Visiting major film fests - Sundance 20102010-02-22
For Us Sundance Is A Must!For the little town of Park City, UT, January is certainly the busiest month of the year. For the past 25 years Sundance Film Festival has gathered thousands of indie film lovers from all over the world at this small winter resort. “It's time for cinematic rebellion. We want to continue to struggle against the domination of the expectable. Let's fight a battle for new, great ideas”, announced Trevor Groth, the programming director (and OFF PLUS CAMERA's advisor) and John Cooper, the artistic director of Sundance Film Festival.
For us, the team organizing OFF PLUS CAMERA, attending Sundance Film Festival is a must. We go there every year to pick films for the upcoming stanza of our festival in Krakow. We hope we will be able to bring some of the best movies presented in Park City to our cinemas this April as part of the Sundance Film Series in Krakow. This is a special program organized in collaboration with the Sundance programming team and will include some of the official entries from this year's competition line-up as well as movies that came to life mainly thanks to the Sundance Film Lab.
Jack Goes Boating, dir. Philip Seymour Hoffman
And there were plenty of movies to choose from. Apart from the permanent competition section, presenting the most interesting features and documentaries (including Jacek Borcuch’s “All that I Love”) and a section called “Premieres”, including movies by the already famous and popular (for instance, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut “Jack Goes Boating”), the festival’s audience had a chance to catch up and watch films that won publicity at numerous international film festivals (like “Lourdes", "Un Prophète" and "Women Without Men").
The section called NEXT is a new concept, aimed at presenting interesting low and no-budget productions. This section is an approach to go back to the roots of Sundance Film Festival and the ideas which shaped it at the very beginning. The cinema-goers had an opportunity to see movies like Katie Aselton’s “Freebie”, which tells of the complicated nature of monogamy in a fresh and uncliched way. Eyada Zahra’s debut, "The Taqwacores", a story of Muslim punk rockers trying to reconcile the world of music with that of religion, is also a great production.
The Kids Are All Right, dir. Lisa Cholodenko
Apart from low-budget movies, there were plenty of productions with stars like: Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner and Julianne Moore. A new film from Lisa Cholodenko (whose “High Art” was shown at OFF PLUS CAMERA’s last year) turned out to be a big success. “The Kids Are All Right” is a bitter-sweet story of a lesbian couple, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annete Bening), whose relationship is put to the test when Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the sperm-donor who they have to thank for their two children, appears in their lives. Cholodenko undermines the stereotypes and analyzes the complicated nature of human relations, stating the fact that aside from sex and sexual orientation, a human being is a highly unpredictable creature.
Winter's Bone, reż. Debra Granik
At the very beginning of the festival Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” gained publicity and later on won a well-deserved main award in the American Drama Competition. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “HOWL”, with James Franco as Allan Ginsberg, was also praised, as was the Australian thriller “Animal Kingdom” from David Michôd, winner in the best foreign movie category. “Blue Valentine”, starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, another film telling about the difficulties of two people communicating with each, other is also worth mentioning. The first studio movie from the Duplass Brothers – “Cyrus”, starring Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly is really outstanding, as well.
The documentaries section was just great. Davis Guggenheim, who showed his “WAITING FOR SUPERMAN”, a shocking analyses of the American education system, lived up to expectations. A new film by Adrian Grenier (from the tv series “Entourage”) “Teenage Paparazzo”, where the director, influenced by meeting a 13-year-old paparazzo, decides to join photographers who follow him and suddenly finds himself in their shoes, was also well received. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s “Catfish” turned out to be a real hit. It’s a profound analysis of the times where direct contact is slowly being displaced by mobile phones, chats and virtual communities.
The organizers of Sundance proved once again that their festival is still one of the most important events on the world’s festival map. So, OFF PLUS CAMERA takes even more pride in the fact that the Sundance Institute agreed to continue the collaboration between Park City and Krakow, initiated last year.
We kindly invite you all to Krakow then.
What is independent cinema? We've asked a number of people at Sundance this question. Watch what they've got to say.
Jack Goes Boating, dir. Philip Seymour Hoffman
And there were plenty of movies to choose from. Apart from the permanent competition section, presenting the most interesting features and documentaries (including Jacek Borcuch’s “All that I Love”) and a section called “Premieres”, including movies by the already famous and popular (for instance, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut “Jack Goes Boating”), the festival’s audience had a chance to catch up and watch films that won publicity at numerous international film festivals (like “Lourdes", "Un Prophète" and "Women Without Men").
The section called NEXT is a new concept, aimed at presenting interesting low and no-budget productions. This section is an approach to go back to the roots of Sundance Film Festival and the ideas which shaped it at the very beginning. The cinema-goers had an opportunity to see movies like Katie Aselton’s “Freebie”, which tells of the complicated nature of monogamy in a fresh and uncliched way. Eyada Zahra’s debut, "The Taqwacores", a story of Muslim punk rockers trying to reconcile the world of music with that of religion, is also a great production.
The Kids Are All Right, dir. Lisa Cholodenko
Apart from low-budget movies, there were plenty of productions with stars like: Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner and Julianne Moore. A new film from Lisa Cholodenko (whose “High Art” was shown at OFF PLUS CAMERA’s last year) turned out to be a big success. “The Kids Are All Right” is a bitter-sweet story of a lesbian couple, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annete Bening), whose relationship is put to the test when Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the sperm-donor who they have to thank for their two children, appears in their lives. Cholodenko undermines the stereotypes and analyzes the complicated nature of human relations, stating the fact that aside from sex and sexual orientation, a human being is a highly unpredictable creature.
Winter's Bone, reż. Debra Granik
At the very beginning of the festival Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” gained publicity and later on won a well-deserved main award in the American Drama Competition. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “HOWL”, with James Franco as Allan Ginsberg, was also praised, as was the Australian thriller “Animal Kingdom” from David Michôd, winner in the best foreign movie category. “Blue Valentine”, starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, another film telling about the difficulties of two people communicating with each, other is also worth mentioning. The first studio movie from the Duplass Brothers – “Cyrus”, starring Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly is really outstanding, as well.
The documentaries section was just great. Davis Guggenheim, who showed his “WAITING FOR SUPERMAN”, a shocking analyses of the American education system, lived up to expectations. A new film by Adrian Grenier (from the tv series “Entourage”) “Teenage Paparazzo”, where the director, influenced by meeting a 13-year-old paparazzo, decides to join photographers who follow him and suddenly finds himself in their shoes, was also well received. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s “Catfish” turned out to be a real hit. It’s a profound analysis of the times where direct contact is slowly being displaced by mobile phones, chats and virtual communities.
The organizers of Sundance proved once again that their festival is still one of the most important events on the world’s festival map. So, OFF PLUS CAMERA takes even more pride in the fact that the Sundance Institute agreed to continue the collaboration between Park City and Krakow, initiated last year.
We kindly invite you all to Krakow then.
What is independent cinema? We've asked a number of people at Sundance this question. Watch what they've got to say.
