Tag Archives: Conversation

#Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival

Through You – How A New VR Project Dances with Intimacy

December 10, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Lily Baldwin

I didn’t do film school. I was a dancer and started making raw stop-motion shorts when touring with David Byrne. After 150 shows, I came to realize that dance enabled people to understand the music. Unsure what the “strange moves” meant, dance gave them permission to feel something they couldn’t necessarily fit into words. Then is when I first felt the compulsion to turn the electricity of a live performance into an object that could transcend borders, language, and endure time. I turned my hard knock dancer-work-ethic into teaching myself how to edit with stills I’d shot (after a year I realized using a mouse made all the difference). ’Twas pure play – I wasn’t even sure what the “it” of it was supposed to be.

I’ve built this manifesto of sorts that guides my work: Everyone speaks body, it’s a universal alphabet. I define this “visceral cinema” with articulate bodies in space in relationship to a lens. Dance isn’t always a virtuosic “pow”; it’s about bodies that are aware of their edges and use their range. Bodies can’t lie. They are the subtext of us – it’s a subterranean language usually too shy to come out. Bodies speak nuance and contradiction that get lost when spoken. The clincher is fitting a body inside a lens – a practice that is significantly more crafted than grabbing footage of a crazy-cool body. I think it’s a balance of these: Proximity to lens, distinct performance focus, a breathing handheld camera, knowing when/not to crop a body and lock frame, editing as a rhythm tool (cutting on action, thank you Maya Deren), and sound/music as sub-protagonist and dialogue. The final convergence shouldn’t be possible in real life. “Gesamtkunstwerk,“ meaning “total work of art,“ is my favorite word, and a wink to The Ballet Russe.

Co-Directing: Where Differences Unite

A couple years ago my friend Saschka Unseld (Oculus Story Studio) asked me to make something with dance. I was trying to turn the “flattie” into a kinetic playground, so the prospect of having 360 degrees to mess around with was enticing. I could use my years of performing in unconventional spaces and get rid of the proscenium box that now seemed stuck on a wall. We’ve both always edited our own work and agree that nothing is ever completed. He’s a renowned director, cinematographer, and tech maven (the latter not being my forte). We embraced our differences, jumped off our respective cliffs, and trusted that our mutual rigor would spit us out somewhere. We applied and were accepted into the Sundance Institute Jaunt VR Residency.

Lily directing Joanna Kotze and Amari Cheatom with Saschka and DP Dagmar Weaver-Madsen. Photo by Cameron Berton.

This collaboration has been striking. It has enabled me to indulge in imagination without needing to know how to practically realize the fantasy. I play with the parameters of performance and narrative expectation. Saschka is a poet with technology and uses it to capture a distinct human tenderness. He moves like a dancer, engaging his tools like I’ve trained my skeleton. We began collaborating by dancing together – him, as his camera, with me. It’s a unique banter, our unique perfectionisms moving through space. We cantilever off our perspectives, pick up where the other drops off, and take different paths to arrive at the same place. It’s an intuitive collision.

Carob is Not Chocolate and VR is Not Film

What’s disarming (and therefore exciting) about VR, is that we’re asking the viewer to silently enter and intimately witness a world they don’t have much control over (yet). This medium’s power is not about titillating the viewer with a rush of endorphins — we all know adapting film to VR is a mistake. The potency of VR is combining the intensity of immersion with all the tech limitations, and then using these as tools to articulate something that couldn’t exist in any other medium — and should absolutely not be possible in real life.

What is Story in VR?

We both wrestle with linearity. Real life happens in simultaneous layers, which is how we experience time and therefore story. Creating in 360 degrees space was a relief, and has left us thinking of story in terms of “slices of life”. Saschka strongly felt we should remove all filmmaking protocol from our process. He slowed down our script into a series of “peak moments of being” that were strung in a bold tableau. I think of it as walking through a museum and stepping inside a series of paintings (each one a complete world) on the wall. VR demands that users feel culpable, feel responsible, feel powerful, feel alone, and feel close. What is a story that uses this alphabet? These tenets dictate our story experience. Time plays differently because there’s so much to see! Because you’re intimate with the environment, little things become epic. Directing in VR is its own muscle, one we’re exploring and training.

Limitations Are Portals For Discovery

My uncle is hard of hearing and he has the most amazing sense of smell. There’s something about having less of one thing, that mandates solving in unexpected ways. I’m a sucker for detail and frustrated by the “fuzzy” picture in VR. After a test shoot, we decided we couldn’t lose the subtle intimacy of our breathing dancers, Joanna Kotze, Amari Cheatom, and Marni Wood, as they moved from the ‘70s through 2046. So we decided dance had to express emotion graphically. Specified fingers in space made all the difference. Colored light would imbue the emotional details lost in their faces. Inside the crafted costume and production design, reflective fabrics with bold patterns would define the character of a body, bold architectural shapes in the room and strong color shifts would best show time passing.

Amari Cheatom and Marni Wood in Through You. Photo by Cameron Berton.

Rigorous Mistakes Are Innovations

Authentic creativity and innovation come from not having rules and not knowing what things are called. Too much identification keeps us confined to knowing what things should be. When I fall onstage and fuck up, it presents a new choice. (First thing is to keep a straight face and never look like you didn’t mean it.) This impromptu problem-solving and rigorous commitment to follow-through is my background, and we’re finding it’s perfect for VR. On set my freshness to the space had me proposing wild “What if?” and “Can we…?!” questions. Saschka adamantly protected our creative discovery saying that anything that “wasn’t supposed to work,” we’d ignore. “There are no rules, anyone who says differently is jumping the gun,” he said. As our previous experiments had proved, we could move the camera and not make the viewer nauseous. It was more complex than tracking a “fixed focal point” — we found the key is creating a physical connection between the camera/viewer and the subject. I danced with Saschka, and there happened to be a camera between us. Fast cuts? Jump cuts? Frantic changes in pace? It’s all possible, it’s just a force that needs to be properly wielded. The conversation is too often between technology and art. We’re talking about technology and body. We want to use technology to move into uncharted areas that make us reckon with our mortality. Our motto: If we fail, if this ends up a disaster, let’s at least fail upwards.

We’ve thrown caution to the wind, and there’s nothing shy about Through You. We dive head on into a never-ending love story that will play cyclically, hitting the peak moments of intimacy, betrayal, loss, aging, the passing of time — only to be engulfed in flames and then reborn again under water. It’s a racy, bold, and undeniably human experience that pushes the power of immersion and dares us to have a body that loves, feels pleasure, and feels loss. We worked intensely with our DP and longtime collaborator Dagmar Weaver-Madsen – a fierce maker in her own right – and she held us to task, grounded our ideas in practicality, and proposed bold DIY ideas to solve curveballs. She pushed us hard and kept the production glued together with the expertise of Brooke Chapman, our camera supervisor who wielded Jaunt’s incredible camera. It was a dream team. None of Through You would exist without our team’s incredibly hard work.

It’s a hot moment, this VR thing. As a dancer first, it’s a space where I thrive and where I don’t have to be an expert – I just get to be rigorously curious. I feel like I’m a detective and we’re all on a wicked-good scavenger hunt.

Final Thoughts

With such polarizing fear shaping our climate, we’ve called our choices into question. It’s a privilege to do what we do. (“Artist” makes us cringe – we think of ourselves as “lookers,” “finders” and “makers.”) What can we do about what’s happening in our world now? We’ve landed here – how can 360 immersive degrees wake up a body? When we literally feel ourselves and all that VR can do (way more than we think), we remember our impact: we are responsible, we make a difference.

(Source: http://www.sundance.org)

#SBIFF, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Showcase Series

SBIFF The Showcase Film Series – On The Map

December 10, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

ON THE MAP tells the against-all- odds story of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 1977 European Championship, which took place at a time when the Middle East was still reeling from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1972 Olympic massacre at Munich, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv. Through the of lens of sports, ON THE MAP presents a much broader story of how one team captured the heart of a nation amidst domestic turmoil and the global machinations of the Cold War.

ON THE MAP
Written and Directed by Dani Menkin
Starring Tal Brody, David Stern, Bill Walton
Country of Origin: USA
Running Time: 85 min

Screening:
Sunday, December 11 @ 2:00pm
Monday, December 12 @ 7:30pm
Tuesday, December 13 @ 5:00pm
Wednesday, December 14 @ 7:30pm
at the Riviera Theatre – 2044 Alameda Padre Serra

Click here for tickets.

“There’s no surer ingredient for a feel-good documentary than an inspirational sports story, and filmmaker Dani Menkin delivers one in spades with his recounting of the 1979 European Cup victory by the national Israeli basketball team.”
Frank Scheck – Hollywood Reporter

“On the Map, a documentary about Maccabi Tel Aviv’s improbable success in the 1977 edition of the tourney, is a feel-good Cinderella story, the real-life details are at least apropo of this kind of athletic fairy tale.”
Michael Nordine – Village Voice/L.A.Weekly

“Menkin has been especially thorough in telling
this classic against-all-odds sports story.”
Kenneth Turan – LA Times

(Source: sbiff.org)

Palm Springs International Film Festival

Amy Adams to Receive the Chairman’s Award at Palm Springs

December 9, 2016 HollywoodGlee 1 Comment

Palm Springs, CA (December 9, 2016) – The 28th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will present Amy Adams with the Chairman’s Award for her performance in Arrival at its annual Film Awards Gala. The Film Awards Gala, hosted by Mary Hart, will be held Monday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 2-16.

“Throughout her career, Amy Adams has continuously challenged herself with complex roles,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “This is reaffirmed in her most recent project, Arrival, where she anchors the film with an award-winning performance as a prominent linguist,
Dr. Louise Banks, as she attempts to communicate with creatures in one of a dozen spacecrafts that visit Earth. It is our honor to present the Chairman’s Award to Amy Adams.”

Adams received the Spotlight Award in 2009 for her performance in Doubt, going on to receive an Academy Award® nomination. She also garnered the Ensemble Performance Award for American Hustle in 2014. Past recipients of the Chairman’s Award include Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Richard Gere, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.

When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team – led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) – are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity. The film is directed by Denis Villenueve and stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Arrival received ten Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress for Adams. Adams won Best Actress from the National Board of Review, which also selected Arrival as one of the top ten films of the year.

Amy Adams is a five-time Academy Award®-nominated and two-time Golden Globe®-winning actress. In addition to Arrival, her other films in 2016 were Nocturnal Animals and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her previous film credits include American Hustle, Her, The Master, The Fighter, Big Eyes, Julie and Julia, Doubt, Enchanted, Junebug, Trouble with the Curve, The Muppets, Charlie Wilson’s War, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Catch Me If You Can. Adams recently wrapped production on Justice League Part One and will start production on HBO’s drama series Sharp Objects.

Previously announced honorees attending the 2017 Film Awards Gala are Casey Affleck, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Negga, the cast of Hidden Figures including Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, and the cast of La La Land, including Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, and director Damien Chazelle.

About The Palm Springs International Film Festival
The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, welcoming 135,000 attendees last year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Film Awards Gala, an upscale black-tie event attended by 2,500, honoring the best achievements of the filmic year by a celebrated list of talents who, in recent years, have included Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Matthew McConaughey, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Roberts, David O. Russell, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

For more information, call 760-322-2930 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Steven Wilson / Lauren Peteroy
B|W|R Public Relations
212-901-3920
steven.wilson@bwr-pr.com / lauren.peteroy@bwr-pr.com

David Lee
Palm Springs International Film Society
760-322-2930
david@psfilmfest.org

(Source: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

#Sundance, Sundance Film Festival

Followup to An Inconvenient Truth to World Premiere at 2017 Sundance Film Festival as Day One Screening

December 9, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Documentary Caps Festival’s First Slate of ‘The New Climate’ Films and Work About Environment and Conservation

The Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, Social Entrepreneur Jeff Skoll & Others Join ‘Power of Story’ Panel on January 22; Live Streamed at sundance.org

Park City, UT — The followup to watershed environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth will make its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as a Day One screening, part of The New Climate, a program dedicated to conversations and films about environmental change and conservation.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture comes the riveting follow up that shows both the escalation of the crisis and how close we are to a real solution. Directed by Sundance Film Festival alumni Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk.

he Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, will also join the Festival’s Power of Story panel, a collaboration between Sundance Institute and The Redford Center, with former President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, producer Heather Rae (Frozen River, RISE), social entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeff Skoll and environmentalist and scientist Dr. David Suzuki. A conversation between these prominent figures, who bring decades of direct experience with climate change and its effects, will be moderated by Democracy Now! journalist and broadcaster Amy Goodman on January 22, 2017, and livestreamed from Park City’s Egyptian Theatre at sundance.org.

The New Climate includes 14 documentaries, short films and virtual reality experiences across the Festival’s categories, and marks the first time that Festival programmers have focused efforts to highlight a specific cause.

Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute, said, “I believe that storytelling is the greatest platform for getting people to care and take action on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Amid escalating threats to our environment, independent perspectives are adding the depth and dimension needed for us to find common ground and real solutions.”

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “This film and the 13 other films and projects that are part of The New Climate slate this year add a new chapter to our legacy of showcasing stories on the environment and climate change. When my team and I first watched this film, we were taken by its complete, sensitive and cinematic presentation of the issues. It was emotional to see the scope of our world’s problems — and heartening to see the potential for progress.”

2017’s other projects for The New Climate appear below. Environmental films and projects showcased at the Festival in recent years include The Cove, Gasland, Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction and Collisions. The New Climate is a partnership of Sundance Institute and The Redford Center.

Chasing Coral / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Orlowski) — Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

Chasing Coral: The VR Experience / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Jeff Orlowski) — Zackary Rago, a passionate scuba diver and researcher, documented the unprecedented 2016 coral bleaching event at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with this exclusive underwater VR experience. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

The Diver / Mexico (Director: Esteban Arrangoiz) — Julio César Cu Cámara is the chief diver in the Mexico City sewer system. His job is to repair pumps and dislodge garbage that flows into the gutters to maintain the circulation of sewage waters. (Short Films)

Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre / U.S.A. (Director: Jack Henry Robbins, Screenwriters: Jack Henry Robbins, Nunzio Randazzo) — One of the first films in American cinema to address climate change, Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre, was also a hardcore porno. All sex scenes have been removed as to not distract from the conscious message. (Short Films)

Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry / U.S.A. (Directors: Laura Dunn, Jef Sewell) — This cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture is seen through the mind’s eye of farmer and writer Wendell Berry. (Spotlight)

Melting Ice / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Danfung Dennis) — We take viewers on a transcendent exploration into the devastating consequences of climate change on Greenland’s ice sheet. Stand under collapsing glaciers, next to raging rivers of ice melt and witness rising sea levels—all visceral warnings of our planet’s future. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

Plastic China / China (Director: Jiu-liang Wang) — Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture. International Premiere. (World Documentary)

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman / U.S.A. (Directors: Susan Froemke, John Hoffman, Beth Aala) — From the Montana Rockies to the wheat fields of Kansas and the Gulf of Mexico, families who work the land and sea are crossing political divides to find unexpected ways to protect the natural resources vital to their livelihoods. These are the new heroes of conservation, deep in America’s heartland. World Premiere. (Documentary Premieres)

RISE / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Michelle Latimer) — This vibrant and immersive documentary series explores the front lines of indigenous resistance. Episodes Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power examine factors that threaten indigenous liberation in the 21st century. A series of contrasts, this series is both a condemnation of colonialism and a celebration of indigenous peoples. Continuing Sundance Institute’s ongoing commitment to presenting bold stories from within the Native American and Indigenous communities, we are proud to debut three episodes: Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power, followed by an extended Q&A. World Premiere. (Special Events)

Tree / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Milica Zec, Winslow Porter, Key Collaborators: Aleksandar Protic, Jacob Kudsk Steensen) — This virtual experience transforms you into a rainforest tree. With your arms as the branches and body as the trunk, you experience the tree’s growth from a seedling to its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

Trophy / U.S.A. (Director: Shaul Schwarz, Co-Director: Christina Clusiau) — This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

Visions of an Island / U.S.A. (Director: Sky Hopinka) — Indigenous and foreign presences coexist on an Alaskan island in the center of the Bering Sea. (Short Films)

Water & Power: A California Heist / U.S.A. (Director: Marina Zenovich) — In California’s convoluted water system, notorious water barons find ways to structure a state-engineered system to their own advantage. This examination into their centers of power shows small farmers and everyday citizens facing drought and a new, debilitating groundwater crisis. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

The New Climate is Sundance Institute’s year-round environmental initiative, supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, Discovery Channel, Vulcan Productions, Code Blue Foundation, FOND Group, EarthX Film, and the Joy Family Foundation.

The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite. The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2017 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, SundanceTV, Chase Sapphire®, and Canada Goose; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe, AT&T, DIRECTV, and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – American Airlines, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Francis Ford Coppola Winery, GEICO, Google VR,The Hollywood Reporter, IMDb, Jaunt, Kickstarter, Omnicom, Stella Artois® and the University of Utah Health. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year-round programs for independent artists. Look for the Official Sponsor seal at their venues at the Festival. sundance.org/festival

Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, The Invisible War, The Square, Dirty Wars, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

# # #

Media Contact:
Spencer Alcorn
310.360.1981
spencer_alcorn@sundance.org

(Source: http://www.sundance.org)

#AFI

The Most Outstanding Films And TV Programs of the Year

December 9, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Each year, AFI recognizes the year’s most culturally and artistically significant films and television programs with AFI AWARDS. This almanac documents works of excellence and is the only national honor for the entertainment community’s creative teams as a whole, celebrating the collaborative nature of the art form.

MOVIES OF THE YEAR

ARRIVAL
FENCES
HACKSAW RIDGE
HELL OR HIGH WATER
LA LA LAND
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
MOONLIGHT
SILENCE
SULLY
ZOOTOPIA

TV PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR

THE AMERICANS
ATLANTA
BETTER CALL SAUL
THE CROWN
GAME OF THRONES
THE NIGHT OF
THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY
STRANGER THINGS
THIS IS US
VEEP

AFI SPECIAL AWARD

O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA

Honorees will gather on January 6, 2017, at the AFI AWARDS private luncheon, a noncompetitive and intimate event where AFI will reveal the jury rationales for each selection. The jury — comprised of AFI Trustees, scholars, artists and critics — is listed in full here.

The AFI AWARDS luncheon will be sponsored by Audi, a supporter of AFI and its programs for the past 13 years. The event’s Patron of the Arts is Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Vice President and Director of the Annenberg Foundation and founder of GRoW @ Annenberg. The event is also sponsored by American Airlines, the official airline of AFI. At the luncheon, AFI will present jury rationales providing artistic and cultural context for the selection of each honoree. Press coverage of the AFI AWARDS luncheon is strictly by invitation only. Photos will be available online through AFI immediately following the event.

(Source: blog.afi.com)

Slamdance, Venice International Film Festival

SLAMDANCE 2017 ANNOUNCES SPECIAL SCREENINGS, BEYOND FEATURES, AND SHORT FILM COMPETITIONS

December 9, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Slamdance Opening Night Film: World Premiere Of What Lies Upstream. Oscar Qualifying Shorts Program Features 24 World Premieres

(LOS ANGELES, CA – December 6, 2016) – (LOS ANGELES, CA) – Slamdance today announced its Special Screenings, Beyond, and Shorts programs for their 23nd Film Festival. It is a bold selection of films from visionary filmmakers from across the globe. This year the festival will host 35 World, 9 North American and 10 US premieres within these programs.

“This year Slamdance’s Special Screenings selections are hard-hitting, revelatory films that deserve exposure in Park City,” says Paul Rachman, Special Screening Programmer. “Averting trends and remaining premiere agnostic this program reflects the gut instinct Slamdance programmers rely on in their singular choices.

Last year the festival presented EMBERS, a sci-fi indie directed by Claire Carre. Carre was recently nominated by the 32nd Film Independent Spirit Awards for the Kiehl’s Someone To Watch Award.

“The support of Slamdance has had a powerful impact on my first feature from selecting the film as the festival’s Closing Night film, through releasing it theatrically with Slamdance Presents,” shares Carre. “It’s challenging making a low budget indie movie on your own, and it’s easy to get lost. Slamdance has championed EMBERS in monumental ways.”

This year, several Slamdance Alumni return with highly anticipated presentations in the Beyond Program. These selections are made be emerging narrative and documentary filmmakers working beyond their first features.

“The films in the Beyond section exhibit bold directorial vision and singular characters that introduce audiences to exciting and uncharted new worlds,” says Beyond programmer Josh Mandel. “These emerging filmmakers are beacons of light in a sea of darkness that will continue to forge new paths in the years to come.”

Films in this program are eligible for the Audience Award. Additionally, the filmmakers are eligible for the Spirit of Slamdance Awards, which is voted upon by their festival filmmakers peers.

“Our slate of short films this year is one of the most daring we have been privileged to showcase,” says Narrative Shorts programmer Taylor O. Miller. Fellow programmer Breven Angaelica adds, “We continue this year with short films that fit into their own category, or none at all, and bring a rawness and and originality to the future of filmmaking that we are humbled to recognize and share.”

The 2017 OscarⓇ Qualifying Shorts competition showcases 51 US and 20 International productions in the Narrative, Documentary, Animation, Anarchy and Experimental sections. All Slamdance films are programmed entirely by the Slamdance filmmaking community from blind submissions.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS PROGRAM

After Adderall
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Stephen Elliott
In 2010 James Franco optioned the rights to my memoir, The Adderall Diaries. In 2015 The Adderall Diaries starring James Franco and Ed Harris premiered at the TriBeca Film Festival. This is a movie about James Franco making a movie about me.
Cast: Stephen Elliott, Mickaela Tombrock, Bill Heck, Michael C. Hall, Ned Van Zandt, James Urbaniak, Lili Taylor, Jerry Stahl

A Narrative Film*
(USA)
Director: Michael Edwards
The most narrative narrative never narrated. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end…. It is at once both a three-act assault on the conceit of the traditional narrative, and also perhaps, a futile attempt to escape the narrative impulse of cinema.

What Lies Upstream
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Cullen Hoback
In this detective story, filmmaker Cullen Hoback investigates the largest chemical drinking water contamination in a generation. But something is rotten in state and federal regulatory agencies, and through years of persistent journalism, we learn the shocking truth about what’s really happening with drinking water in America.
Cast: Dr. Marc Edwards, Dr. Rahul Gupta, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Cullen Hoback, Randy Huffman, Dr. David Lewis, Maya Nye, Dr. Andrew Whelton

You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski
(Italy/Mexico/USA) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Matteo Borgardt
A night of drinking and talking about sex, literature, childhood and humanity with the irreverent writer poet Charles Bukowski in his California house in 1981. A story of tapes lost, found and brought back to life.
Cast: Charles Bukowski, Linda Lee Beighle, Silvia Bizio

*Animated Short Preceding You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski

BEYOND PROGRAM

Automatic at Sea
(USA/ Denmark) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Lessner
Eve, a young Swedish traveler, finds herself stranded on a private island with Peter, a wealthy heir whom she hardly knows. While waiting for other guests to arrive, Eve becomes trapped in an unstable reality punctuated by feverish visions, dimensional shifting and secret soft drinks. How can she escape if she’s not even sure she’s there?
Cast: David Henry Gerson, Livia Hiselius, Breeda Wool

The Erlprince
(Poland) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Kuba Czekaj
It’s the end of the world for a teenage genius, the feverish approach of the apocalypse – adulthood.
Cast: Staszek Cywka, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Sebastian Łach,

Future ‘38
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Jamie Greenberg
1938 screwball comedy set in the far-off future year of 2018
Cast: Betty Gilpin, Nick Westrate, Robert John Burke, Ethan Phillips, Sean Young, Tom Riis Farrell, Sophie von Haselberg, Tabitha Holbert

Neighborhood Food Drive
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jerzy Rose; Screenwriter(s): Halle Butler, Mike Lopez, Jerzy Rose
A group of awful idiots fail at throwing a party over and over.
Cast: Lyra Hill, Bruce Bundy, Ruby McCollister, Ted Tremper, Marcos Barnes, Jared Larson

Suck It Up
(Canada) World Premiere
Director: Jordan Canning; Screenwriter: Julia Hoff
Faye lost the love of her life, Ronnie lost her brother. These two best friends take off on a debaucherous journey into the mountains to cope with the loss of the man they both loved.
Cast: Erin Carter, Grace Glowicki, Daniel Beirne, Toby Marks, Nancy Kerr, Michael Rowe

NARRATIVE SHORTS PROGRAM

August
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Caitlyn Greene
Deep in Louisiana’s swampland, a woman wakes from a fever dream where it has been August for 16 years.
Cast: Kaelyn Charbonnet, Reginald Robinson, Sanita C. Irvin (Voice)

Birds with Human Heads
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Max Wilde
Basking in the wildlife of a handmade universe, a girl receives her first stick and poke tattoo from her best friend.
Cast: Emma Factor, Emma Kikue Munson

Brad Cuts Loose
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Christopher Good
An uptight office drone seemingly discovers the perfect vehicle for letting off steam when an advertisement for a business catering to his innermost desires pops up one morning on his computer.
Cast: Kentucker Audley, Tipper Newton, John Ennis, Wilson Vance

Business
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Kati Skelton
A terrified young man gets tangled up in a surreal and demoralizing “business opportunity.”
Cast: Branson Reese, Peter Reznikoff, Dagmar Stansova, Matt Dennie

The Cure
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Mike Olenick
A mom cries, photos fly, cats spy, and bodies collide in this sci-fi soap opera that unravels the secret dreams of people who are desperately searching for ways to cure their fears of loneliness.
Cast: David Rysdahl, Jennifer Estlin, Justin Rose, Kait Staley, Mrva Russell

A Doll’s Hug
(Taiwan/USA) World Premiere
Director: Rob Chihwen Lo; Screenwriter(s): Rob Chihwen LO (Story), Cheng-Han WU (Screenplay)
A Taiwanese boy learns to fight back from the threatening violence in his Barbie doll world.
Cast: Pin-Chieh Su, Jackson Lou, Mengxi Hus, Fabio Grangeon, Ivon Huang

Dr. Meertz
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Steve Collins
A renegade psychotherapist has a brief window of time to cure a patient with ungodly dreams.
Cast: John Merriman, Byron Brown, Paul Gordon

E
(Canada) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Raphaël Ouellet
5 women : 5 tales of ordinary oppression.
Cast: Victoria Barkoff, Sandrine Bisson, Debbie Lynch-White, Sarah Pellerin, Alexa-Jeanne Dubé

Ford Clitaurus
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: MP Cunningham
An aspiring artist struggles to find his voice, his sexual identity, and the meaning of creativity.
Cast: Bryce Van Leuven, Taylor Young, MP Cunningham

Get Out Fast
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Alex’s best friend, Coyote Boy, is missing and he doesn’t know why.
Cast: Hale Lytle, Tre Marquis Frazier, Warren Dedrick, Tori Wolsefer

I’m in Here
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Willy Berliner
When a man finds a family of strangers in his house who claim to have bought the place, he agrees to let them stay until they can get to the bottom of the mix-up. They never leave.
Cast: Dave Hanson, Jim Santangeli, Jillian Lebling, Kathy Searle

The Investment
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Steve Collins
A mysterious salesman offers an inadvisable investment opportunity to a lonely woman in need of a friend.
Cast: Courtney Davis, Paul Gordon

Last Night
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Kent Juliff
On the final night of their DIY stand up tour around Texas, five comics grow closer as friends.
Cast: Kent Juliff, Elizabeth Spears, Joe Tullar, Martin Urbano

Losing It
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Henry Jinings
High schooler Marshall hopes to seal the deal on prom night, but his date, Sarah, might not be as into it as he had hoped.
Cast: Bryce Earhart, Rachelle Henry, Eric Newsome, Anne Ruttencutter, Nic Chase, Mason Knight, Alice Tokaryev

Neon Lights
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Bradley Bixler
After a seemingly ordinary transaction goes wrong, a young stripper encounters a violent customer on her way home to her father’s birthday.
Cast: Adriana Llabrés, Parker Torres, Michael Barbour, Giovanny Cruz-Marín

No Other Way To Say It
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Tim Mason
A voice over actor tries to deliver the right performance while receiving confusing text messages and confusing direction.
Cast: Beth Melewski, Sue Salvi, Megan Kellie

Nonna
(Canada) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Pascal Plante
Just another visit at granny’s…
Cast: Micheline Chamberland, Catherine Beauchemin

Oh What a Wonderful Feeling
(Canada)
Director and Screenwriter: François Jaros
Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires. Nor any truck.
Cast: Karelle Tremblay, Frédérike Bédard, Catherine Hughes, Patrice Beauchesne

One-Minded
(France/USA/South Korea)
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Forest Ian Etsler, Sébastien Simon
“One-minded” tells the story of one fan’s transformation from dog to God.
Cast: Moon Choi, Yaerin Erin Joo, Ryu Jun-yeol, Kwak Jin-moo

The Package
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Benjamin Whatley
An experimental narrative which follows the journey of a product from the factory line to a consumer and beyond.
Cast: Michael Rudolf

Paco
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Catalina Jordan Alvarez
He wants you to bounce on his lap.
Cast: Brian Jordan Alvarez, Rosalyn Williams, Daniel Fishkin, Parker Dilworth

Pedazos
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Alejandro Peña
After a garish and violent ceremony, two lovers are thrown into a mysterious cave inhabited by flying creatures.
Cast: Henry MacLean, Will Stryker

Redmond Hand, Private Dick
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Todd Selby; Screenwriter: Jason Kreher
On her quest to find a beautiful woman’s missing cactus, LA’s most notorious detective gets caught up in some crazy shit and then dies.
Cast: Felicia Pearson, Miranda Parham, Katya Zamolodchikova, Jay London

Sadhu in Bombay
(India) North American Premiere
Director: Kabir Mehta
Sadhu In Bombay is a documentary portrait of a man, with ascetic origins, who has been radically transformed by city life . The film explores the grey zones between truth, fiction and the construction of reality; while vividly addressing contemporary life in India.

Student Union
(Hungary) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: György Mór Kárpáti
The return journey on a train from a freshman summer camp, where 18-year-old Dóra has just been sexually abused.
Cast: Katica Nagy, Krisztián Rózsa

Voyage of Galactic Space Dangler
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Evan Mann
A space man meets a cave man.
Cast: Andrew Finzel, Nolan Brown, Rick Romero, Valerie Simon

We Together
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Henry Kaplan
A zombie is awakened.
Cast: Martel Rudd, Kristopher McAfee

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS PROGRAM

Clean Hands
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Lauren DeFilippo
On a Sunday morning the congregation of the Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church tunes in.
Cast: Robert Kemp-Baird

Clip-135-02-05
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Sasha Gransjean
Animals are used to express the dislocation, helplessness, and anger, while nature illustrates the lack of control that we have on events that come to pass.
Cast: Sasha Gransjean

Commodity City
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jessica Kingdon
An observation of the daily lives of vendors who work in China’s Yiwu Markets, the largest consumer market in the world. The film explores moments of tension between the fake and the real, between what is for sale and the humans who sell them.

The Dundee Project
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Mark Borchardt
In his long-awaited follow-up to 1997’s ‘Coven,’ filmmaker Mark Borchardt steps behind the camera again with ‘The Dundee Project,’ a documentary chronicling a small town UFO festival in Wisconsin.
Cast: Mark Borchardt, UFO Bob, Mike, Sheldon

Dust & Dirt
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Chris Stanford
Mason Massey dreams of one day making it to the top level of racing but with a lack of big money sponsorship he knows that it is going to be a long, hard road.
Cast: Mason Massey

Eveready
(Uganda/USA) World Premiere
Director: Paul Szynol
Uganda’s most surprising boxer steps into the ring one more time.

Irregulars
(Italy)
Director: Fabio Palmieri
Against a tellingly hypnotic factory backdrop, a refugee encapsulates the global immigration crisis in his own wrenching words.
Cast: Cyrille Kabore

It Is What It Is
(USA) US Premiere
Director: Cyrus Yoshi Tabar
As filmmaker Cyrus Yoshi Tabar digs deep into his family history for answers to questions that have shaped his life, he finds that there are some things that might be better off left in the past.
Cast: Cyrus Yoshi Tabar, Afsaneh Sade, Roxane Maiko Pate

Moriom
(Switzerland)
Director(s): Francesca Scalisi, Mark Olexa
Moriom, a beautiful but strange young woman, says her parents must be punished for holding her prisoner and torturing her. They have a different story.

The Real Wi-Fi of Baltimore
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Julia Kim Smith
Featuring the genre-busting talent of James Nasty and TT the Artist, The Real Wi-Fi Of Baltimore offers a punny and nuanced view of Baltimore neighborhoods in a short film edited from iPhone screenshots of Wi-Fi network names.
Cast: James Nasty, TT the Artist

Richard Twice
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Matthew Salton
Richard Atkins, the singer and songwriter of the early 70’s California psychedelic folk duo ‘Richard Twice’, was on his way to stardom and a huge success with his first debut album when he mysteriously walked away from it all.
Cast: Richard Atkins

Searching for Wives
(Singapore) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Zuki Juno Tobgye
A foreign worker from South India, whose customs says he is not allowed to marry at an even age, comes to Singapore in search of a job and a chance to find a wife before he turns 32.
Cast: Shanmugavel Pathakarnan, Sheeja Sajeev Lal, K. Sajeev Lal, Ramalingam Muthu

Sweet Pie
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Pierce Cravens
Sweet Pie, also known as Paul Winer, revives his career as the baron of bare-assed boogie-woogie and blues at the Public Theater in NYC.
Cast: Sweet Pie aka Paul Winer, Joanne Winer, Will Perone

This is Yates
(USA)
Director: Josh Yates
A reflexive analog-elegy that hates itself.

Troll: A Southern Tale
(USA)
Director: Marinah Janello
An eccentric artist navigates self-expression through his experiences living and growing up in the South.
Cast: Tony Arnold

ANIMATION SHORTS PROGRAM

Auto
(USA) US Premiere
Director: Conner Griffith
Cars dance on highways, crowds of people wash across sidewalk shores.

Batfish Soup
(USA)
Director: Amanda Bonaiuto
Wacky relatives give way to mounting tensions with broken dolls, boiling stew and a bang.

Chella Drive
(USA) Us Premiere
Director: Adele Han Li
A disembodied memory of adolescence in a Southern Californian suburb. The stuck-stillness of endless summer is disrupted only by a passing El Niño.

Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw)
(USA)
Renee Zhan
Flap flapflapflapflap flap. A large bird and a small boy cohabit in an unhappy relationship, trapped by four walls and a mutual codependency. The fragile balance of their existence is cracked by an un-eggs-pected arrival.

Insect Bite
(USA)
Director: Grace Nayoon Rhee
A tiny bug tries to figure out what it wants to become.

It Is My Fault
(China) North American Premiere
Director: Liu Sha
This work utilizes the own approach of the digital medium itself to deconstruct, to form the subliminal synesthesia visually and to create a fictional experience for the mind.

Monkey
(China) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Shen Jie
One of the three monkeys died.

My Father’s Room
(South Korea) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Nari Jang
Sometimes, family members can be worse than strangers.

The Noise of Licking
(Hungary)
Director and Screenwriter: Nadja Andrasev; Short story by: Ádám Bodor
A woman is being watched every day by the neighbor’s cat, as she takes care of her exotic plants. Their perverted ritual comes to an end when the cat disappears. Next spring a peculiar man pays her a visit.

Plena Stellarum
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Wade
Neon ghosts dreaming in dead landscapes.

Q
(USA) US Premiere
Director: James Bascara
A bashful encounter.

Remember
(Japan)
Director and Screenwriter: Shunsaku Hayashi
“Leaving home, ‘I’ got a phone call. As ‘I’ answered it, the house exploded. ‘I’ went to work and continued as normal”…

Serpentine
(USA) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Bronwyn Maloney
A young woman’s reflective fantasy arouses a surreal exploration of sensuality, self-esteem, and deeply rooted fears.

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS PROGRAM

Blua
(Colombia) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Carolina Charry Quintero
What do we see when we really look at an animal? Certainly, not just what meets the eye.
Cast: Margarita Quintero, Chuja Seo, Rafa Rojas, José Adam Arriola

Experiments in Non-Cinema
(USA) World Premiere
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Spencer Holden, Noah Engel
Making cinematic experiences without a camera apparatus. Non-Cinema
Cast: Spencer Holden, Noah Engel

Girl Becomes Snow
(USA) World Premiere
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Ryan Betschart, Tyler Betschart
An investigation into death induced dream ephemera or; a body (mind) dissolves into video signal memories.
Cast: Karissa Hahn

Press Play
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Kym McDaniel
Discernment becomes crucial as a little girl negotiates an adult world where different forms of entrapment threaten reality.

The Trembling Giant
(United Kingdom)
Director: Patrick Tarrant
The bark of the quaking aspen is thought to provide the cure for any fear who cause can’t be named.

Unknown Hours
(USA) North American Premiere
Director: Calum Walter
An observer journeys down a main street in Chicago towards a neighborhood known for its nightlife.

UpCycles
(USA)
Director: Ariana Gerstein
Cycling from original footage shot on super 8mm, up to 16mm, 35mm, down again to 16, optically printed, hand processed, and then optically printed again using a digital still camera to end on digital video.

ANARCHY SHORTS PROGRAM

Ape Sodom
(Canada)
Director and Screenwriter: Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
Three degenerates navigate the descending hierarchy of post-consumerist enlightenment.
Cast: Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Mihaly Szabados, Perrie Olthuis, David Cronenberg

Hell Follows
(USA/Japan) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Brian Harrison
Betrayed by his clan and murdered for his past evil deeds, a sadistic killer’s soul possesses his identical twin’s body and sets out onto the road of vengeance for one final crusade of extermination… Everywhere he goes… HELL FOLLOWS.
Cast: Takuya Iba, Shu Sakimoto, Masahiro Takahashi, Sohanny Rose

Horseshoe Theory
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jonathan Daniel Brown; Screenwriter(s): Jonathan Daniel Brown, Travis Harrington
A weapons deal between a white supremacist and a member of the Islamic State blossoms into more.
Cast: Jackson Rathbone, Amir Malaklou, Lily Harrington, Travis Harrington

In a World of Bad Breath
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Christopher Graybill
Watch general confusion amongst an ancient presence.
Cast: Oates Wu, Asher Knowles

Lighter Click
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Robbie Ward
An odyssey through a mysterious psychedelic landscape full of monsters and secrets both beautiful and dark.

Silverhead
(USA) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Lewis Vaughn
A deranged, 300 lb. masked ax murderer terrorizes the streets of Chicago as a calculated hunter tracks him.
Cast: Christopher Porter, Corbin Manning, Clayvon Reeves, Jason Grey, Jarren Davis, Rodney Andrews, Ashley Pough

TheBox
(USA) US Premiere
Director(s): Jack Turpin, Davy Walker
An expressionistic journey through the gilt-pop-entrapment in which we find ourselves.

Vitamins for Life
(USA)
Director: Grier Dill; Screenwriter: T. R. Darling
An educational film about some lesser known vitamins.
Cast: Tessa Greenberg

What a Beautiful World This Will Be
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Tyler Walker
While a mysterious disease called “the Blank” ravages New York City, a young drunk must find his missing friend.
Cast: Jordan Michael Blake, Luke Marinkovich, Kara Dudley, Amanda Evans

Press Stills: http://bit.ly/2goPmzt

###

ABOUT SLAMDANCE
Slamdance is a community, a year-round experience, and a statement. Established in 1995 by a wild bunch of filmmakers who were tired of relying on a large, oblique system to showcase their work, Slamdance has proven, year after year, that when it comes to recognizing talent and launching careers, independent and grassroots communities can do it themselves.

Slamdance alums are responsible for the programming and organization of the festival. With a variety of backgrounds, interests, and talents, but with no individual filmmaker’s vote meaning more than any others, Slamdance’s programming and organizing committees have been able to stay close to the heart of low budget and do-it-yourself filmmaking. In this way, Slamdance continues to grow and exemplify its mantra: By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers.

The 2017 Slamdance Film Festival will run January 20-26 in Park City, Utah.

Notable Slamdance alumni who first gained notice at the festival include: Christopher Nolan (Interstellar), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity), Marc Forster (World War Z), Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), Lena Dunham (Girls), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Anthony & Joe Russo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin), Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses), Lynn Shelton (Humpday) and Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche). Box Office Mojo reports alumni who first showed their work at Slamdance have earned over $11.5 billion at the Box Office to date.

In addition to the Festival, Slamdance serves emerging artists and a growing audience with several year-round activities. These include the popular Slamdance Screenplay Competition, the traveling On The Road screening events, the Anarchy Workshop for student filmmakers, and The ArcLight Presents Slamdance Cinema Club – a monthly cinema club partnership with ArcLight Cinemas based at the ArcLight Hollywood and ArcLight Chicago, with two screenings and filmmaker Q&A’s each month:
www.arclightcinemas.com/en/news/arclight-presents-slamdance-cinema-club

Slamdance Presents is a new distribution arm established to access broader distribution of independent films. The goal is to build the popularity of independent films and support filmmakers on a commercial level through theatrical releases. In August 2016, Slamdance Presents launched the week long release of Claire Carré’s feature sci-fi film, Embers, at ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood. Steve Yu’s The Resurrection of Jake The Snake was the first film to be released by the company. The documentary reached number one on iTunes in December, 2015.

In November 2015, Slamdance announced DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), a new digital, interactive and gaming showcase dedicated to emerging independent artists working in hybrid, immersive and developing forms of digital media art. Ten works were featured in the inaugural DIG show that opened in Los Angeles at Big Pictures Los Angeles on December 4, running through December 13, 2015. The show was also featured at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

DIG will open December 2-10, 2016 in Los Angeles and form part of the 2017 Film Festival.

2017 Slamdance Film Festival Sponsors include Blackmagic Design, Distribber, CreativeFuture, Directors Guild of America, Fusion, Different By Design, Pierce Law Group LLP, Writers Guild Of America West, Salt Lake City’s Slug Magazine, Beehive Distilling, and BlueStar Café. Slamdance is proud to partner with sponsors who support emerging artists and filmmakers. Additional information about Slamdance is available at http://www.slamdance.com

Facebook: SlamdanceFilmFestival
Twitter: @slamdance
Instagram: @slamogram

Additional References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slamdance_Film_Festival

PRESS CONTACT:

After Bruce PR
Eseel Borlasa
eseel@afterbruce.com
562-881-6725

Tracy Nguyen-Chung
tracy@afterbruce.com
503-701-2115

(Source: Slamdance.com)

#Sundance, Sundance Film Festival

New Frontier Showcases Storytelling’s Future at 2017 Sundance Film Festival

December 9, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Park City, UT — Now in its second decade of breaking new ground at the forefront of art and technology, Sundance Institute has curated an in-depth vision of storytelling’s future for the 2017 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival, January 19-29 in Park City. The full slate — including storyworlds in Augmented Reality headsets, projection-mapped acrobatics, a VR beauty salon producing neuroscience data via the internet of things and a host of socialized, interactive and immersively haptic VR story experiences — stands as a testament to New Frontier’s expertise in identifying, developing and amplifying the most relevant and high-impact modes of tech-enabled narrative.

Live performances, a feature film and augmented reality experiences will complement a total of 20 VR experiences and 11 installations, showcased between three venues in Park City. The historic Claim Jumper will host seven immersive installations focused on cross-disciplinary story construction and and two video works; the VR Palace will feature 15 VR experiences alongside additional installations; and the VR Bar will offer a lineup of mobile VR. Three projects are part of the Festival’s The New Climate program, which highlights the environment and climate change. More New Frontier projects will be announced in the coming weeks.

Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute, said, “Every year, more artists are drawn to the vanguard of art and technology: independent, creative storytellers have more tools to break the mold than ever before. For the last decade-plus, New Frontier’s vision has evolved and grown with this expanding palette, to curate and showcase the most exciting new work made with the latest advances.”

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer and Chief Curator, New Frontier, said, “In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also reimagine what it is to be human. Through Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and various crafted immersive experiences, New Frontier this year challenges the very nature of perception and what we consider to be ‘reality.’”

Through New Frontier’s history, Sundance Institute has been at the forefront of new media storytelling, recognized as a pioneer of story-based, tech-enabled experiences; New Frontier alumni include Doug Aitken, James Franco, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chris Milk, Nonny de la Peña, Pipilotti Rist and Jennifer Steinkamp. The Institute’s support extends well beyond its curated slate of Festival projects, and includes the annual New Frontier Story Lab, which offers mentorship and development opportunities for new media storytellers, New Frontier Day Labs in cities nationwide and the New Frontier Residency Program, which combines the might of partners such as MIT Media Lab’s Social Computing Group and Jaunt Studios to drive groundbreaking data-visualization and VR storytelling tools, training and resources to independent artists.

2016 marked New Frontier’s 10th Anniversary, with celebrations at MoMA in New York City, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

In addition to the New Frontier program announced today, films in U.S. and World Competitions and NEXT have been announced and are listed at sundance.org/festival.

FILMS AND PERFORMANCE

18 Black Girls / Boys Ages 1-18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and Are Thus Spiritual Machines: $X in an Edition of $97 Quadrillion / U.S.A. (Director and writer: Terence Nance) — In this pair of performances, the artist Googles the phrase “one-year-old black boy” and “one-year-old black girl,” ascending in age to 18, allowing Google’s “popular searches” algorithm to populate what words will follow.

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? / U.S.A. (Director: Travis Wilkerson) — This documentary murder mystery about the artist’s own family is a Southern Gothic torn apart and reassembled. Journeying straight into the black heart of a family and country, this multimedia performance explores a forgotten killing by the artist’s great-grandfather—a white Southern racist—of a black man in lower Alabama.

World Without End (No Reported Incidents) / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Jem Cohen) — Close observations around Southend-on-Sea, a small English town along the Thames estuary, reveal not only everyday streets, everyday birds, unflagging tides, mud and sky, but also prize-winning Indian curries, an encyclopedic universe of hats and a nearly lost world of proto-punk music.

INSTALLATIONS

A selection of single-channel works by the collective A Normal Working Day / Switzerland — A Normal Working Day is an artist collective consisting of the installation artist Zimoun and the choreographers and dancers Delgado Fuchs (Marco Delgado, Nadine Fuchs). Formed from the bodies of the two performers, these splendidly hypnotic projections are visual rabbit holes that shimmer with a presence that is larger than the sum of their parts.

Full Turn / Switzerland (Lead Artist: Benjamin Muzzin) — This installation explores the notion of the third dimension with the desire to get out of the usual frame of a flat screen. The rotation of two tablets creates a three-dimensional, animated sequence that can be seen at 360 degrees, unlike any other type of display.

Heartcorps: Riders of the Storyboard / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: dandypunk, Key Collaborators: Darin Basile, Jo Cattell) — Follow the story of Particle, a two-dimensional light being, as you walk through the pages of a giant, immersive comic book. Hand-drawn illustrations come to life around you using projection-mapping technology, while high-level Cirque du Soleil performers interact with animated characters in this “digital light poem.” Cast: Ekenah Claudin, Elon Höglund, Youssef El Toufali, Jenni Gamas.

Heroes / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Melissa Painter, Key Collaborators: Tim Dillon, Thomas Wester, Jason Schugardt, Laura Gorenstein Miller) — The setting: An extravagant movie palace where silent films were shown. One dance—fiercely athletic and romantic—invites you inside. Through both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality headsets, the story comes off the screen, challenging you to move, navigate heroic shifts in perspective and scale and reach out to touch the experience. Cast: Helios Dance Theater, Stephanie Maxim, Chris Stanley, Melissa Sandvig.

Journey to the Center of the Natural Machine / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Daniella Segal, Daniel Lazo, Eran May-Raz, Charles Niu) — From stone axe to super-computer, our brain’s evolution has been guided by our tools, evolving it into the most complicated object in the known universe. Explore a holographic brain with a friend on the Meta 2 Augmented Reality Headset, and rebuild your relationship to the Natural Machine.

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Ashley Baccus-Clark, Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, Ece Tankal, Nitzan Bartov) — A three-part exploration of black women and the roles they play in technology, society and culture—including speculative products, immersive experiences and neurocognitive impact research. Using fashion, cosmetics and the economy of beauty as entry points, the project illuminates issues of privacy, transparency, identity and perception.

Pleasant Places / United Kingdom (Lead Artist: Quayola) — A return to, and a modern elaboration upon, Vincent Van Gogh’s Provence landscapes, this series of digital paintings interrogates and reframes concepts of representation and perception through image manipulation and augmented reality. Using bucolic and contemplative images, juxtaposed with raw data visualization, this project suggests alternate modes of visual synthesis.

Synesthesia Suit: Rez Infinite and Crystal Vibes / Japan (Lead Artists: Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Ayahiko Sato, Kouta Minamizawa) — A full-body 26-sensor suit combines audiovisual and vibrotactile textures to push technology-mediated sensory frontiers. Experience a multisensory climax with pounding beats and stringed instruments in acclaimed PlayStation 4/PS VR game Rez Infinite, or feel vibrations of candy-colored psychedelic sound rippling through the Crystal Vibes universe.

VIRTUAL REALITY

ASTEROIDS! / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Eric Darnell) — From the director of Madagascar comes Baobab’s VR animation. Journey the cosmos aboard the spaceship of Mac and Cheez, an alien duo so mission-focused they forget what’s important in life. It’s up to you to show them what really matters. Cast: Eric Darnell.

Chocolate / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Tyler Hurd) — This VR experience for the song “Chocolate” by Giraffage sets you in a cat-centric world of sparkling, colorful chrome with a tribe of people doing a ritualistic dance just for you, their robot god, to provide them with their precious resource, cute lil’ chrome kitties.

Dear Angelica / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Saschka Unseld, Key Collaborators: Angela Petrella, Wesley Allsbrook, Maxwell Planck, Ryan Thomas) — This project is a journey through the magical and dreamlike ways we remember lost ones and, even though they are gone, what remains of the ones we loved. Cast: Geena Davis, Mae Whitman.

Hue / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Nicole McDonald, Key Collaborators: KC Austin) — This is an immersive and visually driven interactive film about a man who has lost the ability to see color. Participants reawaken the protagonist’s sense of wonder and imagination through empathetic action as color and connection return to his world view. Cast: David Strathairn, Benedikt Negro.

If Not Love / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Rosemarie Troche, Key Collaborator: Bruce Allan) — A conflicted Christian man carries out a mass shooting. In his past: a same-sex hookup and self-loathing. What if events had unfolded differently? What if his partner had convinced him to face himself? Could that simple act change the course of history? Cast: Zachary Booth, Mitchell Winter.

Life of Us / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Chris Milk, Aaron Koblin, Pharrell Williams, Key Collaborators: Megan Ellison, McKenzie Stubbert, Jona Dinges) — This shared VR journey tells the complete story of the evolution of life on Earth.

Melting Ice / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Danfung Dennis) — We take viewers on a transcendent exploration into the devastating consequences of climate change on Greenland’s ice sheet. Stand under collapsing glaciers, next to raging rivers of ice melt and witness rising sea levels—all visceral warnings of our planet’s future. THE NEW CLIMATE

Mindshow / U.S.A.(Lead Artists: Gil Baron, Jonnie Ross, Adam Levin, Key Collaborators: Jonnie Ross, Gil Baron) — Make VR cartoons with your body and voice. Teleport into different characters and act out all the parts. Create with your friends by passing scenes back and forth, then share your shows in VR and on social media. Cast: Dana Gould.

Miyubi / Canada (Lead Artists: Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël, Key Collaborator: Owen Burke) — Experience love and obsolescence as a Japanese toy robot, gifted to a child in the home of a fractured family in 1982 suburban America. Cast: Jeff Goldblum, P.J. Byrne, Emily Bergl, Owen Vaccaro, Richard Riehle, Ted Sutherland, Tatum Kensington Bailey.

Orbital Vanitas / Australia (Lead Artist: Shaun Gladwell, Key Collaborator: Leo Faber, ) — This virtual reality experience presents a surreal sci-fi mystery and meditation on death. Initially placed in Earth’s orbit, participants soon notice an enigmatic form floating toward them. What takes place next makes perfect use of the VR format.

Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Nonny de la Peña) — In August 2014, Daniel Ashley Pierce’s family verbally and physically accosted him before kicking him out of the house because they disapproved of his sexuality. Built directly around audio Daniel recorded from that encounter, this project includes thoughts of hope and triumph from Daniel and three other LGBTQ youth. Cast: Daniel Ashley Pierce, Kyle Wills, Julene Renee, Cyntia Domenzain, Angel VanStark, Phoebe VanCleefe.

The Sky is a Gap / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Rachel Rossin) — The viewer is allowed to precisely move time with space by the use of a positionally tracked headset. Existing in the physical and virtual realms, the installation depicts a pyroclastic explosion inspired by Zabriskie Point, where the scene’s progress is physically mapped to the participant’s forward and backward movement.

Through You / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Saschka Unseld, Lily Baldwin) — Dance is used to inhabit a common mortal story of love born, lived, lost, burned and seemingly gone forever—only to be found again. Cast: Joanna Kotze, Amari Cheatom, Marni Thomas Wood.

Tree / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Milica Zec, Winslow Porter, Key Collaborators: Aleksandar Protic, Jacob Kudsk Steensen) — This virtual experience transforms you into a rainforest tree. With your arms as the branches and body as the trunk, you experience the tree’s growth from a seedling to its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand. THE NEW CLIMATE

Zero Days VR / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Scatter, Yasmin Elayat, Elie Zananiri, Key Collaborators: Mei-Ling Wong, Alexander Porter, James George) — The story of a clandestine mission hatched by the U.S. and Israel to sabotage an underground Iranian nuclear facility told from the perspective of Stuxnet, a sophisticated cyber weapon, and a key NSA informant. Audiences experience the high stakes of cyber warfare placed inside the invisible world of computer viruses. Cast: Joanne Tucker, Eric Chien, Liam O’Murchu, Ralph Langner, Olli Heinonen, David Sanger.

The Sundance Institute New Frontier program is supported by Cindy Harrell Horn and Alan Horn, Lyn and Norman Lear, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Time Warner Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Oculus Story Studio, Nokia OZO, Comcast Ventures, The Fledgling Fund, and David E. Quinney III.

The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite. The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2017 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, SundanceTV, Chase Sapphire®, and Canada Goose; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe, AT&T, DIRECTV, and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – American Airlines, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Francis Ford Coppola Winery, GEICO, Google VR, The Hollywood Reporter, IMDb, Jaunt, Kickstarter, Omnicom, Stella Artois® and the University of Utah Health. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year-round programs for independent artists. Look for the Official Sponsor seal at their venues at the Festival. sundance.org/festival

Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, The Invisible War, The Square, Dirty Wars, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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(Source: http://www.sundance.org)

Feature Film

Martin Scorsese’s #SILENCE

December 7, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE tells the story of two Christian missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who face the ultimate test of faith when they travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) – at a time when Christianity was outlawed and their presence forbidden. The celebrated director’s 28-year journey to bring Shusaku Endo’s 1966 acclaimed novel to life will be in theaters this Christmas.

(Source: Paramount Studios)

#SBIFF, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Showcase Series

Note from Roger – Last chance to see The Handmaiden

December 7, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Dear Cinephiles,

Tonight is the last chance to see the spectacular film THE HANDMAIDEN which just won Best Foreign Film and Production Design from The Los Angeles Film Critics. This is a sexy and extraordinary film.

We are attaching the review from The Atlantic and the headline says it all.

It plays tonight (Wednesday) at 7:30pm at the Riviera Theatre.

See you at the movies!
Roger Durling

Click here for tickets

The Handmaiden Is a Cinematic Masterpiece
Park Chan-wook’s new romantic thriller is a sumptuous tale of shifting identities, forbidden love, and colonialism.
By David Sims – The Atlantic

The Handmaiden contains multitudes: It’s a sumptuous romantic period piece, as well as a sexy spy thriller, replete with secret identities and triple-crosses. It’s an extended commentary on Japan’s occupation of Korea in the 1930s, and it’s an intense piece of psychological horror from one of the masters of the genre, Park Chan-wook. But more than anything, The Handmaiden is just pure cinema, a dizzying, disturbing fable of love and betrayal that piles on luxurious imagery, while never losing track of its story’s human core. For Park, the Korean director of crossover genre hits like Old Boy and Thirst, the movie feels like an evolutionary leap forward in an already brilliant career.

The film is, surprisingly enough, an adaptation of Sarah Waters’s 2002 novel Fingersmith, a Victorian crime novel about a petty thief who gets entangled in a long con against a noblewoman, with whom she then falls in love (after that, many further twists ensue). Park and his co-writer Chung Seo-kyung have taken Waters’s investigation of Victorian repression and its limits on female empowerment, and translated it into a tale that delves into the dynamics of Korean culture during Japan’s pre-war occupation. This is a movie about the costumes people wear, both literal and psychological, and that focus extends outward to its setting, a peculiar mansion that mashes up Japanese and Victorian architecture. Park’s film is one where every gesture or period detail is loaded with double meaning, and where his heroines have to wrap their feelings in layers of deception just to try and survive.

The plot plays out the same way that Fingersmith does, following a a three-part structure where each successive chapter sheds new light on the last, and a series of three grand cons bound up into a larger, swooning tale of misandry, romance, and liberation. Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri, making her film debut) is a crafty young pickpocket plucked from a den of orphans to be the new handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). She’s part of an elaborate scheme cooked up by the conman Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), who plans to marry the emotionally fragile Hideko for her money and then swiftly have her committed. Sook-hee is hired to facilitate his deception, manipulating Hideko into the Count’s arms, but of course, things don’t go exactly as expected.

Hideko is a prisoner in a gilded cage, a manse designed to reflect the culture of Korea’s occupying power, of which she is a prized example. In interviews, Park has said what fascinated him most about transposing Fingersmith to 1930s Korea was the opportunity to comment on the occupation. The chief villain of the piece, Hideko’s uncle-by-marriage, Kozuki, is a Korean intellectual who fetishizes Japanese culture—but he’s also keeping the Japanese Hideko under his thumb as some petty act of supremacy. While he delves into a budding romance between Hideko and Sook-hee, Park burrows into the twisted relationship between the two countries, and the foolishness of the Korean characters gunning for social ascendency by imitating the Japanese way of life.

The film’s dialogue is subtitled in two colors (Korean in white, Japanese in yellow) to underline the disguises the characters are constantly donning in their efforts to blend in. Park has never been a subtle director, which is why he’s worked so well with more lurid genres (most of his movies fall in the thriller or horror category). With The Handmaiden, he makes use of a smorgasbord of tropes and somehow gets away with it. It’s not every film that can feature astute historical commentary, explicit lesbian sex, prolonged bouts of torture, and a giant foreboding octopus without seeming ridiculous. But in The Handmaiden, each of these elements is as wonderfully surprising as the plot itself, which never lets the viewer guess what’s coming next.

The first part of the film charts Sook-hee’s manipulation of Hideko, a con job that turns into a seduction, and then, a seemingly authentic romance; the power dynamic is clearly tilted against the timid heiress. After 45 minutes, the story is abruptly inverted, then re-told through the eyes of Hideko, revealed as far more self-aware than initially imagined; for its third act, the film upends itself again, each time layering a deeper understanding of its four major characters. You might see each twist coming in isolation, but when they’re all knitted together, the effect is stupefying.

The Handmaiden’s identity shifts as much as its sinuous ensemble; it’s as exciting to watch Park keep his grasp on its changing tone as it is to watch the characters double-cross each other. To say much more would spoil a dazzling climax, but this is at its core a tale of liberation, of costumes being thrown off, and of the delight (and terror) that comes with embracing one’s true self. The Handmaiden is long, occasionally demented, and intense enough that it won’t suit everyone. But it’s moviemaking that demands to be enjoyed, a thrill ride in service something far grander and more important.

(Source: sbiff.org)

distribution, Venice International Film Festival

American Movies Should Not Have to Be Approved by Bureaucrats in Beijing

December 6, 2016 HollywoodGlee Leave a comment

Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Therese Shaheen

Last week’s phone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen had all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. The world is on edge with the election of an untested U.S. president determined to confront China. Upstart Taiwan creates the flashpoint: The leader calls the U.S. president — even before he takes office — and initiates a secret dialogue. Military forces are on alert. Markets waver. There are appeals for calm. But it’s too late. The fuse is lit. Watch the movie to see how it ends.

Probably the most appropriate working title for a Hollywood treatment of what took place between Tsai and Trump is “Much Ado About Nothing.” There are many ways in which America’s China policy with respect to Taiwan has become a jumble of inconsistencies and dangerous unrealism, starting with the implication in our policy that Taiwan exists only insofar as China permits us to recognize its existence. While the call between the two leaders was unorthodox, the reaction to it is more a reflection of a stultified underlying policy than an upset to the world order.

A bigger problem with the supposition that this episode might one day make for good Hollywood treatment is that before long, there might be no one to make such a film that is not somehow tied to the growing Chinese involvement in the U.S. film industry. From production to distribution, Chinese companies are increasing their stakes in one of the crown jewels of U.S. industry.

Much has been written about China’s Dalian Wanda Group, which took a majority stake in the U.S. theater chain AMC in 2012. Earlier this year, Dalian Wanda made an offer for the smaller Carmike theater chain. Together, the two chains own more than 8,000 screens, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. total.

On the production end of the process, Alibaba Pictures in October announced a co-production, co-finance partnership with Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s production company. This in the wake of January’s announcement that Dalian Wanda bought the finance and production company Legendary Entertainment. The purchase of a major Hollywood studio by Dalian Wanda, Alibaba, or some other China interest seems a matter of time.

So what? Foreign investment in Hollywood is not unheard of; indeed, Japan’s Softbank had an estimated 10 percent stake in Legendary and was one of the investors bought out by the Dalian Wanda purchase. The stalwarts at the Wall Street Journal editorial page rightly noted in an October editorial that “the movie business is a competitive market with none of the immediate security risks of defense contractors or power-plant operators.”

To that end, the expressed intent of the Alibaba and Dalian Wanda deals mentioned is to create a global production and distribution network for what is clearly a global industry. While more movies are made in India than anywhere else and China is second only to the U.S. in total box office (but is the fastest growing country in that category), the U.S. remains a global leader in content and bankability. One measure: Global box office for 2016 is expected to be about $38 billion, but the combined gross of the Harry Potter, Avengers, and Batman franchises alone is about 15 percent of that. By the way, Legendary Entertainment, now owned by Dalian Wanda, produced the Batman series.

It is understandable that U.S. filmmaking interests are looking for every advantage they can get to distribute films in China, which accounts for more than 10 percent of global box office. China’s movie-going public is anchored by a growing urban middle class that has disposable income and is enamored with all things Western, from automobiles to iPhones. Co-finance, co-production deals to make movies makes perfect sense.

It also makes perfect sense that U.S. filmmakers will do all they can to avoid running afoul of a Chinese government that is increasingly obvious about two things that intersect in ways that put a bull’s-eye on the moviemaking process: control over the media and the use of “soft power” to enhance its role in the world.

On the first point: The Communist government under Xi Jinping is cracking down on so-called civil-society activities. The regime’s attempts to stifle dissent are becoming clear to the public. These include placing restrictions and conditions on Internet access by ordinary citizens, arrests of dissident bloggers, and even abducting several booksellers from Hong Kong and spiriting them back to the mainland for harassment and intimidation.

This control extends to moviemaking. Last month, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved a new film-industry-promotion law, ostensibly to modernize the domestic industry. The Chinese film industry is already heavily protected. According to China Law Blog, the draft law does not change existing prohibitions on “foreigners engaging independently in film production in China.” Foreigners still cannot distribute films in China, and quotas on foreign-film imports continue.

By entering into co-production and co-finance agreements with Chinese interests, U.S. filmmakers obviously hope to get over, around, or through these restrictions and gain access to a fast-growing urban market. To do so, though, Spielberg and other auteurs will probably have to accept the overall intent of the new domestic law, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, is “to serve ‘the people and socialism, prioritize social benefit, and coordinate social and economic effects.’”

Here’s another way to think about that: self-censorship. For example, Alibaba’s partner Amblin, or Dalian Wanda’s subsidiary Legendary, are not likely to want to make two versions of their movies — one for the U.S. and one for China — and so will likely take care to exclude from them anything that Beijing might see as not “prioritizing social benefit” for Chinese viewers.

What might that look like? No need to guess, because it’s already happening. In pre-release publicity for the Marvel blockbuster Doctor Strange, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill acknowledged, as reported in the New York Times, why a key character drawn from the original comic is Tibetan but in the film is played by a British actress, Tilda Swinton. “If you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people,” Cargill said in an interview. Just in case you wouldn’t get his point, he also expressed concerns about “the risk of the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.’”

Got it. And this was a film made by Marvel Studios, and distributed by Marvel’s owner, Walt Disney Studios, a U.S. public company. How might self-censorship look when Dalian Wanda is financing the film and opening distribution doors across the country and attempting not to run afoul of the same government that kidnaps obscure booksellers in Hong Kong?

It’s one thing for Amblin or Legendary to engage in self-censorship to get movies that have been paid for by Chinese companies distributed in China. But the Marvel example is something we had better get used to: Movies produced and paid for by U.S. companies and distributed in the U.S. are censored in the hope that the same movie might somehow find its way into Chinese distribution.

While U.S. national security doesn’t depend on whether a a role in a movie based on a comic book is played by a British or a Tibetan actor, it is pretty obvious that the same kind of self-censorship will apply to political thrillers, historical fiction, real-world history, documentaries, and anything else that producers hope will be distributed in China. At the very least, the burden of proof is on filmmakers to demonstrate otherwise.

This plays into the attention that the Communist government under the Xi regime pays to so-called soft power. The world is fixated on the rise of the Chinese navy, its adventurism in the South China and Philippine Seas, and other “hard power” demonstrations that are raising concerns in the region and in the United States. But Xi intends to extend China’s influence in less belligerent ways, too. These include a proliferating number of international forums such as the Boao Conference, the hosting of global events such as the Olympics and Special Olympics, and investments in CCTV and other foreign-language television.

Core to the soft-power thesis are public diplomacy and related activities. The U.S. understood this for years going back to World War II, when it produced pro-military, pro-government films and, after the war, established Voice of America. The Chinese may simply believe they are modernizing that approach by controlling film content. Shaping the image of China and its interests through the global film industry could hardly be considered an incidental objective for Beijing when we consider the draft film-industry-promotion law or the efforts by Alibaba, Dalian Wanda, and others seeking a stronger foothold in the U.S. film industry.

To address this, the U.S. should consider some modernizing approaches of its own. That may already be underway. In September a bipartisan group of 16 members of the House of Representatives wrote to the comptroller general of the United States to ask for a review of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, “to determine whether its . . . authorities have effectively kept pace” with the current security landscape.

CFIUS is an interagency group that, under the auspices of the Treasury Department, determines whether potential foreign investments in U.S. entities could undermine national security. CFIUS has heretofore focused on national security and proposed investments in critical infrastructure. The September congressional letter asks the comptroller general this pointed question: “Should the definition of national security be broadened to address concerns about propaganda and control of the media and ‘soft power’ institutions?”

It’s the right question, and a review of the future of CFIUS is the right lever to pull. The Trump administration seems predisposed to ask such questions. President-elect Trump and many of his advisers seem to have no qualms about acknowledging the obvious: The Chinese government intervenes in markets of all types to exert its will. That Beijing would attempt to influence the global filmmaking industry to achieve its own ends doesn’t sound like something that would meet a lot of doubt or skepticism from the new administration, some of whose appointees will constitute the CFIUS.

“This has never happened. . . . There’s no road map for this,” Legendary Productions founder and CEO Thomas Tull said at the time of the Dalian Wanda takeover of the company. Now, while it’s still possible (maybe) to watch a movie in a theater in Kansas and not have to question whether a bureaucrat in Beijing approved it, is a good time to start making that map. — Therese Shaheen is a businesswoman and CEO of US Asia International. She was the chairman of the State Department’s American Institute in Taiwan from 2002 to 2004.

(Source: http://www.nationalreview.com)

Co-Directing: Where Differences Unite

Carob is Not Chocolate and VR is Not Film

What is Story in VR?

Limitations Are Portals For Discovery

Rigorous Mistakes Are Innovations

Final Thoughts

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Documentary Caps Festival’s First Slate of ‘The New Climate’ Films and Work About Environment and Conservation

The Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, Social Entrepreneur Jeff Skoll & Others Join ‘Power of Story’ Panel on January 22; Live Streamed at sundance.org

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MOVIES OF THE YEAR

TV PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR

AFI SPECIAL AWARD

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SPECIAL SCREENINGS PROGRAM

BEYOND PROGRAM

NARRATIVE SHORTS PROGRAM

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS PROGRAM

ANIMATION SHORTS PROGRAM

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS PROGRAM

ANARCHY SHORTS PROGRAM

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Film Review and Marketing