Sun. January 21 Sundance Screenings for PPJAG*
*Progressives, Political Junkies, Activists, and Greenies
Sundance Film Festival 2007 Screenings and Events for Sunday, January 21: The Unforseen, Wonders Are Many, The Devil Came on Horseback, Miss Navajo, Joe Strummer, and many more below the cut
Salt Lake City Sundance Film Festival 2007 Screenings for Progressives, Political Junkies, Activists, and Greenies:
The Unforseen -- Broadway Center Cinemas (111 E. Broadway [300 S. ]) -- noon (wait list 10 a.m.)
The American Dream of owning a house with a white picket fence goes head to head with environmental sustainability in Laura Dunn's lyrical and beautifully crafted documentary The Unforeseen.
Dunn tracks the career of Gary Bradley, a west Texan farm boy who went to Austin and became one of the largest real estate developers in the state. In the '80s, Bradley had plans to transform miles of pristine hill country into large-scale subdivisions. But the development jeopardized Barton Springs, a watering hole treasured by locals, and served as a lightning rod for mobilizing environmental activism that flourished under Governor Ann Richards. When George W. Bush took the state's executive reins, however, development patterns changed, and the water quality at Barton Springs, as well as the surrounding landscape of Austin, was irreversibly transformed.
The Unforeseen is a meditation on the destruction of the natural world and the American Dream as it falls victim to the cannibalizing forces of unchecked development. It is an intricate tale of personal hopes, victories, and failures, and debates over land, economics, property rights, and the public good. In a time when development and property values have skyrocketed in nearly every major city, Dunn makes a plea for our development-oriented society to consider restructuring the relationship between our values and the environment that sustains us.- Shari Frilot
Wonders Are Many -- Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. Broadway (300 S. ) -- 12:30 p.m. (wait list 10:30 a.m.)
"Is there beauty in annihilation? This is one question driving filmmaker Jon Else's (The Day After Trinity) latest documentary. Extending his fascination with the now-60-year history of nuclear power, Else's new film achieves something remarkable: it is art about artists contemplating the science of destruction.
With infinite precision and formidable intelligence, Wonders Are Many unfolds as theatre director Peter Sellars and composer John Adams collaborate on Doctor Atomic, their fifth, and in many ways most complex, collaboration. The opera's subject is the 48 hours leading up to the first atomic-bomb test detonation in 1945. The film seamlessly combines footage of the making of the opera, candid interviews, and vivid archival material (much of it recently declassified) with journals and writings by J. Robert Oppenheimer and other members of the team that created the first atomic bomb. Though it largely concerns historical events, the film is startling in its immediacy.
Art, as Sellars says in the film, is in part about discovering something new in what we already know. In documenting the act of creativity, both artistic and scientific, Wonders Are Many draws parallels between science and art, truth and beauty, and succeeds in finding wonder in the heart of darkness itself.- Cara Mertes"
The Devil Came on Horseback -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 3:00 p.m. (wait list 1:00 p.m.)
Marine Captain Brian Steidle is an unlikely hero. Not because he isn't brave; he has shown courage under fire. But Steidle's accomplishment is entirely unexpected; he is a soldier who is learning to change the world through peaceful means.
The subject is Darfur. The journey takes place over the course of 18 months. Steidle went to Sudan as an unarmed military observer working for the African Union. He left as a witness to what many believe is genocide in the western Darfur region, a conflict that has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. In the transformation from soldier to observer to witness and activist, we see a man at first confounded by his naiveté and then confronted by the urgency of a humanitarian catastrophe that he sees unfolding firsthand.
An everyman figure, Steidle is initially unequipped to absorb the horror around him. Like many, he would rather not engage with something so incomprehensible and terrible. But he does, and Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, Sundance 2006) astonishing film journeys from Darfur to the United States, then to Chad, Rwanda, and finally the United States again. His odyssey becomes ours as the more than 1,000 photographs he took become evidence of a crisis that cannot be denied.- Cara Mertes
Miss Navajo -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 4:30 p.m. (wait list 2:30)
For most of us, pageants conjure up smiling beauty-queen hopefuls parading around in bathing suits or glittery gowns. But most of us have never witnessed the Miss Navajo Nation competition, an event, inaugurated in 1952, that redefines "pageant" as an opportunity for young women to honor and strengthen Navajo culture and reveal the beauty within.
In this sensitive documentary, Billy Luther, whose mother was crowned Miss Navajo 1966, opens the door to a surprising world, where contestants with diverse styles, physiques, and political orientations are challenged to answer tough historical questions in the Navajo language and showcase their spiritual and practical knowledge of practices like governance, traditional singing, or butchering a whole sheep.
As Luther follows one quietly powerful contender and interviews winners from the past five decades, we begin to glimpse the multivalent power of the pageant. Miss Navajo serves as a positive model for other young Navajos and an ambassador for her people (one recalls meeting Robert Kennedy when he testified before the subcommittee on Indian education). But the film subtly illustrates the sacred dimension of Miss Navajo as well--how participation places the young women on a timeless matriarchal continuum that goes back to creation and the first Diné life-giving ancestor: Changing Woman.- Caroline Libresco
Joe Strummer -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 9:00 p.m. (wait list 7:00 p.m.)
Filmmaker Julien Temple chronicles the transformation of a self-described "mouthy little git," born John Mellor, into an antiestablishment icon known to the world as Joe Strummer. In his latest documentary, Temple uncovers the myth behind the front man of the seminal punk band the Clash.
Through previously unearthed interviews with Strummer himself and recollections of those who knew him best, Temple reveals a complex man who used his music as a bullhorn for his conscience--as well as a means to educate others about the injustices of the world. The film includes live concert footage spanning Strummer's career and tapes of his BBC radio program, all of which provide a fitting soundtrack to his distinctive and storied existence.
The performance footage would be fascinating on its own, but Temple probes beyond Strummer's mystique to reveal a person with his own flaws who could sometimes be idealistic to a fault. Temple has created a thoughtful and poignant portrait of a man many think they knew. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten provides a rare glimpse into the man behind the legend of "punk rock warlord." -Rosie Wong
Other Sundance Screenings and Events (note: due to limited computer time I'm not able to individually link the films below. Please see the Sundace Film Guide online for locations and more info)
:
Park City: Autism Everyday (10 a.m./W 8:00 a.m.); Miss Navajo (8:30 a.m./W6:30); Manufactured Landscapes (11:30 a.m./W9:30); In the Shadow of the Moon (12:15 p.m./W10:15 a.m.); Enemies of Happiness (2:30 p.m./W12:30 p.m.); White Light/Black Rain (2:30 p.m./W12:30 p.m.); Hot House (7:00 p.m./5:00 p.m.); La Misma Luna (5:30 p.m./W3:30 p.m.); Low and Behold (5:30 p.m./W3:30 p.m.); Blame It On Fidel (9:00 p.m./W7:00 p.m.); For the Bible Tells Me So (8:30 p.m./W6:30); Nanking (9:15 p.m./W7:15); Save Me (8:30 p.m./W6:30); Documentary Spotlight (8:30 p.m./W6:30); War Dance (11:30 p.m./W9:30);
Ogden: no screenings specifically for PPJAG* today
Sundance Screening Room: Everything's Cool (noon/W 10 a.m.)
Other Sundance Events for PPJAG*
History is Made -- Filmmaker Lodge, Elks Building 550 Main Street, Park City (must be credentialed) -- 10:30 a.m.
History matters; it is one way in which we define our present and decide our futures. From World War II to race relations to civil war and radical countercultures, this year's docs and narratives defy expectation and break the mold of traditional historical storytelling. Hear from extraordinary filmmakers tackling the challenges of bringing the past to life for a new generation. Filmmakers Steven Okazaki (White Light/Black Rain), Marco Williams (Banished), Bill Guttentag (Nanking), Julie Gavras (Blame It on Fidel), and Newton Aduaka (Ezra) join moderator Ian Buruma for this discussion on the relationship between history and film.
Sundance Film Festival 2007 Screenings and Events for Sunday, January 21: The Unforseen, Wonders Are Many, The Devil Came on Horseback, Miss Navajo, Joe Strummer, and many more below the cut
Salt Lake City Sundance Film Festival 2007 Screenings for Progressives, Political Junkies, Activists, and Greenies:
The Unforseen -- Broadway Center Cinemas (111 E. Broadway [300 S. ]) -- noon (wait list 10 a.m.)
The American Dream of owning a house with a white picket fence goes head to head with environmental sustainability in Laura Dunn's lyrical and beautifully crafted documentary The Unforeseen.
Dunn tracks the career of Gary Bradley, a west Texan farm boy who went to Austin and became one of the largest real estate developers in the state. In the '80s, Bradley had plans to transform miles of pristine hill country into large-scale subdivisions. But the development jeopardized Barton Springs, a watering hole treasured by locals, and served as a lightning rod for mobilizing environmental activism that flourished under Governor Ann Richards. When George W. Bush took the state's executive reins, however, development patterns changed, and the water quality at Barton Springs, as well as the surrounding landscape of Austin, was irreversibly transformed.
The Unforeseen is a meditation on the destruction of the natural world and the American Dream as it falls victim to the cannibalizing forces of unchecked development. It is an intricate tale of personal hopes, victories, and failures, and debates over land, economics, property rights, and the public good. In a time when development and property values have skyrocketed in nearly every major city, Dunn makes a plea for our development-oriented society to consider restructuring the relationship between our values and the environment that sustains us.- Shari Frilot
Wonders Are Many -- Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. Broadway (300 S. ) -- 12:30 p.m. (wait list 10:30 a.m.)
"Is there beauty in annihilation? This is one question driving filmmaker Jon Else's (The Day After Trinity) latest documentary. Extending his fascination with the now-60-year history of nuclear power, Else's new film achieves something remarkable: it is art about artists contemplating the science of destruction.
With infinite precision and formidable intelligence, Wonders Are Many unfolds as theatre director Peter Sellars and composer John Adams collaborate on Doctor Atomic, their fifth, and in many ways most complex, collaboration. The opera's subject is the 48 hours leading up to the first atomic-bomb test detonation in 1945. The film seamlessly combines footage of the making of the opera, candid interviews, and vivid archival material (much of it recently declassified) with journals and writings by J. Robert Oppenheimer and other members of the team that created the first atomic bomb. Though it largely concerns historical events, the film is startling in its immediacy.
Art, as Sellars says in the film, is in part about discovering something new in what we already know. In documenting the act of creativity, both artistic and scientific, Wonders Are Many draws parallels between science and art, truth and beauty, and succeeds in finding wonder in the heart of darkness itself.- Cara Mertes"
The Devil Came on Horseback -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 3:00 p.m. (wait list 1:00 p.m.)
Marine Captain Brian Steidle is an unlikely hero. Not because he isn't brave; he has shown courage under fire. But Steidle's accomplishment is entirely unexpected; he is a soldier who is learning to change the world through peaceful means.
The subject is Darfur. The journey takes place over the course of 18 months. Steidle went to Sudan as an unarmed military observer working for the African Union. He left as a witness to what many believe is genocide in the western Darfur region, a conflict that has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. In the transformation from soldier to observer to witness and activist, we see a man at first confounded by his naiveté and then confronted by the urgency of a humanitarian catastrophe that he sees unfolding firsthand.
An everyman figure, Steidle is initially unequipped to absorb the horror around him. Like many, he would rather not engage with something so incomprehensible and terrible. But he does, and Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, Sundance 2006) astonishing film journeys from Darfur to the United States, then to Chad, Rwanda, and finally the United States again. His odyssey becomes ours as the more than 1,000 photographs he took become evidence of a crisis that cannot be denied.- Cara Mertes
Miss Navajo -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 4:30 p.m. (wait list 2:30)
For most of us, pageants conjure up smiling beauty-queen hopefuls parading around in bathing suits or glittery gowns. But most of us have never witnessed the Miss Navajo Nation competition, an event, inaugurated in 1952, that redefines "pageant" as an opportunity for young women to honor and strengthen Navajo culture and reveal the beauty within.
In this sensitive documentary, Billy Luther, whose mother was crowned Miss Navajo 1966, opens the door to a surprising world, where contestants with diverse styles, physiques, and political orientations are challenged to answer tough historical questions in the Navajo language and showcase their spiritual and practical knowledge of practices like governance, traditional singing, or butchering a whole sheep.
As Luther follows one quietly powerful contender and interviews winners from the past five decades, we begin to glimpse the multivalent power of the pageant. Miss Navajo serves as a positive model for other young Navajos and an ambassador for her people (one recalls meeting Robert Kennedy when he testified before the subcommittee on Indian education). But the film subtly illustrates the sacred dimension of Miss Navajo as well--how participation places the young women on a timeless matriarchal continuum that goes back to creation and the first Diné life-giving ancestor: Changing Woman.- Caroline Libresco
Joe Strummer -- Broadway Center Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway (300 S.) -- 9:00 p.m. (wait list 7:00 p.m.)
Filmmaker Julien Temple chronicles the transformation of a self-described "mouthy little git," born John Mellor, into an antiestablishment icon known to the world as Joe Strummer. In his latest documentary, Temple uncovers the myth behind the front man of the seminal punk band the Clash.
Through previously unearthed interviews with Strummer himself and recollections of those who knew him best, Temple reveals a complex man who used his music as a bullhorn for his conscience--as well as a means to educate others about the injustices of the world. The film includes live concert footage spanning Strummer's career and tapes of his BBC radio program, all of which provide a fitting soundtrack to his distinctive and storied existence.
The performance footage would be fascinating on its own, but Temple probes beyond Strummer's mystique to reveal a person with his own flaws who could sometimes be idealistic to a fault. Temple has created a thoughtful and poignant portrait of a man many think they knew. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten provides a rare glimpse into the man behind the legend of "punk rock warlord." -Rosie Wong
Other Sundance Screenings and Events (note: due to limited computer time I'm not able to individually link the films below. Please see the Sundace Film Guide online for locations and more info)
:
Park City: Autism Everyday (10 a.m./W 8:00 a.m.); Miss Navajo (8:30 a.m./W6:30); Manufactured Landscapes (11:30 a.m./W9:30); In the Shadow of the Moon (12:15 p.m./W10:15 a.m.); Enemies of Happiness (2:30 p.m./W12:30 p.m.); White Light/Black Rain (2:30 p.m./W12:30 p.m.); Hot House (7:00 p.m./5:00 p.m.); La Misma Luna (5:30 p.m./W3:30 p.m.); Low and Behold (5:30 p.m./W3:30 p.m.); Blame It On Fidel (9:00 p.m./W7:00 p.m.); For the Bible Tells Me So (8:30 p.m./W6:30); Nanking (9:15 p.m./W7:15); Save Me (8:30 p.m./W6:30); Documentary Spotlight (8:30 p.m./W6:30); War Dance (11:30 p.m./W9:30);
Ogden: no screenings specifically for PPJAG* today
Sundance Screening Room: Everything's Cool (noon/W 10 a.m.)
Other Sundance Events for PPJAG*
History is Made -- Filmmaker Lodge, Elks Building 550 Main Street, Park City (must be credentialed) -- 10:30 a.m.
History matters; it is one way in which we define our present and decide our futures. From World War II to race relations to civil war and radical countercultures, this year's docs and narratives defy expectation and break the mold of traditional historical storytelling. Hear from extraordinary filmmakers tackling the challenges of bringing the past to life for a new generation. Filmmakers Steven Okazaki (White Light/Black Rain), Marco Williams (Banished), Bill Guttentag (Nanking), Julie Gavras (Blame It on Fidel), and Newton Aduaka (Ezra) join moderator Ian Buruma for this discussion on the relationship between history and film.