Last night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards saluted the best in American independent cinema, with top honors going to Kathryn Bigelow’s gritty war drama The Hurt Locker. Presented by the Independent Feature Project, the often boozy ceremony heralds the start of the film awards season, and in past years has proven a good indicator of which indies will receive Oscar nods.
The crowd at Cipriani Wall Street — which included Willem Dafoe, Meryl Streep, and Alec Baldwin — was eager to express their support for independent filmmaking. Said presenter Ellen Burstyn, “I love independent film because I think that’s where all the people stories are now. The big studio films have gotten to be so much about explosions and special effects.” Richard Kind, a character actor currently in A Serious Man and previously in every movie, sitcom, and animated film ever, added, “The Coen brothers said that when they got a really big budget it wasn’t as much fun as keeping it small, and I think they’re right. I think you’re more focused.”
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Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for a few more reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew to trickle in today.
“It takes courage to tell someone you love them,” says Shelly, the lead (Stella Schnabel) in Ry Russo-Young’s second feature film, You Wont Miss Me. It also takes courage to be loved, as the disturbed young Shelly discovers within the push and pull of her downtown dropout artist scene. With a jet-setting mother and a big house in the country, we know Shelly comes from a certain set of privileges; but with a shrink who callously has seen her problems before and with a set of friends who pride themselves in grubby authenticity, Shelly also comes with a certain set of emotional baggage — designer baggage, intentionally scuffed, the zippers busted, the fabric frayed, emotions spilling out in a dysfunctional display.
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Today was my last full day in Park City and it was once again a long, jam-packed day. I saw two films, Humpday and Sin Nombre; they were both great in totally different ways. The performances in Humpday were exceptionally funny and Sin Nombre reminded me of one of my favorite films, Days of Heaven. The sky was beautiful in the late afternoon as the sun set behind the giant ski slopes. While I talked to my friend (and co-editor of You Wont Miss Me) Gil Kofman on the phone in a parking lot at 5:15 p.m., I was at last able to appreciate the quiet magnificence of twilight at a high altitude.
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This morning I went to an IFC brunch where there was a panel discussion about their new initiative to release films on VOD while they simultaneously premiere at film festivals. Steven Soderbergh spoke, he is amazing to listen to and such an inspiration having made films like Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989, Traffic, Erin Brockovich and most recently, Che — the guy is ahead of his time and very smart in terms of his ability to use the system for his own way.
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I can’t believe it’s day 4 already. It feels like I’ve been at Sundance forever and also like it’s going to be over before I know it. This morning I saw a film in the dramatic competition called Don’t Let Me Drown, a teenage love story that takes place in Brooklyn. The director’s name is Cruz Angeles (a great name). Then I went to Salt Lake City screening of You Wont Miss Me. I didn’t watch the movie this time, instead I walked around Salt Lake. Everything was closed and desolate; there was one store with a bunch of old school board games in the window including one of my childhood favorites: Candyland.
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New York-based Ry Russo-Young is no newbie to the indie film scene. After graduating from Oberlin in 2003, she made a super 8 short called Marion that deconstructed Psycho; it earned critical buzz at Tribeca and SXSW, which led to her debut feature film, Orphans. In 2007 Ry appeared in Joe Swanberg’s mumblecore masterpiece Hannah Takes the Stairs, and even more recently she worked on artist Doug Aitken’s large-scale film installation at the MoMA, Sleepwalkers.
Ry’s second feature film You Won’t Miss Me — which she describes as “a kaleidoscopic film portrait of Shelly Brown, a twenty-three-year-old alienated urban misfit recently released from a psychiatric hospital” — will screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Watch the trailer here, and find our IM interview with her after the jump.
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