Sundance Film Festival 2023, Thursday 1/26: Fantastic Machine

Fantastic Machine (Danielson & Van Aertryck, 2023)

One amazing thing you can do at Sundance is accidentally go to the wrong theater, have the wrong QR code scanned so you get in, be surprised that the film is starting later than you expected, and then be totally stunned when the Sundance programmer let's you know that you're about to see Fantastic Machine rather than Mami Wata.

Then, when you're just starting to roll with it, the delightful directors thank the audience for being so responsive and vocal in previous screenings and that each one of us in attendance is a member of "a generous people"--which you never expected to hear ever in your lifetime as a citizen of the United States--confirming that yes, you're gonna stay and see what the Fantastic Machine is.

It's a movie camera, of course! A history of it, by way of sick narration and the most iconic images ever recorded...that horse with all of its feet off of the ground, yes pictures of earth after the moon landing, yes the moment when BBC television was first broadcast. 

At each evolution of the motion-picture camera--from nickelodeon to documentary war footage to television to news journalism to YouTube--there is a moment of optimism: more information, more education, more voices heard, the possibility for more harmony as we understand our neighbors across the globe. And at each evolution the reality that follows: media conglomerates, market capitalism, isolated voices in a sea of content, "fake news," and algorithms that dictate what we see online. It's a beautiful, tragic, compelling story. 

And we're in it. In the end, we need communities that engage and discuss it, media literacy, and more community.

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Also of note was Shayda (Noora Niasari, 2023) a debut film by an Iranian filmmaker who depicts her experience as a child immigrant to Australian and her mother who moves them both to a women's shelter to escape an abusive relationship. The film allows each character to breathe: inhale...exhale. It allows us to access their space for a moment to experience both a mother-daughter relationship and a precarious journey.

A Winter Day Outside of Park City, Utah

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Wednesday 1/25: Rye Lane

Rye Lane (Raine Allen-Miller, 2023)

It's time for rom-com best of all time list to make room for a new film. Notting Hill, The Big Sick, Amelie, Crazy Rich Asians, Harold and Maude, and When Harry Met Sally...enter Rye Lane. 

Instantly rewatchable, Rye Lane depicts a day in the life (and more) of Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) who come together by chance after each of them experience breakups separately. It's fast and funny with scenes that you want to tell your friends about if they haven't seen it yet. And the script is top notch: why say you're ignoring something when you can say you're snoozing through your alarm clock--or something like that! I'm messing it up. It's so good. Go see it. 

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And really briefly: the performance of Inez (Teyana Taylor) in A Thousand and One directed by A.V. Rockwell is jaw dropping; meanwhile, the kid-friendly Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out turns on every dime, just as you'd expect, with joy and ebullience. 

Director Roger Ross Williams introducing Cassandro at Sundance

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Tuesday 1/24: Cassandro

Cassandro (Roger Ross Williams, 2023)

Cassandro is cinema. 

Cassandro post-screening Q&A with Roger Ross Williams center and co-writer David Teague speaking

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Also of note was The Eternal Memory (Maite Alberdi) which documents a famous Chilean couple dealing with Alzheimer's. And not to be missed: 

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (Ben Braun & Chiaki Yanagimoto) which uncovers in detail the insane history of the Aum Shinrikyo cult which carried out sarin attacks on Tokyo's subway system in 1995. The latter's sprawling geographical setting, historical contextualization, and transnational relevance today in an era of fake news is sensational.

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Monday 1/23: Victim/Suspect

I remember remarking at my first Sundance: "this year's Sundance is so amazing" and the person I was with said "it's like this every year"--and they were right.

Thanks be to Sundance...another year--this is my fifth time to attend, the first being in 2013 when Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale was the standout film--and as always it blows me out of the water.

Today I watched A Little Prayer (Angus MacLachlan) starring Jane Levy, who delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, and David Strathairn. I also experienced the poetic and experimental film about rocks entitled Last Things by director Deborah Stratman at The Egyptian Theater. 

Director Deborah Stratman takes a picture of the audience at The Egyptian Theater

Victim/Suspect (Schwartzman, 2023)

But today's film that will stay with me for a long time is Netflix's Victim/Suspect by director Nancy Schwartzman. This documentary exposes systemic bias against victims of sexual assault in the United States who are not only disbelieved when they report their stories at local police precincts but are in turn accused of filing false reports which results in punishments including their imprisonment. 

The story centers around the investigative reporting of Rae de Leon (who works at the Center for Investigative Reporting) whose inquiry into one case leads to encountering over 200 cases nationally in which the victim becomes the suspect due to unfair police interview tactics and structural discrimination. In terms of presentation, a kind of love letter to the power of journalism, the doc itself feels like an investigation in the style of the reporters the director deeply admires while highlighting the brave women who are featured in the film and who were in attendance.

Victim/Suspect post-screening Q&A

"Street Legacy" Documentary, Broll Cinematographer

During the summer of 2022 I had the opportunity to work with fantastic up-and-coming film director Hunter Gregory Scheidt on the project "Street Legacy" as a b-roll contributor. I had my hands in some of the pre-production too!

Presented by Bar Seven Seven productions, Hunter's film outlines the "Street Legacy" street art exhibition at the Escondido Arts Center, curated by Tribal Streetwear's very own Bobby Ruiz and art professor and critic Jim Daichendt. Check out the doc, below:

And more info. is available here in this article by Toby Franklin.

Podcast: Robbie and James Talk Music, Episode 1

I'm really pleased to announce that writing professor and colleague Robbie Maakestad and I started a podcast in which we chat about the music we enjoy listening to. It's something we always do casually since we enjoy sharing music and playlists, so it felt natural to document and share it in this way! 

And since I was pre-school age I always wanted to be a DJ, so this is a fun outlet for that old ambition.

In this first episode (part 1 of 2), we chat about our musical influences. Thanks for checking it out!

link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0eVN9k1YAmZvAaV8owACLo