Category: Artist Spotlight

It’s been dubbed (by our own senior programmer John Nein, in fact) the first Iranian vampire western, and who would dare refute that obscure designation? A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night garnered a rapturous reception at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it played in the NEXT section before screening again at this summer’s Sundance NEXT FEST in Los Angeles.
A Girl is set in the fictitious Bad City, a home to debauched drug users and other degenerates where a subdued vampire stalks the denizens. Our vampire, “Girl,” stunningly portrayed by Sheila Vand, only changes her ways upon being seduced by a debonair romantic named Arash.

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

Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson recently wrapped up their work at the three-week Theatre Lab at Sundance Resort where they rehearsed, revised, and rewrote parts of their in-progress play The Good Book. The play tells the story of how the Bible became the most powerful collection of texts in human history. Below, the writing duo discuss their sources of creative inspiration for sundance.

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

Throughout Glenn Close’s distinguished career—she’s received an Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award, plus six Academy Award nominations for acting—she has been a fierce advocate for independent film. As part of last night’s Sundance Institute Celebration benefit, Glenn was honored with the Vanguard Leadership Award for her ongoing commitment to the indie film community. Also recognizing the emerging guard, Sundance Institute honored filmmaker Damien Chazelle with the Vanguard Award, Presented with The Lincoln Motor Company.

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

Rooted in themes of death and rebirth, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom is an emotive ode to the victims of the 2010 tsunami in Japan. Veteran doc filmmaker Lucy Walker interweaves amateur footage and poetic cinematography to produce a tableau of the rebirth of nature and the resilience of man. The short film won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, Non-Fiction, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated that same year for Best Documentary (short subject) at the Academy Awards.

Rewind to 2010 for this Q&A with Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik, before Jennifer Lawrence appeared in the Hunger Games series and won an Academy Award for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook. In Winter’s Bone, Lawrence plays Ree, a teenage girl who embarks on an heroic quest to find her bail-skipping, meth-making father, and bring him home. Below, Granik remarks on the luck she felt in having worked with Lawrence and describes the challenges she faced in navigating a storyline centered around indelible hillbilly stereotypes.

Don’t look now, but it’s been two decades since filmmakers Steve James, Peter Gilbert, and Frederick Marx premiered their rapturously received basketball documentary, Hoop Dreams, at the Sundance Film Festival. As part of the 2014 Festival, a digitally remastered high definition version of the film will screen for the first time ever in this year’s From the Collection program.Hoop Dreams charts the five-year journey of Chicago basketball prodigies Arthur Agee and William Gates as they vigorously chase their on-the-court endeavors while confronting burdensome issues off the hardwood.

It’s hard to recall a documentary film with a more audacious blueprint than the one Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster outlined some 14 years ago. At that time, their 5-year-old son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, were beginning kindergarten at the prestigious Dalton School, a private institution in New York City. Over the next 12 years, Stephenson and Brewster would candidly document the boys’ conflicting experiences as one opted to pursue an education in the public schooling system.

In making his alarming, often outraging documentary God Loves Uganda, director Roger Ross Williams embedded himself in the eye of a cultural thunderstorm—one marked by stanch moral and religious adherence and a shocking code of ethics surrounding homosexuality. 
God Loves Uganda plays like nothing less than an investigative thriller, penetrating a potent American evangelical movement taking place in a vulnerable East African country. Perhaps the only thing more rousing than the mission itself, is the man crusading it.

Matthew Porterfield’s third feature, I Used to Be Darker, is a delicate exercise in restraint. His fingerprints appear everywhere and nowhere in this strained family drama as he infuses naturalism by seemingly relinquishing control. More than ever before, Darker showcases Porterfield’s undervalued acumen for developing characters by simply allowing them to develop.