U.S. embassy and consulate websites or www.state.gov.
We’ve gone social!
Follow us on our facebook pages and join the conversation.
30 January 2007
Personal Stories Win at 2007 Sundance Film Festival
International independent filmmaking fest showcases “artistic power of film”
Washington – Personal stories crossing cultural and geographical borders dominated audience and jury awards for both documentaries and dramas at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 as the 10-day internationally acclaimed independent film festival in Park City, Utah, closed on January 28.
The award winners “exemplify the artistic power of film to illuminate and explore issues that are prevalent in our global society,” said festival director Geoffrey Gilmore.
Even the grand jury prize winners in both the dramatic and the documentary competitions managed to cross the cultural divide, with both winning entries from American directors telling personal stories that involve Latin American problems.
Padre Nuestro, by Kenyan-born American filmmaker Christopher Zalla, about a Mexican boy who travels with illegal immigrants to New York City, is primarily in Spanish and won the dramatic competition. The winning documentary, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), directed by Jason Kohn, uses the chilling stories of a variety of characters to study violence and corruption in Brazil.
The independent film competition, which celebrates the work of American and international filmmakers, is the heart of the Sundance Institute, which was founded in 1981 by American director, actor and producer Robert Redford. The Sundance Institute is an internationally recognized resource for independent artists through its annual film festival and artistic development programs throughout the year for filmmakers, screenwriters, composers, playwrights and theater artists.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE
Because American and international films are screened side by side at the Sundance Film Festival, says expert Richard Pells, it is impossible to imagine American filmmaking without the influence of works from other countries, not only in terms of style and ideas, but, even more important, in terms of “presence,” or distinctiveness and effectiveness.
“One of the best examples of this is the influence in the 1920s that German expressionist filmmaking had on Hollywood,” Pells, a history professor at the University of Texas, told USINFO. Many of these filmmakers became refugees in the United States in the 1930s and wound up making movies in Hollywood that became known as film noir, a French term for darkly suspenseful films.
The influences of Hong Kong martial arts films and the French New Wave have been persistent in American films, Pells said. The British-born American filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is the best-known New Wave director who rejected narrative methods of cinematography in favor of expressive themes and making movies on location instead of in the studio.
Today, Latin American filmmakers are playing an important role, Pells said. At Sundance, The Same Moon, Mexican director Patricia Riggen’s film about a mother and child separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, received a standing ovation.
“Human nature in Mexico City is stronger and more raw and I think that is reproduced in Mexican cinema,” Guillermo Arriaga, producer of The Night Buffalo, which was screened at Sundance, told reporters.
Directors who physically and cinematically move between the United States and other nations in filmmaking are becoming more prevalent, according to Pells. One such director is Taiwanese-American Ang Lee, whose Brokeback Mountain won three Academy Awards in 2005, Pells said. Lee’s current project is the Chinese film Se jie (Lust, Caution).
Sixty-four American and international films in dramatic and documentary genres were screened at Sundance, and five dramas made by American directors featured characters speaking mainly in Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Portuguese or Muskogee, an American Indian language. Most of the more than 3,000 feature films submitted for consideration focused on global issues. Six submissions concerned Africa, Gilmore said.
AMERICAN FILMMAKING AND ITS INFLUENCE OVERSEAS
Awards voted on by Sundance Film Festival audiences in the documentary and dramatic categories were given to movies by American filmmakers about personal stories.
Hear and Now, a documentary directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, tells the story of the director’s deaf parents and their decision after 65 years of living together in silence to undergo cochlear implant surgery. Grace Is Gone, by director James C. Strouse, is a dramatic film about an American family whose father finds the courage on an adventurous road trip to tell his young children about the death of their mother, a career soldier, in Iraq.
“American films historically rarely ask the audience to know very much about American politics or American society or headlines,” Pells said. Audiences overseas who may not know very much about America still can appreciate American film because much of what is going on in these films is something that they themselves have experienced, he added.
In this way, Americans have had an influence on filmmaking in other countries.
For example, Sundance’s world cinema audience award for drama was given to Once, directed by Irish filmmaker John Carney. The film, a modern-day musical set on the streets of Dublin, tells the love story of a street performer and a Czech immigrant.
And Sweet Mud, Israeli director Dror Shaul’s drama about a son’s struggles to help his mentally ill mother on a kibbutz in southern Israel in the 1970s, won the world cinema jury prize.
The world cinema jury prize for documentary was given to the Danish Enemies of Happiness, directed by Eva Mulvad and Anja Al Erhayem. The documentary follows the personal story of Malalai Joya, the 28-year-old Afghan woman elected in 2005 to Afghanistan’s parliament.
The full text of a press release announcing the winners of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival is available on the festival’s Web site.
For more stories on the influence of filmmakers and other artists in society, see The Arts-Film.
