To Sundance And Back

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by Ashraf Rijal | Jan 26 2012

Back in 2010, your very own Equipment Rentals Coordinator (that's me!) went down into the bayou of Louisiana with a slew of buddies to work on the feature film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by DCTV Presents alum Benh Zeitlin. I was working as Art Department Coordinator on a crew of about 90, and each of us spent many a 6-day week laboring in the stickiest heat you could imagine to make this movie. After a year and a half of editing, the film had its World Premiere on Jan 20th at the Sundance Film Festival! YES!

To celebrate, I flew out to Park City, Utah this past Thursday with a bunch of the film's crew and cast. It was my first time out at the festival, and -- this isn't the altitude talking -- it was a trip! It was also the first time I saw the film. It didn't disappoint! The buzz around the film was intense! The distribution rights to the film were just bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and producers/pals Dan Janvey and Josh Penn received Sundance's first Creative Producers Fellowship for their work on the movie. Here's hoping a few more awards come in before the end of the festival!

Let's not forget though, film festivals are about the films! Almost all of Sundance's programs were sold out, but I was lucky enough to catch some great flicks at Slamdance - the smaller-scale but no less awesome film festival that takes place at the same time in Park City. There was Welcome to Pine Hill, a moving narrative feature that DCTV Instructors Eric Philips-Horst and Jay Sterrenberg, as well as DCTV Member Cat Tyc all worked on. There was also the excellent We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, a documentary on the (mostly) politically-motivated collective of hackers called Anonymous. Props also go to DCTV Post-Production client Rudd Simmons, whose The First Season premiered at Slamdance. I was bummed that I couldn't catch this really touching doc on a family struggling to run a small farm, but I got to say hi to Rudd, and he told me that things were going really well for the film.

What else happened that I can tell you about? Not much. But I had fun, and if that was the last Sundance/Slamdance experience I have, I got as much as I could from the experience. If any of you are going to be at any festivals next year, let's hang out then and there.

Before I go, I'll leave you with a list of celebrity sightings, ranked in order of how much shorter in person they are than they look on-screen:

  • Lil' Jon - thought he was 6'2", looks more like 5'6" ("YEAH!")
  • Nick Lachey - thought he was 6'3", looks more like 5'9" (was incidentally at the bar where we had our after-party watching ultimate fighting)
  • William H. Macy - actually as tall as I thought, about 5'9" (bonus surprise: was wearing a band-aid across his nose, don't know why)
  • Joshua Jackson - thought he was about 5'8", looks more like 6'2" (bonus surprise: he looks like he's only 15 years old)