Recently I went in to my collection of dvd’s and picked out Do The Right Thing and I have to say of all the films directed by the talented and versatile Spike Lee (a list that includes Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man among others) this has to be his greatest achievement.

The film’s setup takes place during the hottest day of the summer in a mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhood of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City.The main plot of this ensemble piece involves the situation of Mookie, (played by Lee) a young black pizza delivery man for Sal’s famous pizzeria owned and operated by Sal or Salvatore, (convincingly played by Danny Aiello) an Italian American who has owned the place for twenty five years and operates with his sons Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson). The relationship between Mookie and Sal acts as a microcosm for the tenuous or strained race relations between residents of the entire neighborhood that we see as the day wears on and becomes night eventually escalates into acts of violence.

With smart and purposeful direction by Lee, beautifully vivid cinematography , a strong cast filled with a great amount of entertaining and interesting characters, a solid soundtrack led by the group Public Enemy and their song Fight The Power that features prominently throughout the picture, and mesmerizing ending that you won’t expect and leaves the viewer to decide for themselves whether or not violence can be the right thing to do. So if you are not busy and want to see a thought provoking picture that can start a conversation I strongly recommend this one to be it.

Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/

Harmony Korine was born in Bolinas California to Eve and Sol Korine and was raised in Nashville Tennessee. When Korine turned 18 he went to study literature at NYU, he dropped out after only one semester. During this time in New York he met Larry Clark in a Park who later when on to direct Kids. When Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids he was still a teenager. Korine uses a unique and experimental style to display his feelings in film. Korine expertly streams almost unrelated scenes and images together using unique experimental tools for his films to make them seem more realistic. Some of these tools are blackface, mental disorders, poverty and nonprofessional film. Instead of focusing on plot and character development or relationships, Korine uses raw footage and shocking image to convey a feeling. This feeling is felt differently between every viewer which is a difficult thing to do in a work of art. Korine doesn’t necessarily like to put meanings or messages into his films because he believes that these things belittle the audience. Korine talks about his take his take on film “I’m not really so interested in it working on a purely cerebral level. I’m much more concerned with it on an emotional level and that you leave feeling a certain way.” Korine has also experimented with other forms of art such as short films, photography, literature, and also music. (more…)

The camera used to shoot the main sequences for my movie. Standard Definition.

So the student film program I am in provides a lot of opportunities for experiencing and learning both documentary film-making and film-making in general. I am learning so much. I finally get to take control of the camera and be in charge of a lot of things while shooting the film. The downside to that is that it is a bit overwhelming and the documentary often is too distracting to remember everything I need to do. For a quick rundown and explanation for all you non-Directors of Photography. Setting up a shot and while we are shooting I need to set and keep track of:

1. Focus- Making sure things are not blurry or at the least (on purpose) just the background is in focus.

2. White Balance- This is making sure the colors are okay depending on what kind of colors are in the shot and the brightness. This is easy and only requires me to hit a button and make sure it looks good. (more…)

Never in my wildest dreams would I think I would see Robert Redford just standing on the side of the road. Never would I have thought I would have the opportunity to see World Premieres, or attend parties as the celebrities I see in Entertainment Weekly. So far to me this film festival has been an unbelievable experience, and it’s only just the beginning.

Me and Ali and Sam with the Big River Man (Martin Strel and crew)

 Prior to my arrival I really had not the faintest idea of what was to come or what to expect. The Sundance film festival is like another country, another world within a world and I observed that within my first 24 hours. So far I have seen several movies, starting with Big River Man, which entails the incredible story of overweight alcoholic, swimming the Amazon for a cause greater than himself. Myself alongside several of my classmates had a strong desire to see the film after reading several blogs and hearing about through word of mouth. We were so intrigued that we decided to waitlist, which is an experience in itself.

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Two older women and a young man take an annual trip to an island where they dry fish, expecting to be taken home before the water freezes.  When they fail to return at the expected time, and after the oldest woman passes away, the boy and his grandmother must find ways to cope on their own.  Before Tomorrow is the third in a trilogy of films (beginning with The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen), made by contemporary Inuit natives as a way of recapturing a sense of their past.  This one is the feature debut of Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau of the Arnait Video Collective, based on the novel For Morgendagen by Danish writer Jørn Riel.  It is a beautiful and intimate story, and the tenderness between grandmother and grandson is palpable and moving, as when she encourages him to speak bravely of his first seal hunt, asking him to elaborate on his simple tale, and invest it with a heroic quality.   (more…)

Yet another sleepless night. Is it just the usual insomnia? It could be, but different kinds of thoughts fill my mind. I am tired. I could sleep at any time, but when I lay down countless thoughts race through my mind and keep me up. Each thought is a sheep, but not a peaceful sheep that helps me relax, they are annoying, loud sheep that keep me up. My mind continuously drifts to the upcoming trip that is in only three days. It is not the excitement for the trip that keeps me up. Though I am certainly excited for it, it is the anxiety that is keeping me up. I am going to Sundance for a second time, but this time it is to make a film, not to just watch them. I want to pursue film after I get out of school. It is funny that I word it “pursue” as if I am trying to catch it, yet it is running away from me.

To make film a career I need to try to “get into the business” once I’m done with my education. The most important thing that allows you to do this is making connections; networking. Now this program that I am in, Real Ideas Studio in which I make a documentary, is a great place to learn a lot about the actual art, but an added bonus is that I will meet people who provide networking opportunities. Those opportunities are what scares me so much. When will another opportunity like this come along in my life? (more…)

Before watching Shadows, an understanding of how it was created helps get the best experience from the groundbreaking film.

Director John Cassavetes taught an acting class and lead his students in an improvisation exercise to explore the emotions that come from unknown situations. The three main characters in the resulting film are siblings living in New York. One brother is black while the sister and the other brother are light skinned and pass for white.  The original version didn’t live up to Cassavetes’ expectations, so he went back and added scenes, mainly scripted, and re-edited until the characters had more depth. Now they go beyond the racial issues on the surface and discover their own mistakes and how to overcome them.

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I will never be the same person again. Sundance marked a transition in my life, and there is no turning back. I cannot escape the vortex which I have fallen into. That vortex, being, of course, film. I have always liked movies (I rarely ever saw one I did not like) but never realized that they would be my life’s ambition. And that is how Sundance changed my life: it opened my eyes.

I did not try to go star gazing. I did not try to make it into any fashionable parties. I threw away all the bull that goes along with Sundance and got to its essence. I completely immersed myself into each film I saw. So much so that I do not know if I could remember all the films I saw. Some stuck in my mind: a gay zombie movie [Otto, or up with Dead People], a great baseball flick [Sugar], and a documentary outlining the country’s economic collapse [IOUSA] (”hate to say I told you so” comes to mind), but the entire experience changed me. I thought, “wow, not only is this the greatest thing that has come into my life, but I can do it too.” And so it began, my rocky but enthused trip into trying to make films. How will it all turn out? We will see.

Algenis Perez Soto plays a Dominican pitcher in Iowa in "Sugar"

The next turning point may be this year. I am enrolled in a documentary filmmaking program that works through Slamdance (the smaller, but not small festival in the same place). The things I learn, the experiences I gain, and the networking that will be established will hopefully be the crux of the next and biggest chapter of my life. I am taking the first step towards recovery: I am addicted to movies. And I am making the final step: I am never coming down off this high.

[Editor: Matt Went was part of the Sundance Winter Term trip in 2008; he is returning to the festival this year as part of a documentary filmmaking program run by Real Ideas Studio.]

A girl plays by the rapidly eroding shoreline, in Everything's Cool

Sundance has had a green streak for a long time. It goes deeper than the new line of organic cotton festival wear, and the reliable influx of hybrid vehicles into town for the week. Films like An Inconvenient Truth, Blue Vinyl, Everything’s Cool, The Unforeseen, Who Killed the Electric Car, Fields of Fuel, Flow, Manufactured Landscapse, Up the Yangtze all premiered at Sundance over the last few years and all focus heavily on themes of environmental change and of connections between people and their environments. The festival’s related commitment to Native American stories goes back to its beginnings.

I always pay close attention to such films because of my involvement with Eckerd College’s “Visions of Nature, Voices of Nature,” Environmental Film Festival, that I have co-directed along with its founder Cathy Griggs for the past three years, and that began as a Native American film festival. For several years, we have tried to supplement the February lineup with at least one film that had just shown for the first time at Sundance. Last year it was Up the Yangtze and The Unforeseen (which played Sundance in 2007), and before that we screened Everything’s Cool. It goes beyond documentary. We have also screened fictional feature films from Sundance, films in which place plays a prominent role, such as Chris Eyre’s Edge of America, Jake Mahaffy’s War, and Kevin Wilmott’s CSA: Confederate States of America. (Kevin Wilmott is back again this year, with a western that I discuss below). We’ll see whether we can manage to pull it off again this year. (more…)