Sundance skeds four world bows
The 17 dramatic features and 15 documentaries in the competitive categories were announced last week.
Fest programming director Geoffrey Gilmore announced that 84 feature films are scheduled. Of these, 32 are in competition, 24 will be premieres or special screenings, and the remainder are in sidebars.
Gilmore observed that one of the hallmarks of this year's competition crop is the extreme youth of several of the new directors. "I think we have seven or eight filmmakers who are between 23 and 27 years old. There are always a lot of young filmmakers in the festival, but never a body of them so young as there seems to be this year."
Also notable is the presence of 10 women directors in the competition (eight in documentaries, two in fiction), and several strongly "regional" films.
While the competition portion of the festival is strictly limited to American indies, foreign films are welcome in the sidebar and special-screenings sections. And this year they have achieved a profile unprecedented for the festival.
"If there's a place where we can put foreign films that have a sort of spiritual allegiance to American independents, we try to make space for them in the special sections," Gilmore said.
Opening-night attraction in Salt Lake City will be Mike Newell's "Into the West," an American-Irish adventure fable written by Jim Sheridan ("My Left Foot"), starring Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin. Miramax will release it in February.
Park City opener the following night will be Martin Bell's "American Heart" in its U.S. preem. Jeff Bridges and Edward Furlong topline this father-son drama.
Sam Shepard's "Silent Tongue," the writer-actor's second directorial outing, stars Alan Bates, Richard Harris, Dermot Mulroney and River Phoenix.
Other world preems will be Yurek Bogayevicz's "Three of Hearts" with Billy Baldwin, Kelly Lynch and Sherilyn Fenn, and Michael Lessac's "House of Cards" starring Kathleen Turner and Tommy Lee Jones.
U.S. premieres include David Jones' reworking of Franz Kafka's "The Trial" from a Harold Pinter script and toplining Kyle MacLachlan, Anthony Hopkins, Jason Robards and Juliet Stevenson; Gillian Armstrong's "The Last Days of Chez Nous" with Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz and Kerry Fox; Sally Potter's "Orlando" featuring Tilda Swinton; and Ron Mann's music docu "Twist."
Also in for special screenings will be Guy Maddin's "Careful," Zhang Yimou's "The Story of Qiu Ju" and John Turturro's Cannes prize winner "Mac."
Sidebar screenings will be held of Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson's "Black Harvest," Alison Maclean's "Crush," Leos Carax's "Les Amants du Pont Neuf," Julie Taymor's "Oedipus Rex," Antonio Tibaldi's "On My Own," Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels' "Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography," David Attwood's "Wild West," Rusty Cundieff's "Fear of a Black Hat," Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer," David Parker's "Hercules Returns" and Peter Jackson's "Dead/Alive" (formerly "Brain Dead").
Denzel Washington will receive the second annual Piper-Heidsieck Tribute to Independent Vision. Recognizing "the original voice and vision of a film artist, " tribute will salute the "Malcolm X" star for "having chosen markedly controversial roles and socially conscious films throughout his career."
Kaufman retro
Director Philip Kaufman will be the subject of a career retrospective that will include screenings of eight of his feature films--"Goldstein,""The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid,""The White Dawn,""Invasion of the Body Snatchers, ""The Wanderers,""The Right Stuff,""The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Henry & June."
Fest is serving up three international sidebars. "European Independents" will include Aki Kaurismaki's "La Vie de Boheme," Ana Belen's "How To Be a Woman and Survive," Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde's "Man Bites Dog," Arnaud Desplechin's "The Sentinel," Philip Groning's "The Terrorists" and two programs of British shorts called "Arrows of Desire."
"New Hong Kong Cinema" section consists of Clara Law's Locarno Fest prize winner "Autumn Moon," John Woo's "Hard-Boiled," Wong Kar-wai's "Days of Being Wild," Raymond Lee's "Dragon Inn" and Lawrence Ah Mon's "Three Summers."
"The Pan American Highway Revisited" slate of Latin American entries offers up Dana Rotberg's "Angel of Fire," Eliseo Subiela's Montreal Fest prize winner "The Dark Side of the Heart," Fernando E. Solanas' "The Journey," Alfonso Arau's "Like Water, Like Chocolate," Adolfo Aristarain's "A Place in the World" and Patricio Guzman's "The Southern Cross."
Fest also will present a four-film tribute to the late documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood.
Topics for six seminars have been announced: "The Forgotten Part of the Equation: The Independent Screenwriter," moderated by Howard A. Rodman; "Regional Filmmaking: Making Films Outside of N.Y. or L.A.," with Leigh von der Esch moderating; "People Who Make It Happen: Producing and Financing the Independent Film," with moderator Seth Willenson; "A Conversation With Philip Kaufman"; "Twenty Somethings: The New Generation," moderated by John Pierson; and "The Aesthetics of Neoviolence," with B. Ruby Rich moderating.
