Category: Diaries

Festival diaries and other time-based records

Sundance Film Festival 2022 Diary: Days 1 & 2

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie
Sundance Film Festival 2022 Header Image

 

It’s the last week of January, so you know what that means. I’m back with dispatches from the front of Virtual Sundance, Round 2 (aka the Sundance Film Festival 2022)!

This year’s coverage of the festival won’t be quite as extensive as last year’s. I have just moved across the country–seriously, we’ve been in our new place for a week, and the movers haven’t even gotten our stuff here yet–and had thought that I wasn’t going to be able to attend the festival at all this year. While the 2022 edition of the festival had long been planned as a “hybrid” event, it wasn’t clear what would be available online (frankly, it didn’t seem like much), and I wasn’t going to be able to go to Utah for a week in the middle of a move. So I had written this year off a Sundance loss and resigned myself to it. 

As the omicron/winter COVID surge began to sweep the country in December, film industry folks wondered if Sundance would push forward with the in-person festival. Public health experts in Utah predicted that the peak of the omicron surge in the film festival’s host state would coincide with the event. At the very last minute, the announcement finally came that the 2022 edition of the festival would, as last year, be entirely virtual. Well, I couldn’t help myself at that point. I snapped up some tickets, roped in my longtime Sundance buddy (my mom), and we were off to the races. I don’t have a festival pass this year, and I’ll have to take a few days off this week to, you know, unpack all of my belongings; however, I can’t restrain myself and will still probably watch more movies than any one person should watch in a week.

Writing my Sundance diary last year was a challenge that I greatly enjoyed tackling. I thought it would be fun to try it again, so expect regular updates here on the blog about what I’m watching at the festival. This year, I’m going to try out a streamlined version of the diary that consists mainly of capsule reviews. I’ve also tasked myself with being less descriptive in my roundups and more pithy with my opinion. We’ll see how that goes. “I’m working on developing my quick reaction muscle,” I tell you as I meaningfully tap the “About Us” tab.

So, without further ado, here’s the main attraction.

 

DAY 1 (Friday, January 21, 2022)**

All of the films I watched on Day 1 pointed me outwards, to other films I would like to watch. Living made me curious about Ikiru, of course, while The Exiles inspired me to seek out the documentaries of Christine Choy. Leonor Will Never Die piqued my interest in the Filipino action films, like the ones Leonor makes and dreams about, that clearly inspired writer/director Martika Ramirez Escobar.

 

Living (Premieres)

Oliver Hermanus directs this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), while internationally acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the script, which transposes the story of Kurosawa’s film to post-war London. Living features an impressively restrained, incredibly effective central performance from Bill Nighy as a bureaucrat who struggles to find meaning in his life when he learns that he has six months left to live. Supporting turns from Tom Burke (pitch perfect here, simply oozing seedy charm), Aimee Lou Wood, and Alex Sharp round out a uniformly strong cast. From the stunning opening credits, which are designed to look as though they belong to a film made in the period in which the film is set, it’s clear that the film will be a treat for the formalists. Each frame of Living is rigorously, classically composed, and, combined with the gorgeously high contrast cinematography, this does lend the film a decidedly (deliciously) old-fashioned look. The plot, taken straight from the Kurosawa film, has a literary bent, full as it is of chance encounters, intertwined fates, and existential questions. The film is, ultimately, a morality tale, but the script never falsely reduces the emotional complexity of any situation to make a point or pull a heartstring. Despite a premise that sounds like the setup for something mawkish, Living operates in a controlled, repressed register that reflects its main character’s inner state. I liked this film quite a bit, but, having never seen Ikiru, I can’t speak to how it works as a remake. 

 

The Exiles (U.S. Documentary Competition)

Violet Columbus and Ben Klein set out to make a biographical documentary about outspoken nonfiction filmmaker, activist, and professor Christine Choy; but during the process, they discovered that Choy had hours and hours of footage for an intriguing unfinished project. In 1989, Choy began filming a group of Chinese activists who had survived the Tiananmen Square massacre and been granted asylum in New York City. Choy, a Chinese-American woman, found herself at the perfect cultural crossroad to take on the project. (She’s blunter, saying she was able to film the subjects because “I spoke Chinese.”) Columbus and Klein endeavor to help Choy finish the project, following up with the subjects thirty years later and reminding audiences of the significance of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The two intentions of the documentary never came together meaningfully for me (the profile of Choy and the recovery of Choy’s old project), although the thread of the film that concerned the survivors of the massacre in the present day was undeniably moving.

 

Leonor Will Never Die (World Dramatic Competition)

Perhaps the strangest film I’ve seen so far this festival, Leonor Will Never Die might best be described as an experimental film about filmmaking, turning life into art, dealing with death, and action films from the Philippines. Martika Ramirez Escobar wrote and directed this never less than involving movie, which takes so many surreal turns that you can’t help but keep watching. Leonor (a fantastic Sheila Francisco) is an aging, retired action film maker. When she gets hit on the head and goes into a coma, she gets stuck in a script she’s been working on for many years. The coma/dream sections of the film are faithful, affectionate recreations of the type of action film Leonor would have made in her career. I admired the craft and the ambition of this film, but I’m not sure I loved it. I am looking forward to watching this one again when I have the opportunity.

 

DAY 2 (Saturday, January 22, 2022)

My Day 2 schedule unintentionally provided me with two thematic pairs. Calendar Girls and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande featured women over 60 interested in challenging accepted norms about how women “should” age and figuring out a better way to live their lives. The documentaries Fire of Love and Lucy and Desi both spotlit real-life couples whose shared work changed the world.

 

Calendar Girls (World Cinema Documentary Competition) 

If this movie doesn’t make you want to dance, then I don’t know what to tell you. Finnish directing duo Maria Loohufvud and Love Martinsen make their feature film debut with this charming documentary about a volunteer dance troupe in Florida made up entirely of women over 60. The film follows several of the dancers, including the troupe’s founder and leader, over the course of a year or so. The spirited women at the center of this documentary find meaning and purpose while performing with the Calendar Girls at a time in their lives when they feel like society expects them to be invisible. The highlights of the doc for me were the interpretive dance scenes sprinkled throughout the movie, which worked to both illuminate the women’s inner emotional states and also effectively translate the Calendar Girls’ dancing for the medium of film. Juno Films picked up Calendar Girls for distribution, with an expected North American theatrical release in the summer.

 

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Premieres)

Before I go any further, I have to get this out of the way: Daryl McCormack is a goddamn STAR. I hadn’t seen him in anything before I watched this film, and he a) held his own against Emma Thompson giving an absolute powerhouse performance and b) completely sold a character who is pretty much a gender-swapped, progressive version of the “hooker with a heart of gold” cliché. He pulled off the fantasy and kept the whole thing real without breaking a sweat. He knocked my socks off. Yes, he’s hot (that’s the point), but I can’t stop thinking about his performance. Brb, coming up with pitches about this for later because I have MORE TO SAY.

Anyway… if you can’t tell, I adored Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, directed by Sophie Hyde and written by Katy Brand. The film is a dialogue heavy two-hander that might easily have been a play; the astutely written script got noticed by producers because the single setting and two characters made it safe to shoot during a pandemic. The film’s visual style is rather subdued and utilitarian, but that worked for me, as the script and the performances are the main attraction here. Emma Thompson plays “Nancy Stokes,” an older woman who has never experienced sexual pleasure or satisfaction. She hires a much younger sex worker, “Leo Grande” (McCormack), to meet her in a hotel room and hopefully, finally give her a sexual encounter to remember. Over the course of four meetings, Nancy and Leo experience many forms of intimacy with each other in addition to the sexual kind. This sex-positive dramedy never hit a false emotional note, and I will not stop recommending it to everyone I know when it comes out.

 

Fire of Love (U.S. Documentary Competition)

I loved this archival doc, which showcases the work and relationship of married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Director Sara Dosa combines archival footage and lyrical narration (voiced by the inimitable Miranda July, an inspired choice) to create a French New Wave-inspired meditation on the volcanic forces of love and nature that shaped the Krafft’s lives. The artistic footage of active volcanoes, taken by Maurice during his lifetime, that makes up the bulk of the film is simply mesmerizing. I can’t wait to see Fire of Love on a bigger screen, which should be possible since National Geographic Documentary Films snapped it up for distribution. The story of the Kraffts, who come off in the doc as outsider adventurer scientists from an age bygone even before they lived, seems like a great fit for National Geographic.

 

Lucy and Desi (Premieres)

At the height of their influence, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were a power couple if ever there was one. Comedian Amy Poehler’s documentary serves as a tribute to both their love story and their legacy in Hollywood. As a nearly lifelong I Love Lucy fan whose Dad encouraged her to read histories and biographies, none of the information presented in Lucy and Desi felt revelatory to me. However, the documentary makes wonderful use of archival audio to let Lucy and Desi tell their own stories in their own voices. Although Poehler refrains from relying too heavily on talking heads, Lucie Arnaz contributes extensive recollections of her parents, and a handful of performers from the generations after Lucy and Desi speak to the couple’s legacy in the entertainment industry. Ultimately, the film is standard in form for this type of biographical documentary but obviously made with love for its subjects. Lucy and Desi will debut on Amazon Prime Video in March.

 

*The festival officially kicked off on January 20, but I didn’t see any of the premiere screenings that night. My festival started on the first full day, January 21, so that’s when I’m starting this diary.

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Final Day and Wrap Up

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 7: February 3, 2021 / Wrap Up

Well, friends, we finally made it to the end of the festival! Before I get into my wrap up, I want to mention the three awards winners that I made time to catch up with on day seven. Animated documentary Flee (World Documentary Competition Grand Jury and Audience Award winner) is a stunner. Director Jonas Poher Rasmussen interviews his longtime friend (whose name is changed in the film for safety reasons) about his friend’s experience as an Afghan refugee. Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury and Audience Award winner) will make you get up out of your seat and dance. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson directs this joyful ode to the Harlem Cultural Festival concert series that happened over the summer of 1969. The festival showcased a wide range of Black musical talent, and the documentary frames the festival’s lineup as a snapshot of what was happening in the Black community at the end of the 1960s. Ma Belle, My Beauty (NEXT Audience Award winner), written and directed by Marion Hill, takes us to the south of France, where a couple of newlyweds are suddenly reunited with their ex. The film explores the power dynamics of their polyamorous relationship in sensitive and intriguing ways, and the beautiful French countryside provides a lush and sensuous backdrop for the proceedings.

By the end of the final day of the festival, I was pretty exhausted.* I watched 29 feature films and one shorts program over seven days. I think that’s a new record for me, even at the longer, in-person festival. Out of curiosity, I did a little category breakdown to see how widely (or not) I sampled.

 

U.S. Dramatic Competition: 7

U.S. Documentary Competition: 5

World Dramatic Competition: 2

World Documentary Competition: 4

NEXT: 5

Premieres: 5

Midnight: 1

Shorts Programs: 1

 

My fiction/nonfiction split ended up being exactly 50/50, with fifteen fiction films and fourteen nonfiction features (plus the documentary shorts program). I’m really happy with that ratio; Sundance is a great festival for documentaries, and I try not to neglect the documentary categories in favor of the buzzier narrative films.

Overall, I think that Sundance did an exemplary job of putting on the virtual festival. The programmers still put together a solid lineup, all of the technical aspects of the platform worked seamlessly for me, and the whole experience still felt like an event. I think keeping the screening windows short really helped create a sense of temporal unity among festival goers, even though we were spatially scattered. In addition, the design of the festival’s centralized web portal created a nice sense of virtual space. I felt like I was “entering” the festival when I pulled up the website. While the in-person festival experience is irreplaceable, I hope that going into the future Sundance continues to use the virtual festival platform that they’ve built. I would love to see certain programs, films, or categories made available virtually in concurrence with the in-person festival. It could be an excellent way to increase the reach and accessibility of the festival going forward.

I’ll leave you with a list of my favorite films from this year’s festival. I will say upfront that I saw a lot of decent to good films this year; just because a film isn’t on this list doesn’t mean I didn’t like it.** But these were the standouts for me, especially after a few days’ distance from the whirlwind of the festival.

 

All Light Everywhere, dir. Theo Anthony (distribution TBD)

Censor, dir. Prano Bailey-Bond (distribution TBD)

Cryptozoo, dir. Dash Shaw (purchased by Magnolia Pictures, release date TBD)

El Planeta, dir. Amalia Ulman (distribution TBD)

Flee, dir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen (purchased by NEON, release date TBD)

Passing, dir. Rebecca Hall (purchased by Netflix, release date TBD)

Together Together, dir. Nikole Beckwith (purchased by Bleeker Street, release date TBD)

 

And that’s a wrap on Sundance 2021! I’ll be back with the monthly essay in a couple of weeks! It’s been fun trying out the festival diary format, and I hope you’ve enjoyed following along. If you’ve been into the recent influx of reviews on the blog, with the one-two punch of my favorites of 2020 list and my Sundance diary, let me know. I still envision this blog as a space primarily for essays about whatever films I’m currently thinking about, regardless of their current relevance, but I am open to periodically writing some reviews of new releases if that’s something my readers (you!) would be interested in seeing. 

 

 

*Sorry for the slight delay on these last two diary entries! I just needed a mental break. And the blog is called Delayed Responses, to be fair.

**I also want to say that while I would highly recommend catching Judas and the Black Messiah, it felt weird to put it on my favorites list because its premiere felt sort of outside the festival to me. It felt more like a special screening or something. But the film is well worth your time! It will be available in select theaters and to stream on HBOMax for thirty days, beginning this Friday (February 12).

 

Sundance Film Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 6

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 6: February 2, 2021

I made it to my final full day of screenings! I’ll be catching up on a few awards winners on the official last day of the festival, and I’m also working on a short wrap up post; so keep your eye out for one more dispatch after this one. Thanks for following along.

On day six, I explored the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, choosing three films I had heard positive things about after their premieres. First up, I watched Nikole Beckwith’s surrogacy comedy Together Together, starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison. Helms plays a single man in his forties who wants to have a child and start a family, in an inversion of the usual stories about ticking biological clocks; Harrison plays the twenty-something woman he chooses to carry his child. This thoughtful little situational comedy explores the (platonic) relationship that develops between the two main characters. I found the film to be totally lovely and emotionally honest, and Helms and Harrison shine as two lonely people who strike up an odd-couple friendship under unusual circumstances.

Marvelous and the Black Hole (written and directed by Kate Tsang) brought me back into coming-of-age indie dramedy territory (after CODA on day one). Delightful newcomer Miya Cech plays Sammy, a rebellious thirteen-year-old who’s struggling to deal with her grief over her mother’s death. Through happenstance, Sammy meets Margot (Rhea Pearlman), a whimsical children’s magician. Over the course of a summer, Sammy and Margot become unlikely friends. The story hits familiar beats, but, as with CODA, the particulars are charming. 

Jockey also traces a familiar story arc, that of an aging athlete coming to terms with the end of his career and facing his own mortality. Clint Bentley, who wrote and directed the film, grew up in the horse racing world and brings a sense of authenticity and specificity to his portrayal of it. Character actor Clifton Collins, Jr. gives an excellent performance as the titular jockey; his work elevates the whole film to the next level.

My least favorite film of the day had to be First Date (NEXT), Manual Crosby and Darren Knapp’s early-Tarantino homage. The program notes describe the film as “Superbad meets True Romance,” and that about sums it up. Although the teenage leads add that coming-of-age element, the film is otherwise very much of a piece with the many, many Tarantino knock-offs from the late ‘90s. I suppose that the ‘90s are far enough past that this kind of movie counts as a throwback now, but Crosby and Knapp didn’t introduce any fresh or unexpected elements to liven things up. I wanted to like this one more than I did.

I only watched one documentary today: Egyptian filmmaker Ali Al Arabi’s Captains of Zaatari (World Documentary Competition). This understated film follows two teenagers, Syrian refugees living in the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, as they try to get out and become professional soccer players. They get scouted by a Qatari sports academy, and the movie goes from there. This observational, subdued film allows many of its largest thematic concerns to flourish in the margins and remain almost unsaid. This restraint ultimately makes the film more powerful, subtly commenting on the way that real life doesn’t hit the triumphant beats of Hollywood sports movies. Similarly, the difficulty of life in Zaatari is implied through the boys’ fervent desire to transcend their circumstances, but the film doesn’t revel in misery. The film is ultimately a delicate look at the power of hope.

That’s all for day six! Check back in for my final Sundance 2021 diary.

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 5

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 5: February 1, 2021

On day 5, I got to play catch up with a few films I had heard excellent things about over the past few days. I started with Fran Kranz’s Mass (Premieres), one of the best-received films of the festival so far. This chamber piece features knock-out performances by Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Ann Dowd, and Reed Birney as the parents of a victim of a Columbine-esque mass shooting and the parents of the shooter. The film consists almost solely of the conversation that this set of parents has with each other—a conversation that seems to have been set up in an effort to help the victims’ parents heal and find closure. The film is heavy and highly charged, but the script and the performers hold onto emotional and moral nuances and contradictions that could easily have been glossed over in a less thoughtful version of this story. Kranz’s film will no doubt be a conversation starter.

While I doubt it will be as widely seen, Amalia Ulman’s autobiographically-inspired El Planeta (World Dramatic Competition) should also start conversations. Ulman’s film might be one of the best depictions of middle class economic precarity I’ve ever seen; Leo (Amalia Ulman) and her mother (played by Ulman’s real mother, Ale) struggle to get by after Leo’s father dies and leaves them with nothing. Leo’s mother has never worked, and Leo was a student studying abroad. They don’t qualify for social benefits, but they can’t find jobs in Spain’s depressed economy. So they skate by, running small-scale scams to get what they need and maintain appearances. The film is funny, but in a “what else are you supposed to do but laugh” kind of way. It’s a breezy film about a tragic situation; the tone of the film expertly evokes both Leo and (especially) her mother’s fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude about their misfortunes. The more I sit with this one, the more I like it.

Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill’s Cusp (U.S. Documentary Competition) has gotten praise for its sensitive depiction of teenage girlhood. Like El Planeta, although operating in different ways, Cusp addresses serious topics without being an Issues Movie. Bethencourt and Hill follow a group of three teenage girls in a small Texas town over the course of one summer; the girls party and hang out, wasting time in that distinctly teenage way. One of the film’s most disquieting through lines becomes the way these young women must constantly deal with the consequences of pervasive, gendered power imbalances; the idea that women are “scared to say no” to men (to non-consensual sex, to controlling boyfriends, to abusive fathers) crops up again and again in the film. Bethencourt and Hill don’t neglect to honor their subjects and show the joyful moments, too, making sure to document the girls’ lives beyond just their trauma.

At the last minute, I decided to squeeze in Sean Ellis’s Victorian werewolf tale Eight for Silver (Premieres). I thought I needed a little burst of good genre fun in between all of my serious movies, and I was definitely right. Although the film could use a tighter edit (its runtime is too long for the amount of story it’s trying to tell), I got a kick out of Ellis’s grimy, gothic monster movie. The creature design for the werewolves could have been more creative, but the mechanics of how a person turns into one of these monsters delighted me. (One particularly gory reveal might be the highlight of the whole thing.) This one is worth catching for fans of monster horror.

The world premiere of Judas and the Black Messiah (directed by Shaka King) capped off my day of screenings. Warner Brothers chose to use the Sundance festival as a launch pad for the film’s awards campaign; the film certainly feels like a glossy studio production in a way that made it stand out from the much smaller films I’ve been watching all week.* King’s film follows William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), the FBI informant who ultimately enabled the assassination of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton (an unbelievably good Daniel Kaluuya, standing out even in a film packed with strong performances) in 1969. The film is primarily about Hampton’s assassination, tracing O’Neal’s journey as he gets closer to Hampton and ending with the police raid on Hampton’s Chicago home that served as the pretense for his murder. The film works as a powerful indictment of the FBI’s COINTELPRO project, and it’s encouraging to see a movie with such a radical (and thoroughly anti-cop) heart get made by a mainstream studio.

Day six will be my last full day of screenings! Check back tomorrow for another review roundup.

 

 

*Judas and the Black Messiah will be released in theaters and on HBOMax (WW84-style) on February 12. Because of the pandemic, the Academy lengthened its eligibility release window, so Judas will be eligible for Oscars at this year’s awards. If I didn’t have the Sundance pass, I wouldn’t have seen the film at the festival since it’s being released next week; but I’ve been looking forward to the film, and I thought I might as well get into the premiere if I could.

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 4

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 4: January 31, 2021

I stayed busy on day four with six movies, a new record made possible by the increased scheduling flexibility of the on-demand second screenings. By the final movie, I had surrendered and decided to watch on my laptop in bed. (I did not fall asleep during the film, though, which is more than I can say for myself at some of the late screenings at the in-person festival.) Six films in one day might be my limit, but never say never.

My favorite film of the day was probably Theo Anthony’s All Light Everywhere (U.S. Documentary Competition). Anthony describes his films as “documentary essays,” which aptly captures the way that All Light Everywhere weaves together thematic threads to make an argument. The film interrogates the idea of objective vision, particularly with regards to photography and cameras, asking the viewer to consider the subjective frame that’s constantly present. I don’t want to spoil where the film ultimately goes or flatten the sense of its scope, but suffice it to say that Anthony grounds these theoretical and philosophical musings about observation in the history and current practices of surveillance and law enforcement. As an art historian and an advocate for visual literacy, I will admit that this film was of particular interest to me; of course I’m down for a two hour meditation on the way cultural and social context frame any image if you know how to look. Your mileage may vary.

In the morning, I made time to catch up with On The Count of Three (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Jerrod Carmichael’s suicide pact buddy comedy. The film pulls off a tricky tonal balancing act, managing to be genuinely funny without undercutting the seriousness of the characters’ decision to mutually self-destruct. Co-leads Christopher Abbott and Carmichael both give great performances, although Abbott’s got the showier part and has received the bulk of the praise so far. Some of the filmmaking choices and bits of dialogue felt clunky, but the film balances its tone so deftly that I couldn’t write the film off entirely. I’ll be curious to see how this one plays outside of the festival.

I also saw two biographical documentaries: Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (U.S. Documentary Competition) and My Name Is Pauli Murray (Premieres). The Rita Moreno doc (directed by Mariem Pérez Riera) celebrates the life of the iconic actress, singer, and dancer; the film focuses on her status as a trailblazer of Latina representation in Hollywood, as well as her remarkable resilience as she navigated the sexist and racists systems of the industry for decades. My Name is Pauli Murray (co-directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen) works to elevate its subject into the mainstream historical consciousness. West and Cohen first heard about Murray when they were working on their previous documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsberg; Murray, it turns out, was the legal mind who came up with the framework for using the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution to argue against the legality of discrimination on the basis of sex. Previously, this amendment had only be used to legally battle discrimination on the basis of race. The documentary tries to tell the whole story of Murray’s incredible life, but 90 minutes doesn’t quite seem to do Murray justice. The film is a good introduction to an under-recognized civil rights hero, however, and made me want to learn more about Murray.

For my last two films of the day, I took a dive into the weird. First up was Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland (Premieres). The film’s maximalist, post-apocalyptic, East-meets-West aesthetic is the best thing about it; and, indeed, the production design was so fabulous that I found myself disappointed that the rest of the movie didn’t live up to its promise. The film also inexplicably loses steam in the last fifteen minutes or so, right when I wanted things to get peak batshit. (This is a film where Nic Cage’s character gets one of his balls blown off while trapped in a tight leather suit programmed to self-destruct if he fails to complete his mission, so I’m not really sure what I mean when I say “peak batshit.” I just know that I wanted the film to accelerate right when it took its foot off the gas.) I’m glad I made time for this one, but it didn’t quite do it for me. While nestled in bed, I finished off the day with Strawberry Mansion (NEXT), Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s lo-fi sci-fi. I appreciated the film’s inventiveness and easily got on its surreal, Gondry-inflected wavelength. Strawberry Mansion isn’t going to change your mind if you aren’t into that kind of thing (if you hear the term “dream auditor” and roll your eyes, this film isn’t for you), but I enjoyed it.

See you back here tomorrow for day five! I’m really, really looking forward to the premiere of Judas and the Black Messiah, so look out for thoughts on that one.

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 3

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 3: January 30, 2021

Day three, and we’re still going strong. I’ve managed to increase the number of movies I can fit into my schedule day over day; today I watched five, and tomorrow I’ll be attempting six. I think my brain said, “Eight hours of sleep? During Sundance? Get outta here, watch more movies.” And I willingly complied, because I’m greedy.

Before I get into the film roundup, I have some notes on the chat function in the virtual premiere screening room. I had initially written off the chat function as unusable, but I’ve come to realize that this really depends on the film. The chats for the buzziest, busiest films do quickly become hard to follow and difficult to use for conversation; however, in the waiting rooms for some of the documentaries and smaller films, I’ve had some nice interactions in the chat with fellow festival-goers. As the festival has gone on and people have seen more films, the chat has also become a place for people to swap recommendations about what movies are worth catching. As I start to view more on-demand second screenings, which don’t have the live chat function, I think I might start to miss it. 

I will also say that it’s been lovely chatting with some of my friends on social media who have also been doing the virtual festival. We’ve mostly found each other through our Instagram stories and swapped stories in our DMs. It’s not the same as seeing each other in line at a screening and waving, but it’ll do.* I’ve also done several screening parties with friends and family over Zoom, which has been great. I almost always do the festival with my mom, and we’ve kept up that tradition this year. And one of my dearest friends, who lives in Denver and has never done the festival in person, decided to take the virtual festival as an opportunity to Sundance for the first time. (She’s a horror aficionado, and she’s stretched me to venture into the Midnight category; we watched Censor together last night, which we both loved. More on that later.) This is my shout out to all of you who have connected with me over the past few days and helped remind me that the virtual festival is still a communal experience.

Today’s films were more of a mixed bag, but, happily, I ended the day on a strong note with three films I enjoyed. I’ll start the roundup with the documentaries: Sabaya (World Documentary Competition) and Searchers (NEXT). I don’t think I could have purposefully picked two documentaries more opposite in tone or subject matter. Sabaya (directed by Hogir Hirori) follows a group known as the Yazidi Home Center that rescues kidnapped Yazidi women from sex-slavery in an ISIS camp on the Iraqi-Syrian border; Searchers (directed by Pacho Velez) captures impressions of a swathe of New Yorkers as they look for love—or sex or connection—on various dating apps. Sabaya’s subject matter is harrowing, and the people of the Yazidi Home Center (as well as the crew involved with making the film) routinely risk their lives to do the work depicted. The film can’t quite decide, however, whether it wants to be a portrait of the rescued women’s trauma or a heroic account of the incredibly brave people who run the rescue missions. It splits the difference to its own detriment, ultimately. 

Searchers proved to be a sweet, surprisingly moving little treat. In an effective move, Velez positions the camera behind a computer screen and puts a crew member in charge of clicking, typing, and inputting information into the computer. Participants in the documentary look directly into the camera as they look at the dating app up on the computer screen. They must verbally communicate what actions they want to take so that the offscreen crew member can execute them on the computer. This choice doesn’t come across like a gimmick; rather, this interruption allows the viewer of the documentary into the decision making process that goes on when someone’s absorbed with a dating app on their phone. This deceptively slight doc thoroughly charmed me. (Tickets to the second screening of Searchers on February 1, 2021 are still available as of this writing.)

From the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, I saw Wild Indian (directed by Lyle Mitchell Corbine, Jr.) and Passing (directed by actress Rebecca Hall). Wild Indian didn’t connect for me, despite an intriguing premise and strong lead performances. Of the two lead characters, the film focused much more on the enigmatic—and likely sociopathic—man (Makwa, played ferociously by Michael Greyeyes), who felt like too much of a blank slate for the film to really kick into high gear. I kept wondering if I would have found the film more successful if the balance had been shifted to focus more on the other lead (Ted-O, sensitively brought to the screen by Chaske Spencer).

The much buzzed about Passing worked best as an acting showcase for Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson, who are always powerhouses. In the film, which is set in the 1920s, Thompson and Negga play old acquaintances who accidentally reconnect when they run into each other in a New York City tea room. Since they’ve last spoken, Negga’s character has passed the color line to live as white, hiding her racial identity from her husband and her new social circle. The racial passing aspect of the story has gotten the most attention, but the film investigates various ways that people choose their identities (often at the expense of their authentic selves or true desires) to “pass.” Hall’s directorial debut is an admirably restrained and surprisingly queer psychological thriller shot in delicate black and white. I want to sit with this one to see if the emotional impact deepens or lingers, but I think I liked it.

I rounded out the night by catching up with Censor, which had accumulated great word of mouth buzz since it premiered on opening night. My horror-loving friend, aforementioned above, had singled this film out from the beginning of the festival as one she was excited for; so we were both pretty ready to be taken for a ride by director Prano Bailey-Bond. Both my friend and I really dug this one. Enid (NIamh Algar) works as a censor for the British government, banning “video nasties” to protect the public from their immoral and depraved excesses. (In the 1980s, when the film is set, Britain did censor and ban ultra-violent, low-budget exploitation horror films in a burst of moral panic over these films circulating on VHS.) In an excellent twist on the fear that violent horror films would negatively influence the public’s behavior, Enid slowly loses her grip on reality over the course of the movie, confusing events and unresolved issues from her own childhood with the films she watches every day for work. Bailey-Bond clearly loves the aesthetics of ‘80s horror, and her excellent film pays homage accordingly. 

That’s it for day three! day four marks the halfway point of the festival, and I still have so many films I’m looking forward to. Tune in tomorrow for more!

 

 

*I tried to work out an on line/online joke here, but that seemed too regional. Also, after only two years in New York, I don’t actually say “on line” instead of “in line.” Sorry, this footnote is basically the equivalent of that lazy “insert joke about [x] here” tweet format. I’m writing these dispatches in a hurry, I don’t have time to be witty!

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 2

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 2: January 29, 2021

Welcome back! I had a successful first full day of screenings; I enjoyed three out of the four films I watched, which is a pretty good average.

In the morning, I watched President (World Documentary Competition), Camilla Nielsson’s documentary about the 2018 presidential election in Zimbabwe. Nielsson follows Nelson Chamisa, the candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change party, and his campaign staff as he runs to unseat the candidate of the ruling party (ZANU-PF). Although Zimbabwe’s democratic constitution provides for free and fair democratic elections every five years, in practice, the military leaders of ZANU-PF have refused to concede control of the government and run truly transparent elections. This urgent film highlights the MDC’s tremendous uphill battle to hold ZANU-PF accountable to the will of the people. Chamisa and his staff refuse to succumb to a feeling of futility as they fight against a truly corrupt system, holding fast to the promise of democracy and risking their lives to do so. This film isn’t uplifting (ZANU-PF still rules in Zimbabwe), but Nielsson’s film provides an intimate look into an important struggle.

For my afternoon screening, I checked out the animated head trip Cryptozoo (NEXT), written and directed by Dash Shaw, with animation by Jane Samborski. Cryptozoo tells a globe-trotting action-adventure story about a woman who rescues and shelters cryptids, giving them a home at the Cryptozoo and ostensibly providing them with a better life. (All of the cryptids depicted in the film derive from different global folklore traditions, and the creature design here is top notch.) The film, which is set in the 1960s with an aesthetic to match, explores the allure of counter-culture idealism and dreams of utopia; but the film’s thesis might best be summed up when, early in the film, a character says under her breath, “Utopias never work out.” I don’t think this movie would succeed at all without the vibrant, creative, and psychedelic animation (the plot follows a familiar arc); however, I don’t necessarily see this as a flaw, since the art should be integral to the success of an animated film. I really took to the film on first viewing.

My third film of the day, Brazilian drama The Pink Cloud (World Dramatic Competition), was my least favorite. Written and shot entirely before the COVID-19 pandemic, writer/director Iuli Gerbase’s film imagines a scenario in which the appearance of a toxic pink cloud forces everyone into an indefinite quarantine. Ten seconds of exposure to the cloud results in instant death, so everyone must stay inside, trapped wherever they happened to be when the cloud showed up. The movie follows the relationship of a man and a woman who are forced to live together; they were having a one-night stand when the cloud descended and confined them in the same house. The film felt like a thought experiment more than anything else, and very little about the movie struck an emotionally resonant chord. Gerbases’s script hints at other (more interesting, absurd, tragic, horrifying) things happening in different corners of the world she’s created, and I kept wishing that she had given more room to these stories. Lead actors Renata de Lélis and Eduardo Mendonça carry the film well, but the whole thing didn’t add up to much for me.

I closed out the day with Rebel Hearts (U.S. Documentary Competition), Pedro Kos’s documentary about the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and their experiments in the 1960s as they sought to modernize their religious order. These women made headlines as they clashed with the archbishop of Los Angeles, becoming a flashpoint in the larger conversation about how the Roman Catholic Church should operate in the twentieth century. These women were feminists, activists for social justice, and artists; they wanted to be engaged with the world in a way that nuns had previously been forbidden from doing. Kos’s documentary combines interviews, archival footage, and animation to create a warm tribute to the revolutionary women of IHM. This inspiring, moving film tells the historical story in a crisp, engaging manner and links the social justice movements of the ‘60s to the social justice work going on today.

As of publishing this post, tickets are still available for the on-demand second screenings of President, Cryptozoo, and Rebel Hearts on January 31, 2021. Like I said in my intro post, if you have an internet connection and $15, you, too, can get in on the festival action!

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Day 1

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

Day 1: January 28, 2021

The festival has officially started! I kicked off my 2021 schedule with a documentary shorts program, and then in the evening I joined the premiere stream of CODA, one of the opening night selections. 

For context, the festival organizers have set up two types of screenings. Each movie gets one premiere screening that consists of a three hour slot with a live Q&A afterwards; then, on a subsequent day, each film gets a second screening, which is a 24-hour on-demand window. The shorts programs are an exception to this model—the shorts programs have no premiere screenings but are available on-demand throughout the whole festival. (I love this idea, because it encourages people to try the shorts programs since they’re constantly available.)

First, I checked out the shorts on-demand screening format. I appreciated that the shorts on-demand stream included a programmer’s introduction, the Sundance introduction, and the category information card before the films started playing. After the shorts program concluded, a pre-recorded Q&A with the filmmakers followed as part of the stream (there was no need to click to another page to find the Q&A). Having all of this packaged together helped preserve that “screening” experience; I didn’t feel like I was watching a playlist of shorts on YouTube or something. Including the Q&A at the end of the stream, rather than putting it on a separate page, encouraged me to watch it and spend some time with the filmmakers. One big positive about the pre-recorded Q&A: the festival programmer moderating the discussion had very thoughtful questions that elicited interesting answers. The pre-recorded Q&A also ran a bit longer than an after-screening Q&A normally would, which allowed all of the filmmakers to speak for an equal amount of time. The Q&A consisted of a recorded Zoom call, so it didn’t feel overly polished or worked-on, but I found the quality of the discussion to be much higher than you’d get at a standard after-screening audience Q&A at an in-person festival.

I opted to watch the Documentary Shorts Program 1, which included the short films Tears Teacher, Up At Night, This Is The Way We Rise, Dear Philadelphia, Snowy, and The Rifleman. Snowy and The Rifleman were the standouts for me in this program. Snowy, the most playful of the films in the collection, is about the filmmaker’s family’s pet turtle, Snowy. Snowy lives in the basement, tended to mostly by the filmmaker’s dad. The short investigates the question of whether or not Snowy is happy. The Rifleman succinctly exposes the links between the modern NRA, resistance to gun control laws, and xenophobic violence at the U.S.-Mexico border. The film, composed entirely of archival footage and photographs, focuses on Harlon Carter (who is considered the father of the modern NRA) and his personal history.

My first premiere screening also went smoothly. Fifteen minutes before the screening begins, a virtual waiting-room opens up. You can click in to join the waiting room, and you’re taken to the screening landing page. This landing page functions as a virtual space; a countdown banner ticks down at the top of the page, the video player below that displays the pre-screening content (ads and music), there’s a live chat feed where everyone in the virtual screening room can say hi, and there’s a little tracker bar in the shape of a row of theater seats to show how full the screening is.* The chat, while a good idea in theory, quickly became unusable due to the number of people typing at once. I followed the feed for a few minutes before the messages started coming in too fast for me to read them. Mostly, it was people saying where they were tuning in from and adding their Twitter or Letterbxd handles for others to follow. I did notice, however, that festival programmers and staff were in the chat answering logistical questions, and useful announcements (like how to access the live Q&A after the film) popped up in the chat periodically. Overall, I liked the idea of the screening room page and appreciated the effort made to create a virtual space. The chat function could be tweaked to allow for actual conversation, but the flurry of comments reminded me, in their way, that this screening was a shared experience. I sort of liked the way that the crazy chat signaled the busyness and crowdedness of the virtual screening room.

Once the countdown clock got to zero, the screening started automatically. (Well, it should have. I had to refresh the page in my browser, but then it worked.) The premiere screening also included a programmer’s intro, the Sundance intro, and the category information card. After the film, there was a live Q&A, which was on a separate page. When I clicked through to the Q&A page, it looked similar to the virtual screening room page. The video player displayed the Q&A (a livestream via YouTube of a Zoom call with a programmer and the filmmakers), and below the player there was a space for audience members to submit questions. Although this Q&A was live and questions were being submitted in real time, the moderating programmer could smartly pick and choose between submitted questions; so, again, I felt that the Q&A in this format was much more interesting than the after-screening Q&As usually are.

CODA (directed by Siân Heder) turned out to be a pleasant opening night pick. The film, part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, is a classic Sundance crowd pleaser; I’d put it in top contention for the audience award at the end of the festival. The movie follows high schooler Ruby (a fantastic Emilia Jones in what should be a breakout role), the hearing daughter of two deaf parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur). Ruby helps her parents and her brother (Daniel Durant), who is also deaf, navigate their fishing business, often acting as an interpreter. But Ruby possesses a talent for singing, and as she realizes how good she is with the help of an interested teacher, she decides to apply for music school and think about leaving her family. The particulars of the movie, especially the way it portrays deafness and deaf culture with warmth and care, set the film somewhat apart from the countless other indie coming-of-age dramedies that have premiered at the festival in years past. Personally, I was delighted to see Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (such a stand out in 2016’s Sing Street) pop up in the film as Ruby’s love interest. He’s not given too much to do, but he is so charming anyway that I didn’t mind. (The second screening of CODA on January 30 has already sold out, but I’m willing to bet that this one will get distribution and a decent release.)

That’s a wrap for Day 1! Cheers to a good start to the festival; I’m looking forward to my first full day of movies tomorrow.

 

 

*Please note that “pre-screening content” is the term used by the festival staff in the chat. It’s weird and corporate sounding, I know.

 

Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary: Intro Post

Posted on by Leah Carlson-Downie

 

We’re doing Sundance 2021 at home this year, baby! It’s going to be a little weird, and my butt will probably meld with my couch cushions by the end of the week. But I bought a pass, and I’m ready to watch as many films as I can from January 28 to February 3. Challenge accepted.

Sundance and I have a long-term relationship; I started going to the Sundance Film Festival when I was sixteen and attending Park City High School. After class got out, I’d hop on the waitlist line and try to get a standby ticket for whatever was showing at the Eccles theater that evening.* On the weekends, my mom and I would try to get into four movies a day waitlisting. We loved it. When I moved down to Salt Lake City, I didn’t stop attending the festival every January. I became a Salt Lake City Sundance convert. The festival moves at a slower pace down the canyon (and the celebrities rarely show up at the Q&As), but I could usually get into whatever screenings I wanted—and locals passes that only worked for Salt Lake City screenings were cheaper. Plus, the filmmakers would always gas us up by saying that they preferred the Salt Lake screenings with “real audiences” to the industry audiences in Park City. The mostly local audiences, including me, loved to feel special, and the line always worked like a charm on us.

2020 was the first time I missed the festival in ten years; last year, I couldn’t justify traveling back to Utah, missing class at the beginning of the semester, and taking the time off work. So, while Virtual Sundance will definitely not be the same, I’m quite excited to be back at the festival in whatever form. So far, I’ve been impressed with the way the virtual festival has been set up. Everything has run smoothly, from a technical standpoint, and the user interface is conveniently centralized and easy to navigate. 

I’m curious about how buzz will circulate during Virtual Sundance, as well as what things the festival planners have put in place to create a sense of community. The atmosphere is half the fun of a film festival, and I’m looking forward to exploring what that looks like in a virtual setting. For what it’s worth, maintaining a “festival atmosphere” in a virtual environment appears to be a priority of the festival planners. I want this diary to serve as a critique of Sundance’s virtual festival model as well as a record of the films I watch. So here’s what to expect with each entry: some thoughts about the Virtual Festival experience as the week goes on, a roundup of the films I’ve viewed each day, and then an assortment of whatever miscellaneous notes I’ve collected. This is the first time I’ve done a Sundance diary, so thanks for reading and going on this journey with me. Also, now seems like a good time for a reminder that anyone from anywhere in the U.S. can join the virtual festival this year! So, if you want to, you can totally get in on the fun if you have an internet connection and $15.

Tune in tomorrow for my Day 1 post! The festival starts today, but my diary posts will be a day behind since screenings go late every day. (My January 28 diary will go up on January 29, for example.) Let’s get this party started!

 

 

*The largest screening venue in Park City by capacity is the Eccles theater, which is also the Park City High School auditorium. Yes, it was weird to see celebrities stand on the stage where I did the fall musicals.