Filmmaker Raoul Peck answers a question posed by Sundance Film Festival Director Tabitha Jackson about his new miniseries, Exterminate All the Brutes, during a panel discussion, The Big Converstation The Past in the Present: A Personal Journey Through Race, History and Filmmaking.
Scott Iwasaki/Park Record
Filmmaker Raoul Peck found himself in a state of indecision after the release of his award-winning 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”
Peck felt the film, which was based on the late writer and activist James Baldwin’s unfinished work “Remember This House,” said everything he wanted to say about the history of race in the United States.
Scott Iwasaki/Park Record
Sundance Film Festival 2021 is underway and Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam says she’s happy people are joining in the action albeit virtually.
“When we realized we’d be holding the 2021 festival during a pandemic, we had a choice to make,” Putnam said during the festival’s opening night welcome that took place online Thursday at the festival’s website. “We could cancel or move the festival. We could play it safe and simply make our slate of films available online, or we could take a risk and imagine a way to recreate the energy of the full festival experience digitally. Well, we chose the riskier route, following the lead of our artists and audiences whose adventurous spirit inspire us.”
Sundance Film Festival.
Needless to say, due to COVID and the possibility of sponsoring a super spreader event, Sundance, like so many other film festivals have taken their party virtual. So, how is that gonna work? One of the most endearing things about attending is running through the snow and grabbing a shuttle to all those screenings, panels, parties and networking events. How do you party and network online? What about those conversations on a shuttle bus that may shift your different gaze or perspective on a film that hadn’t entered your consciousness?
Well, Sundance Institute
Film Festival Director Tabitha Jackson and
Tanzi Propst/Park Record
Sundance Film Festival 2021 will be like no other.
Instead of screenings in theaters throughout town and panel discussions with filmmakers, composers and actors in the Filmmaker’s Lodge on Main Street, programming for the festival, which starts Thursday, will be virtual.
Festival organizers, under the leadership of new Festival Director Tabitha Jackson, decided to reimagine the festival, centered around an online platform, due to the coronavirus concerns last spring.
“The question was to what extent could we gather live and in person, and that is where we needed to be at our most flexible and responsive right up until the last moment,” Jackson said in an email question-and-answer exchange with The Park Record. “As we continued to keep close tabs on the rising rates of COVID-19 in Utah, we made the difficult decision in December to reduce our in-person Festival footprint in Park City this year.”