, here’s a guy who owns planes. How could you be so rich and not go to Africa, or not go to China, or not go to South America?” I was sitting around at 17 going, “Oh my God, if I could just get to wherever — San Francisco, New York, Paris!” I wanted to go to the whole world. So I wrote Passing Strange to chronicle an American story that was about being curious about the world and not about Our Town, the small town thing.

Insider: Do you see it as a political piece of art?

Stew: I do. I think ultimately any personal statement can be political. And while it’s heavily documented in the world of literature, I feel like in film and in theatre we could have more stories about black expatriate-ism. And more stories not just about the experience of “Oh, Josephine Baker went to Paris, and then she was a hit!” But let’s talk about why Josephine Baker felt she had to leave in the first place.

Insider: What does your protagonist hope to find in Europe?

Stew: Everything that he hears from his community is through the filter of decorum or the filter on how black people behave. You know, “You’re supposed to play football or basketball if you’re black,” or “Why don’t you wear this because this is what black teenagers are supposed to wear,” or “Why don’t you talk like this because this is how black teenagers are supposed to talk?” And he doesn’t want the filter. He wants, as he keeps saying, something that feels real.

Insider: What’s the significance of the title?

Stew: Someone gave me a comic book edition of Othello, which is awesome because I’m such an idiot that I can’t handle a lot of Shakespearean English. I opened the book, and I happened upon this speech where Othello is explaining to Desdemona’s dad how she fell in love with him and how he wooed her by accident by telling her all these war stories, all these tall tales. And it was so moving, because I knew the character in my play was going to travel, he was going to meet women, and he was going to tell women tales about America and about his travels, and some of these tales would be stretched a bit just like Othello’s war stories were stretched. But what blew me away was when Othello told her these stories, Desdemona would always say, what a strange story, it was passing strange. You know, like beyond strange. And I thought, “Oh wow!” because I knew the play was also going to be about passing — people wearing the psychological masks that people wear, and the whole passing for black, passing for white, passing for poor, passing for rich, slumming, all those kinds of things.

Insider: Your protagonist talks about “black folks passing for black folks.” Is that something you experienced growing up in Los Angeles?

Stew: I did feel that people were conforming to self-imposed stereotypes or to community-imposed stereotypes. It used to be very strange if a black man or a black kid talked like Barack Obama. Now the thing is, I grew up with black people for the most part in my family who talk like that, so that was never a weird thing for me. But for some people, authentic black speech means you sound like you’re from Louisiana. And I’ve always felt — and I think I’m right — that accents are regional, they’re not really racial. My parents are both from the Midwest. Neither of them sound like they’re from the South. And it gets confusing when someone keeps telling you that you don’t sound black. And I’m always like, “You just don’t know enough black people to know what you’re talking about.”

Insider: Did you always hope to turn the musical into a film?

Stew: I was so ready to close, but if I had closed, and after all that work we had done there was no documentation except some wiggly, handheld camera in the back that somebody bootlegged, I would have lost my mind. I mean, it was the biggest thing we’ve ever done. Four years of work. So Spike Lee basically has saved me thousands of dollars in therapy bills!

Short Shot: Instead of Abracadabra, a Lot of Humor

2009-01-17T21:19:41+00:00

Even when he eventually ventures into longer format storytelling, director Patrik Eklund, director of the beguiling short Instead of Abracadabra, doesn't plan to give up short form content. "I love the format and the freedom," says the Sweden-based filmmaker, who heads to Park City with a film that sheds comedic light on and reveals the heart in the timeless practice of magic.

Instead of Abracadabra is the hilarious, endearing story of a 20-something slacker who lives at home with his disapproving parents and has only one goal: to be a great magician.

The concept for the film was born when Eklund cut a show reel for a local magician, which included four hours of material and, naturally, some bloopers.

"You could really feel the panic when something went wrong and how he acted to cover things up again," Eklund says. "I felt I just had to do something that had the same sort of nerve. I'm a huge fan of magic and have nothing but respect for those who dare perform it, especially the Swedish Super Wizard Joe Labero."

After two versions of the script (a dramatic attempt and a comedic one that finally stuck), an impressively short 4-day shoot (the film is 22 minutes long) with expert prop makers who made sure no swords went through performers, and a full month of editing, the short was complete. It has since screened at a number of film festivals and received much praise, due in part to the combined talents of Eklund, producer Mathias Fjellström, cinematographer David Grehn, and a handful of memorable performers. In addition to being a part of Shorts Program 3, Instead of Abracadabra can be downloaded for free from iTunes from January 15-25.

Bengt, the father of the magician, is played by Jacob Nordenson, who has worked with Eklund on virtually every film he has made. Tomas the magician is played by Simon Berger, who had just finished acting school; Eklund saw him on a Swedish TV series called Upp till Kamp. "I told him to grow a moustache and then it all fell into place,” Eklund says.

“It’s quite heavily rehearsed and new things always pop up during rehearsal,” Eklund mentions when citing how bits of improvisation made its way into the final piece.

As for his trip to the Festival, Eklund's only agenda is to take every moment as it comes. “Hopefully I’ll get to see a lot of great films and meet interesting people,” Eklund says. “[Instead of Abracadabra] has been very well received at various festivals, which is a great relief to me. I didn’t think it was so funny after a lot of rewrites and a lot of editing. A joke gets outdated pretty quickly. Now it’s just a pleasure to hear that some people find it funny.”

Meet the Artist: Doug Pray Finds the Humanity Behind Big Money in Art & Copy

2009-01-17T21:02:20+00:00

Doug Pray has forged a career documenting characters that live on the fringes of the establishment: the truckers in Big Rig, the graffiti artists in Infamy, the DJs in Scratch. So when he turned his camera on the executives behind some of the most successful advertising campaigns of the past half-century — from “got milk?” to the Budweiser frogs — he was surprised to learn that they also consider themselves underdogs. “The thing is, from their perspective, they’re working from so far within the system that it’s like all odds are against them,” says Pray. “They have the same mindset as your average Sundance independent filmmaker.”

The idea for Art & Copy was brought to Pray’s attention by One Club, a non-profit that celebrates excellence in advertising. But as Pray met some of the giants of the industry, the project quickly evolved from a simple organizational tribute into something far more nuanced. Prayescorts his audience into the offices of the best and brightest of a muchmaligned field, intercutting their stories with images of the far-reaching effects of their creativity — billboards being erected, satellites being launched, and clips from some of the most enduring ad campaigns of our time. “I was as cynical about advertising as anyone else when I entered the project,” says Pray. “But as soon as it was humanized, and it was a film about creative people, it got really interesting to me.”

Entering the glamorous and moneyed homes and offices of the advertising elite was a new experience for Pray. “The thing that amazed me most was the architecture,” he says. “It was just funny for me, because I’ve done other movies that are much more street and underground and crazy. I’m always in basements and cellars and alleys. So when I made this movie, the biggest thing that changed was I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m in huge penthouses.’ It seemed like the West Coast offices were just these massive, amazing, open, creative atmospheres, and very expensive, too.”

Within these walls, Pray didn’t find a bunch of cynical suits driven solely by the almighty dollar. “I met Mary Wells Lawrence,” says Pray about the founding president of the ground-breaking agency Wells Rich Greene. “She has these little napkins, and the napkins say, ‘Have a big life.’ And it’s not like I immediately put that into practice after I walked out of the elevator, but it actually is a pretty inspiring thought.”

Many of those at the top of the advertising game share Lawrence’s optimism and believe that they are elevating products and people through their work. “It’s like they’re putting little pixie dust on everything,” says Pray with a laugh. The effect isn’t always a mere illusion. Nike’s “JustDo It” campaign did motivate Americans to exercise more, and the ads that launched Tommy Hilfiger to prominence terrified him into living up to his reputation by working twice as hard to design great clothes.

Whether or not ads are doing a public service, they will continue to be a fixture in our culture for a long time to come. “It’s the cave painting of our era,” says Pray. “The point of the film is not to judge, but to show and get into it and just go, ‘This is what we do, and this is what we say, and here’s where it comes from.’”

Unmade Beds, Indie Hearts

2009-01-17T01:09:14+00:00

It's a silly question, of course. Romance and indie cinema have always been closely intertwined, if not in bed with each other. John Cassavetes – the father of American independent cinema – devoted his entire career to mapping the complicated cross-currents of passion. More recently, non-sentimental auteurs like Richard Linklater and Michel Gondry have dipped their toes in the warm waters of amour, though always with a chilly regard to the genre's many clichés.

This year, romance is out in full-force along Main Street, with films of all nationalities, budgets, and temperaments taking a knee before the temple of Eros. If the approaches are wildly eclectic, the films themselves manifest a romantic sincerity and lack of irony that may seem downright foreign to loyal indie fans. In many ways, they represent a back-to-basics diet with the power to cleanse, invigorate, and maybe even uplift cynical audiences.

We'll have what they're having. Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy follows the ups and downs in a stormy relationship between the title characters – the scruffy New York hipster Peter (Jason Ritter), and his more straight-laced girlfriend Vandy (Jess Weixler).

Based on DiPietro's play of the same name, the movie skips randomly through the couple's complicated history, telling their story out of sequence and making viewers complete the jigsaw puzzle in their heads.

"I always intended to tell the story out of order,” explains the writer-director. “I think the juxtaposition is a lot of fun. As you get to know the couple, you find out who they are and where they are in their history by how they do things, not by chronology."

Peter and Vandy was shot in sequence over a three-week period; the naturalistic dialogue was almost all scripted. (DiPietro played the part of Peter in the play's 2002 off-off-Broadway production.) The writer-director adds that the disorienting structure forces you to concentrate on the little moments of the relationship for clues as to where you are in the film. "You start seeing afters in the befores," he says.

In Paper Heart, romance takes the form of a not-quite documentary about Los Angeles comedienne Charlyne Yi's cross-country journey to interview ordinary people about love and marriage. But the film's documentary structure gives way to a romance between Yi and actor Michael Cera (playing himself) that may or may not be fictional.

The idea for the movie originated with Yi, who wanted to do a straightforward documentary about love. But when she teamed up with director Nicolas Jasenovec, the movie became something stranger, with Yi eventually assuming the role of herself in the narrative portion of the movie.

"She's a character and a bit not a character," Yi explains. Her skepticism about love, both in real life and the film, drives the movie toward a merging of the documentary and fictional story.

"We realized it would be half-and-half, and in terms of striking a balance, it kind of dictated its own structure," Jasenovec says .

An unconventional heart also beats at the center of Alexis Dos Santos' Unmade Beds. Spanish backpacker Axl (Fernando Tielve) and French 20-something Vera (Déborah François), are the romantic leads who never manage to meet in their adopted home – a London squat that has become an artistic commune.

Missed connections keep the two protagonists apart, but they remain metaphysically linked through a shared romantic yearning, often unrequited, for human contact. Axl forms a series of puppy-dog attachments to various squat inhabitants – men and women alike. He also latches on to a London real-estate agent who he thinks could be his long-lost father. Meanwhile, Vera pines for an old flame and passes the time by working at a bookstore.

"The idea for the movie was to portray the building where the characters lived and to create a feel for those people," says Dos Santos. "I wanted the two stories to mirror each other, with items like a jacket and mattress passing between them."

Shot in Nottingham and London over a five-week period, Unmade Beds is partially an ode to the international bohemia who descend upon the capital city in droves. "I wanted to portray how young people in London really are," says the director. "It's a story about people constantly arriving and leaving."

Max Mayer's Adam is also about two potential soul-mates who live in the same building. Set in Manhattan's Upper West Side, the film follows the title character, Adam (Hugh Dancy), a single young man with Asperger Syndrome, and his tenuous relationship with his neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne).

Mayer, who also wrote the film, says that making romantic movies is getting increasingly difficult these days because "a lot of the taboos have been explored to death." He adds that Asperger presented a plausible romantic obstacle that audiences aren't likely to dismiss as trivial. (The director cites Punch-Drunk Love and Breaking the Waves as inspirations for their depiction of mentally disturbed characters in the throes of love.)

In addition to reading books on Asperger Syndrome, Mayer and Dancy attended support meetings for sufferers who are trying to socialize into society. "I wanted the film to investigate the syndrome as a metaphor," he says. "It’s like we're all stuck in our own brain, trying to reach each other."

Perhaps the most emotionally direct of the Festival's romance films, Cruz Angeles' Don't Let Me Drown tells the story of two New York teenagers who find love in the month immediately following the September 11 attacks.

Lalo (E.J. Bonilla) lives in Brooklyn with his parents and spends his time cruising the neighborhood with his friends. His father, a construction worker, has been hired to remove debris at Ground Zero, while his mother tries to make ends meet with diminishing success.

Romance arrives in the form of Stefanie (Gleendilys Inoa), a sullen and inexpressive teen from the Lower East Side. A shared sense of tragedy brings the two protagonists together – one of Stefanie's relatives perished in the World Trade Center, while Lalo is a daily witness to his father's broken and battered body.

Even amid rubble, a love story grows. The film's willingness to sound sentimental, even old-fashioned, is an indication of its full-blooded commitment to the genre. As Lalo says, in a cri de coeur that could serve as the taglines of many of the Festival's romance films: "How're you gonna diss a brotha when he's opening his heart to you?"

Meet the Artist: Havana Marking

2009-01-16T01:57:23+00:00

Reality TV shows like "American Idol" arguably occupy a space near the bottom of our pop-culture barrel, but one country's guilty-pleasure dregs can be another's social breakthrough.

The documentary Afghan Star follows the contestants of an "Idol"-like series, also called Afghan Star, that airs to soaring popularity in the central Asian country. More than just a diversion from grinding poverty and non-stop war, the show proves to be a galvanizing social phenomenon and even a controversy of life-and-death proportions.

An Afghanistan-U.K. co-production, Afghan Star is directed by independent London-based producer and documentarian Havana Marking.

"In the West, we look down on reality TV like this. But in Afghanistan, it’s hugely powerful," she says.

In March 2008, the director traveled to Kabul to chronicle the taping of the latest season of the reality show. Her crew consisted of herself and her cameraman, Phil Stehbing, who doubled as the sound engineer.

"Life is easier in Afghanistan if you're a smaller team. You don’t draw attention to yourself," says Marking, referring to the country's kidnapping epidemic.

At its heart, Afghan Star explores the power of pop culture to change a country where just eight years ago, singing in public was a crime.

The TV series, like its U.S. counterpart, is a competitive singing contest in which viewers get to vote for their favorite contestants. The show features representatives from different ethnic groups sharing the stage peacefully, something that would have been unthinkable less than 10 years ago. But perhaps the film's most surprising sequences are those that follow some of the female contestants whose on-air presence elicits disapproval from all levels of society.

In one climactic scene, Setara, a young contestant from Herat, performs an act of defiance on stage after being voted off the show. Her act – which might seem silly and harmless to the Western viewer – angers conservative elders and progressive youths alike. There are threats against her life. The documentary follows her home to Heart, where she faces an uncertain reception from her family.

The documentary's two-person crew faced its own difficulties. An armed bodyguard was hired for location shooting. Electricity proved unreliable – on average, Kabul has only three hours of juice per day. This meant that commonplace tasks like lighting and charging the camera were extremely difficult.

The logistical limitations necessitated a surgical-strike mentality on the part of the director. "You have to go in and out. You can't ring in advance to say you’re coming. And you can't say, 'I'll be back tomorrow to shoot,'" explains Marking. The filmmaker partnered with Tolo TV, a commercial broadcaster that produces Afghan Star. The station allowed complete access to the taping of the series in exchange for sharing the rights to the documentary.

The director says that during production some colleagues criticized her decision to make a film about a trashy TV show.

"They told me that pop shows are rubbish," she recalls. "But shows like this are one of the fastest ways to reach people. What it's achieving in terms of change is more than an NGO [non-government organization] could do in a year. Compared to the depressing news coming out of the country, we thought that this was a powerful story with hope."

The Odd Couple

2008-12-10T22:08:59+00:00

There are animated films that you take the kids to see and then there are animated films best appreciated by grown-ups. Mary and Max, the opening-night selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, definitely falls into the latter category. This moody claymation movie embraces the dark side of human nature, tackling issues of loneliness, alcoholism, suicide, and morbid obesity.

Mary and Max deals with depressing themes but it's not a depressing movie. In fact, it's a comedy (of sorts) with a life-affirming message. Five years in the making, Mary and Max is the first feature by Australian writer-director Adam Elliot, who won an Academy Award in 2004 for his animated short film Harvie Krumpet.

His new movie tells the story of two oddball pen pals -- Max (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a 44-year-old obese New Yorker who lives alone, and Mary (voiced as a child by Bethany Whitmore and later by Toni Collette), a friendless eight-year-old girl living in Australia.

Speaking during a break in post-production from a studio in Melbourne, the director explained that the movie is based on his own long-distance pen-friendship with an obese Jewish man in New York who suffers from autism. "I can't reveal his name, of course," says Elliot, 36. "But I suppose I'm Mary in our situation."

During production, the filmmaker wanted Hoffman to use an unrecognizable voice as Max because he feared the audience's illusion "will be spoiled if you can picture the actor in a sound studio." At first, Hoffman used an autistic-like voice but the director thought it was too cold. The actor then tried a gruff Noo-Yawk accent that the director thought was warmer. (Hoffman recorded his part in London while the crew worked in Melbourne; they collaborated via Skype video.)

Mary and Max follows the protagonists' friendship for nearly 20 years as they grow older and somehow keep missing opportunities to meet each other in person. Mary's self-esteem improves and she eventually befriends Damien (Eric Bana), an artistically inclined boy with a stutter. Meanwhile, Max grows fatter and more reclusive.

The director said his main visual inspiration was Diane Arbus, whose photographs often depict social outcasts and the physically grotesque. In the movie's first shot of the Manhattan skyline, Elliot inserted a fleeting homage to Arbus in the form of a woman who resembles the famed photographer standing at a window.

Shooting Mary and Max using the stop-motion process took a little more than 13 months, with an average of 2.5 minutes of animation created per week. The crew made 212 plasticene puppets and used six hi-res Canon digital still cameras to capture the tiny changes in positioning needed to create the illusion of movement.

In all, the film cost under $10 million, with the majority of the budget coming from the Australian government. Melanie Coombs, the film's producer, said the Oscar win for Harvie Krumpet helped to open doors. "Quite frankly, people returned our calls faster," she says. "But it wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. We rubbed every cent twice."

She adds that the success of mature-themed animated movies like Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir has made the art form more attractive to indie filmmakers: "You can tell a story in the animated world that people would find too confronting in a live-action movie. A lot of animated films today are absolutely not for kids but they're incredibly powerful. And that's why I think more independent filmmakers are turning toward animation."