Today was Obama Day, and first-time director Lee Daniels was wishing the packed audience at the Eccles Theatre, Sundance’s largest, a happy one. Daniels, better known as producer of Monsters Ball and The Woodsman, with characters and situations drawn from the disenfranchised (a racist prison guard, a guilty interracial affair, a paroled child molester) was introducing his latest, Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, easily one of Sundance’s most talked-about dramas in competition.

Based on a book of fiction, Push tells the story of an overweight, withdrawn 16-year-old Harlem girl named Precious, pregnant with a second child by her own father and abused at home by her mother (searingly played by comedienne Mo‘Nique, who will surely win awards). Without spilling the plot, through creative writing Precious achieves a degree of selfhood, and the film ends in as much emotional uplift as possible given the circumstances. more

Many of the reviews of Thriller in Manila (which premiered in World Documentary Competition last Friday) mention the fact that it transcends expectations for a sports documentary (it revolves around the third Ali-Frazier right in Manila in 1975).

The credit for this of course goes to director John Dower, editor Nicholas Packer, DP Stephen Sanden and the team. But it also goes to Andrew MacKenzie, the producer at UK’s Channel 4 who provided the money. At least that’s how Dower explains it with a kind of wonder in his voice, as if still can’t believe he got to make a documentary with enough money. Money that bought a precious thing: pre-production.

Actually calling it pre-production doesn’t really describe it. Dower talks about going to the north Broad Street neighborhood in Philly, with no set plan, hanging out at Frazier’s boxing gym with the fragile, ferocious and mistrustful fighter. Dower walked the streets, met the now-gray-haired friends and witnesses, interviewed the fight participants including Ali’s acerbic doctor. He moved into the story. This is of course not unheard of in documentaries—but it is rarely budgeted for. more

Somehow the tiny budget for Paper Heart paid for trips to Toronto, Paris, and about 12 states including—to the best of DP Jay Hunter’s recollection—California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and New York, where the man shot 300 hours of Varicam footage in ten weeks. Not surprisingly he thinks Paper Heart’s lone editor Ryan Brown is a hero.

The film is in Dramatic Competition and premiered last night at the Racquet Club. Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec it tells a fictional story of Charlene Yi (the actress’/co-producer’s real name) through both a narrative thread and a documentary one. (The picture at right shows Jasenovec, Yi, and Brown). While Charlene’s story of skeptical love is fictional, her co-stars are not. Hunter says he shot the many interviews with non-actors—friends and acquaintances talking about love–in a narrative style using primes and very deliberate compositions, but that he also tried to shoot the narrative segments with the frankness of a documentary, “obeying the laws of reality.” more

Acting for the Camera is a scary and funny indictment of a person that many theater students know too well—the overzealous acting teacher. Whether the instructor is trying to get personal frustrations out or is simply on a nonstop powertrip, most acting students will admit that the seemingly arbitrary rules set forth in a bad acting class would get most employees at any other job fired for emotional or sexual harassment.

That’s part of what makes director Justin Nowell’s 2009 Sundance short so frightening. One can assume that he and his brother, writer Thomas Nowell, have been through their fair share of these moments. The 14-minute short film, shot on HD Cam, takes place in one room in a beginner-level drama workshop and was shot in one single day. more

I’m having Asia flashbacks as DP Brent Huffman talks about the big white elephant mall in Guangzhou, the largest mall in the world and an unaccepted failure of surreal proportions. For face-saving reasons, the Chinese government cannot abandon the unfinished (and nearly unoccupied) mall/amusement park with its construction hazards, enormous indoor rollercoaster (dubiously welded), oversized Teletubbies, and population of semi-employed workers and moms looking for something (unsafe) to do with bored toddlers. Which apparently includes launching them onto a river inside human-sized balloons filled with about two minutes of oxygen, to cavort to the point of mild asphyxia before they’re towed back in

How could this not be the subject for a documentary short? Utopia, Part 3: The World’s Largest Shopping Mall premiered last night in the Documentary Shorts program; as the title suggests, it is one segment of Sam Green and Carrie Lozano’s envisioned series on global expressions of utopia. more

Davis Guggenheim started the filmmaking process for It Might Get Loud with an inconspicuous tape recorder. Sitting in hotel rooms across from Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White, he let conversation write the first draft of his documentary, laying down a map for the shooting that would unfold over the next 18 months.

It was a technique he learned “by accident” on An Inconvenient Truth as the best way to draw out Al Gore without the distraction of lights and cameras. For a different reason, cameras inhibit rockstars who are used to creating artifice and performance. But without an audience, all three could talk articulately and intimately about their lives, music and process. And with audio tape practically free, Guggenheim could roll indefinitely.

He then cut together a radio documentary-style outline; the conversations told the filmmakers where to go—to the house in Dublin where The Edge hid out with his songwriting demons and emerged with “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” to Headley Grange where Jimmy Page performed in a hallway where he once heard John Bottom play drums. more

Press Release

Paper Heart, a playfully imagined journey of one young woman’s quest for love, is one of the 16 narrative features selected to screen in the Dramatic Competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Shot with Panasonic AJ-HDC27H VariCam HD Cinema cameras, Paper Heart stars Michael Cera (Juno, Superbad), Charlyne Yi (Semi-Pro, Knocked Up) and Jake Johnson (Curb Your Enthusiasm). The movie was directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, who shares the screenwriting credit with Yi; Jay Hunter was the Director of Photography. Read on in The Briefing Room

More Sundance 2009 news from The Briefing Room

Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman spoke just ahead of Sundance’s opening with award-winning documentary producer/director RJ Cutler about making his new film, The September Issue –a film documenting the creation of Vogue Magazine’s annual September issue, and the people behind that effort. The movie is having its World Premiere at Sundance, and competing in the Documentary category.

CLICK HERE for their conversation. (Right Click, Save As to download)

By Michael Goldman

Veteran rocker Neil Young (using his filmmaking alter-ego, Bernard Shakey) hit Sundance to promote his new movie, CSNY Deja Vu–the film chosen to close the festival. The movie documents the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young 2004 Freedom of Speech tour, and the reaction to the tour’s anti-war message across North America just around the time that public opinion began to turn against events in Iraq. Young teamed with veteran television journalist Mike Cerre to intermingle concert footage from the tour with a series of journalistic vignette stories produced by Cerre at Young’s behest, all shot in HD, covering people and events surrounding the tour–from his band-mate Steven Stills’ work campaigning for Democratic candidates to Iraq veterans using music to protest the war to some vocal fans reacting with great anger to the band’s political message. After arriving at Sundance, Young spoke with millimeter senior editor Michael Goldman about his reasons for making the movie, his growing interest in filmmaking, and his views on the use of film as a medium for creating political dialogue.

To listen to the podcast interview click here.
(To download: Right Click, Save As)

Check out our entire Sundance Podcast Archive.

Park City’s weather continues its upswing, with optimistic blue skies, blinding daylight that makes snow banks dazzle like Hollywood teeth, and thin, icy mountain air that invigorates exposed skin and reveals your every breath.

No matter how good the films—and they are good this year–after being cooped up in the gloom of flickering shadows all day, a shot of cold air to the face is as bracing as a shot of strong spirits would be. Good thing, because the latter is a delicacy in Mondo Utah, where buying a round requires temporarily joining a club, usually for the duration of the imbibing.

Sundance is the ultimate temporary club membership, ten days of pretending that the world revolves around a resort festival of small films with limited commercial appeal. Where, absurdly, festival volunteers must shout, “Please turn off your Blackberries!” as the lights dim.

Not your Treos, your Motorolas, your iPhones… tellingly Blackberries are the official mobile communication tool of Hollywood, whose flying monkeys monitor Sundance premieres while compulsively stealing glances at their email in the dark—or is it the other way around? Do they really expect to find box office champions here? more