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From the "Biz" Archives:
by Eugene Hernandez and Anthony Kaufman/indieWIRE
>> Sundance Invites 13 Projects to June 2000 Lab
(indieWIRE/05.16.00) -The Sundance Institute has unveiled the list of 13
feature film projects that have been selected as part of its June Filmmakers
and Screenwriters Lab which kicks off May 30th and runs through June 29th in
Utah.
The two part Lab begins with a three week section that includes the shooting and
editing of key scenes, and the filmmakers working with professional actors and
video crews. During the following week, screenwriting participants attend
story conference with advisors.
The participants are Isaac Webb ("Blackbottom"), Phil Bertelsen ("Caucasia") Jim Mendiola ("Come and Take it Day"), Gary Hawkins ("Downtime"), Cauleen Smith ("I Am Furious Black"), Michael Burke ("The Mudge Boy"), Tom E. Brown ("Pushing Dead"), and Laura Colella ("Stay Until Tomorrow"). Screenwriting participants include Alex Rivera ("Death of a Cybracero"), Stefany Mathias
("Native Land"), Jamie Mayer ("Painless"), Duane Dell1Amico ("Shut Up Little Man") and Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal ("The Unknown").
"We are thrilled to be supporting such a diverse and bold group of next
generation filmmakers. The material, which varies in tone from the dramatic
to the darkly comedic, ranges from a gender-bending murder mystery to a love
story that unfolds in the new world order of Mexico/U.S. relations, circa
2029," explained Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Institute's
Feature Film Program, in a prepared statement.
Recent Lab projects include Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry,"Gina
Prince-Bythewood's "Love and Basketball," Tony Bui's "Three Seasons," and two Cannes entries, Rodrigo Garcia's "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her" and Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream." Among the Lab projects in completion are Dan Minahan's digital project, "Series 7: The Contenders," and John Cameron Mitchell's adaptation of his off-Broadway musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
Gyula Gazdag will serve as the Artistic Director for the 2000 Filmmakers and
Screenwriters Labs. This year1s creative advisors include: Jon Amiel, Paul
T. Anderson, Alice Arlen, John August, Jon Avnet, Paris Barclay, Walter
Bernstein, Kathryn Bigelow, Aida Bortnik, Robert Caswell, Gurinder Chadha,
Joan Darling, Allen Daviau, Suzy Elmiger, Sally Field, Gary Fleder, Naomi
Foner, Bart Gavigan, Carlin Glynn, Keith Gordon, Robbie Greenberg, Stephen
Gyllenhaal, Reginald Hudlin, Leslie Jones, Millard Kaufman, Michael Lehmann,
Delroy Lindo, Peter Masterson, Chris McQuarrie, Peter Medak, Mira Nair,
Steven Poster, Robert Redford, Howard Rodman, Susan Shilliday, Stewart
Stern, Wesley Strick, and Audrey Wells. [Eugene Hernandez]
A complete list of participants follows (information and descriptions
provided by the Sundance Institue):
Isaac Webb (writer/director), BLACKBOTTOM: Born and raised in a small mill
town in western Pennsylvania, Isaac Webb went on to earn his degree at
Northwestern University. After college, Isaac moved to New Orleans to
become an elementary school teacher with the Teach for America program.
After working on the staff of the New Orleans Video Access Center, he
produced, wrote and directed four short films. Of special note was THE
WEDDING, which won the Lumiere Award as the best Louisiana film in the New
Orleans Film and Video Festival and was shown as part of the Showtime Movie
Networks African-American Filmmakers Showcase. Isaac was recently awarded a
2000 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for BLACKBOTTOM. BLACKBOTTOM: After
her college graduation, a young woman haunted by her past finds herself
drawn back to her hometown, where the line between reality and memory is
blurred beyond recognition.
Phil Bertelsen (writer/director), CAUCASIA: Phil Bertelsen recently received
his MFA in Film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. While
there, Phil was a Johnson Scholar and Spike Lee Fellow. His short film,
AROUND THE TIME, received the First Place, Wasserman Award as Best Graduate
Film at NYU, and went on to win a Student Academy Award, a Roger Award for
Best American Short at the New York/Avignon Film Festival, and Best Short at
the Urban World Film Festival. It was ultimately featured at the 44th Annual
Robert Flaherty Film Seminar and currently airs on Sundance Channel. Phil
is now a resident of Manhattan where he is finishing a documentary film, THE
SUNSHINE, about one of the last remaining flophouses on New York City's skid
row. CAUCASIA marks his first feature effort as a writer/director. Based on
the novel by Danzy Senna, CAUCASIA is a coming of age story about a mixed
race teen on the lam with her fugitive mother in the 1970's. Forced to pass
for white, she soon realizes what it means to fit in and stand out.
Jim Mendiola (writer/director), COME AND TAKE IT DAY: Jim Mendiola is a
writer/director who divides his time between San Francisco and his hometown
of San Antonio, TX. He was awarded a 1997 Rockefeller Intercultural Media
Fellowship for AN AMERICAN ARTIST, as well as a 1999 Gateways Fellowship for
documentary research on Mexican American family photos in Texas. His
award-winning half-hour film, PRETTY VACANT ‚ about a Sex Pistols obsessed
Chicana punk rocker ‚ has screened in numerous film festivals in the U.S.
and Mexico. Mendiola was the first Media Arts Curator at the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and also Director of the San Antonio
CineFestival. He is a regular contributor on TV, soap operas and popular
culture for L.A. based Frontera magazine, Politico (an internet magazine),
San Antonio Current, and San Francisco Bay Guardian. COME AND TAKE IT DAY:
>From deep in the heart of TejasShistory revises in a Tex Mex tabloid of
double-cross, tourist traps, and the fabled lost treasure of Gregorio
Cortez.
Gary Hawkins (writer/director), DOWNTIME: Gary Hawkins was born and raised in Thomasville, North Carolina, where he continues to live. He teaches
directing at the North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking. He
is a realist painter, who has successfully parlayed his imagery into
animated and documentary films. His credits include THE ROUGH SOUTH OF
HARRY CREWS, for which he won an Emmy in 1991. He is now in post-production
on THE ROUGH SOUTH OF LARRY BROWN, the second film in the series, which
includes three short fiction films based on three of Brown's short stories.
DOWNTIME: The power goes out in a Southern factory town, and in the
stillness that follows, three workers choose ‚ for better or worse ‚ to
change their lives forever.
Cauleen Smith (writer/director), I AM FURIOUS BLACK: Cauleen Smith is a
recent graduate of UCLA's School of Film, Theater and Television Masters
program. Smith began making films in 1989 at San Francisco State
University. Her earliest films, DAILY RAINS and CHRONICLES OF A LYING
SPIRIT BY KELLY GABRON have received international recognition. In 1998,
Smith completed her first feature length dramatic film entitled DRYLONGSO.
It was selected for the American Spectrum at the 1999 Sundance Film
Festival, won the Silver Armadillo at the 1999 SXSW Film Festival, and won
Best Picture at the Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles. DRYLONGSO
premiered on Sundance Channel in August 1999. In March 2000, Cauleen was
awarded the Movado Someone To Watch Award by IFP West's Independent Spirit
Awards. I AM FURIOUS BLACK is a gender-bending, genre-busting mystery in
which a homicide detective falls in love with the victim of the murder he is
investigating.
Michael Burke (writer/director), THE MUDGE BOY: Michael Burke was raised in
Vermont. A licensed Special Education teacher, Michael recently earned a
Masters of Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York
University. His most recent short film, FISHBELLY WHITE, received a Special
Jury Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the 1999 NYU
First Prize Wasserman Award, as well as top honors at numerous festivals
worldwide. Michael was one of only three recipients of the prestigious
Digital Media Lab Grant for the screenplay of FISHBELLY WHITE, which was
also recently published in Scenario magazine. FISHBELLY WHITE is currently
airing on the Sundance Channel as well as on several European and South
American television stations. In THE MUDGE BOY, the sudden death of his
mother sends teenage misfit Duncan and his pet chicken on a strange and
dangerous search for acceptance and love.
Tom E. Brown (writer/director), PUSHING DEAD: Self-taught filmmaker Tom E.
Brown has been making films since the age of ten when he picked up his dad1s
8mm movie camera, a superhero cape, and a handful of smokebombs. DON'T RUN
JOHNNY, RUBBER GLOVES, and DAS CLOWN, Brown's award-winning short films,
have screened at over 200 film festivals around the world. His films have
also been featured at The American Museum of Natural History, the Walker Art
Center, and New York's Guggenheim Museum, and have been televised nationally
and internationally. Brown was recently awarded a 1999 Rockefeller
Foundation Fellowship for PUSHING DEAD, which will represent his feature
directorial debut. In PUSHING DEAD, Dan wanders through life hoping to find
the man of his dreams, but is constantly distracted by his longtime
dysfunctional relationship with AIDS.
Laura Colella (writer/director), STAY UNTIL TOMORROW: Laura Colella made
her first feature film, TAX DAY, in 1998 with the help of an Aaton camera
package donated by the Sundance Institute. The film screened at several
festivals, including New York's Anthology Film Archives, Chicago Filmmakers,
and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and was selected for the upcoming Southern
Circuit tour. Laura's most recent short film, STATUARY, screened at over
fifty venues internationally, winning ten festival awards. Laura studied
film as an undergraduate at Harvard University, with filmmakers Raoul Ruiz
and Miklos Jancso, and is currently based in Providence, RI. STAY UNTIL
TOMORROW is the humorous and poetic story of a woman permanently in transit,
seeking beauty in her rootless existence.
The 2000 Screenwriters Lab will feature the following projects:
Alex Rivera (writer/director), DEATH OF A CYBRACERO: Alex Rivera is a New
York based filmmaker and digital media artist. Through the past 5 years
he1s made work that addresses concerns of the Latino community through a
language of humor, satire, and metaphor. His work has been screened at The
Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, as well as at
film festivals, universities, and union halls across the country. Rivera
has received support from various foundations including The Rockefeller
Foundation, Creative Capital, and The US/Mexico Fund for Culture. DEATH OF
A CYBRACERO is a tragic love story that unfolds in the new world order of
the US/Mexico border of the future.
Stefany Mathias (writer), NATIVE LAND: Stefany Mathias has a Bachelor of
Fine Arts degree in theatre and acting from the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She has taken courses at the Vancouver Film
School on filmmaking and acting for film. Stefany has taught acting at a
theatre school, worked on the set of a feature film, as well as produced and
directed a biography documentary for television. She has performed in many
plays in Vancouver and Toronto. NATIVE LAND is a coming of age story about
a young Native woman1s struggle to combine the modern world with traditional
Cherokee culture.
Jamie Mayer (writer/director), PAINLESS: Jamie Mayer is a
screenwriter/director living in Los Angeles. She graduated with a degree in
Visual Arts from Harvard University, where she wrote and directed a number
of short films, including the award-winning GOODNIGHT, HENRY. The script
PAINLESS won Jamie a spot in the Walt Disney Writer1s Fellowship Program.
Jamie has also directed several music videos, most recently a project for
renowned Irish folk singer Will Millar that aired nationally on Canadian
television. PAINLESS: Falling in love for the first time, a young man with
the inability to feel physical pain is forced to confront his mother1s death
and his own emotional isolation.
Duane Dell1Amico (writer), SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!: Duane Dell1Amico was born in Sevilla, Spain and spent his early years in Andalusia, the United States,
and South and East Africa. His experimental film NURSERY RHYME won UCLA1s
Dorothy Arzner Award, and his film ORGAN LORDS won the Ray Stark Award.
Screenwriting credits include SLEEP WITH ME, a romantic comedy, and TWILIGHT
OF THE DARK MASTER, a Japanese anime. Duane is currently adapting Calderon
de la Barca's play THE BEST GARROTING EVER DONE, which he wants to direct
and film in East Los Angeles. In SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!, two nineteen-year-old
nihilists move in next door to a couple of terminal drunks, and their diverging reactions to the older men1s despair lead to conflicts that mirror their neighbors.
Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal (co-writers/co-directors), THE UNKNOWN: Brian Klugman studied theater at Carnegie Mellon University. Klugman
recently wrote, directed and starred in the short film THE GREAT UPSIDE
DOWN. He met childhood friend and writing partner Lee Sternthal at summer
camp. Sternthal, a Philadelphia native, has written several plays and is
currently finishing his first novel, GIRL MAKING PICTURES. He studied
Russian literature at Hampshire College and also attended Cambridge
University. THE UNKNOWN is a layered and haunting morality tale about a
celebrated novelist who must learn to live with the consequences of
undeserved success.
>> Sundance Channel Acquires Award Winning "Rising"
(indieWIRE/5.16.00) -- Sundance Channel's Liz Manne confirmed that the cable outlet has acquired the U.S. television rights to Peter Sollett's "Five Feet
High and Rising." The 29-minute short, an offical selection at the 53rd
Cannes Film Festival, will screen in the Festival's Cinefoundation section
later this week, a showcase for first-time and second time student films.
"Rising" premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the
Festival's Jury Prize for short film. It also screened at New Directors/New
Films, SXSW, and Aspen Shortsfest. Canal + Spain and France, and Chanel Four in England have acquired television rights for their respective territroies. [Anthony Kaufman]
>> Miramax Picks Up "Harry"
(indieWIRE/5.16.00) -- On Monday, Miramax confirmed its second domestic
acquisition of the 53rd Cannes Film Festival, Dominik Moll's "Harry: He is Here to Help" (Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut du Bien). "Harry" is a Hitchcockian thriller with a very French touch and continues to be considered one of the more unanimously liked films of the festival. The deal also includes remake rights, according to an article published in Monday's Daily Variety. indieWIRE reported on the film's premiere in Friday's issue. [Anthony Kaufman]
READ MORE ABOUT "Harry: He is Here to Help" at indieWIRE.com:
http://www.indiewire.com/onthescene/fes_00Cannes_000512_Cannes3.html
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