All these wonderful things

2008 IN REVIEW: A Summary

With the Sundance Film Festival kicking off Thursday, it seems a pretty appropriate time to draw our extended look back at the past year to a close.  If you want to take another look down memory lane, here are the links:

The Nonfiction Films of 2008
The Nonfiction Heroes of 2008
The Nonfiction Issues of 2008

The 2008 Nonfiction Honor Roll
The 2008 Nonfiction Box Office

Interviews with:
James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE)
Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (TROUBLE THE WATER)
Jeremiah Zagar (IN A DREAM)
Yung Chang (UP THE YANGTZE)
Patrick Creadon (I.O.U.S.A.)
Margaret Brown (THE ORDER OF MYTHS)
Marina Zenovich (ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED)
Ellen Kuras (THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON))
Darius Marder (LOOT)
Scott Kennedy (THE GARDEN)
Daniel Junge (THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY)
Tommy Davis (ONE MINUTE TO NINE)
Morgan Dews (MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH)

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH's Morgan Dews

Lucky number 13 of our series of interviews with some of 2008's top nonfiction filmmakers...

Morgan Dews' MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH had its US premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, but, like Tommy Davis' ONE MINUTE TO NINE, it had already had a strong run on the international film festival circuit before it hit stateside, even though it's a truly American story.

Based on audio tape diaries and audio correspondence between his grandparents in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the film is a beautiful, dreamlike accounting of a troubled family in the midst of changing times, particularly differing attitudes toward sex, mental health and psychiatry.  It gets a US limited theatrical release via Gigantic next month.

In this exchange, Morgan talks about his discovery of the archival material at the heart of his film, convincing his family to trust him with their painful past and what he's learned about film festivals after his go 'round with MUST READ.

So part of the background of MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH is the discovery of a series of letters and audio recordings left by your grandmother, which reveals not only a very surprising dynamic between her and your grandfather, but also shines a light on the era in which they lived.  Tell me about the discovery of your grandmother's archives and your decision to make a film about them.

I grew up very close with my grandmother Allis. I spent a lot of time up at her place in Vermont and had pretty much free rein of the woods and attic and shed. I'm not sure if she showed me their old 8mm home moves or I just dug them up, but from a very early age I was setting up screenings and watching them.

My mother and uncles were already sick of them as children. All they could remember is their father chasing them around with huge lights and making them do multiple takes coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. My brother and cousins weren't interested in them so when Allis died in 2001 I took the 200 odd reels back with me to Barcelona.

I took my time splicing them onto bigger reels and taking notes on all the footage. There was only a little more than eight hours of material, but all that film is unwieldy. I thought I could use Allis' letters or a memoir that she had written and make an interesting short film out of the material.

Then in spring of 2004 two interesting things happened. First I got a package of cds from my Uncle Bruce. He had found the dictaphone letters in a box somewhere, bought a machine on eBay and transferred it all to CD and sent it out to the whole family. Now these are about ten hours of audio letters my grandparents and their children sent back and forth when Charley, my grandfather, was away on business.

Secondly, I went out to dinner with Bruce's ex-wife Barbara.  We hadn't seen each other since their divorce in the 80s.  She hadn't had such a great relationship with Allis. When I told her I had all of Allis' home movies she asked me if I was going to be using the tapes. I asked if she meant the dictaphone letters and she said no. She said about the time Bruce had been sent to the mental institution, Allis had driven around with a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder making diaries to give to her shrink.

I was pretty excited. Barbara assured me that these tapes still existed. I made some calls and sure enough, they were still out in the shed. I arranged for them to come to my mothers for our first big family Thanksgiving since Allis died. We got a reel to reel tape recorder and I spent thanksgiving week putting it all onto a hard-drive.

Once I got home and heard the tapes I realized that there was a very different film in there. It also really excited me that the material mirrored the outrageous pressure to conformity of the fifties that lead to the social upheaval of the '60s. This story is really about what that process looks like inside a suburban home with the shades drawn.

The tapes are so intimate and revealing, I kept wondering whether there was ever any thought within your family that maybe it's not such a good idea if Morgan turns these into a movie?

Yes. In fact when I told my mother and uncles that I was making a film out of these tapes they were pretty taken aback. "Yikes!" they said, "and listen, that's a box of random recordings of the worst moments of the worst years of our childhood. We don't even know what's in there."

I said that in order to find funding for the film, they were going to have to trust me and sign release forms. They said, "Make your film and show it to us, and if we're OK with we'll sign the forms."

A lot of people told me that this could be a real disaster. But I think when people put their stories in your hands you have a big responsibility to portray them in a way that they find acceptable. I don't think having a release relieves you from your responsibility. Plus this is about how my family disintegrated forty years ago. This is something that we're all still recovering from and the last thing I would do is something to make things hard for us again.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with ONE MINUTE TO NINE's Tommy Davis

#12 in a series.

Tommy Davis' ONE MINUTE TO NINE - the story of Wendy Maldonado's last days before reporting to prison for killing her abusive husband - had its premiere at the 2007 Locarno Film Festival, but it made its mark stateside with a much talked about US premiere at SXSW last March.  From there, Davis' film attracted the attention of HBO, which will release the film later this year.  It was one of my favorite films of 2008 as noted yesterday in our recap of the year's best films.

In this exchange, Davis talks about discovering his subject and racing the clock to film in a scant five days, how he tackled the film's revelations as well as its centerpiece 911 phone call.

ATWT: Let me say first off that I don't think I was as emotionally drained after watching a movie this year as I was with ONE MINUTE TO NINE.  When the film finished, I just sat silently for a while because it was such a moving and wrenching experience.  Much of that is not just from the events that took place but by how you chose to unfold this for the audience.  A lot of the key facts of this story are laid on the table at the very beginning of the film, yet you keep surprising the audience - not in gimmicky ways - by the way you play with chronology and memory.  How much of your process did you have from the start and how much of it came during the post process with your editor Luis de Leon?

Tommy Davis: I was visiting with my Uncle Ferdinand and he was asking how the shoot in Oregon had gone.  I told him how over 5 days I had to earn Wendy's trust in order to find out about the crime, etc.  Then a friend of his, Jimmy, came over and sat down beside us.  Jimmy, had heard parts of the conversation and wanted to know what we were talking about.  Ferdinand started to fill him in.  Hearing the story retold was a minor miracle.  Ferdinand told Jimmy that as I was filming, Wendy slowly doled out the information and it created a totally natural state of suspense.

That gradual process of hearing their story was pitch perfect.  In some ways it made editing pretty seamless, because we just had to filter out things, the story was there, in the proper chronology, all we had to do was keep our eyes and ears open.

How did you find Wendy and how soon did you meet her before she is scheduled to go to prison?

I read about her story on google about a week or so before she was set to go to jail.  I got up to Oregon ASAP and went to her attorney's office.  I told him I wanted to film Wendy and he said, "She only has five days...."  A couple hours later I met Wendy and her family at a diner in Grants Pass.  They were all incredibly gracious and twelve hours later the camera was rolling.

The family was always wanting to turn on lights for me or turn down the TV and I'd say, "no, just keep doing things like you're doing".  A month or two later I was shown all of their home videos and I realized that their father had always staged scenes to make sure they looked happy and the lighting was okay.  Had I known about that when I was filming I probably would have let them turn on a light or two.

2008 IN REVIEW: The Year in Nonfiction Films

Putting together a top ten list of favorite nonfiction films from 2008 has been one of my biggest procrastinations of all time here on the blog.  I actually started working on notes for it in early December, figured I wrap the whole thing up before Christmas and have it ready for the first few days of 2009. 

Not so much.

For one thing, I've not yet seen what is by all accounts one of the best and most important nonfiction titles of last year, WALTZ WITH BASHIR.  Still haven't seen it.  Apologies all around.

For another, my list kept shifting.  And for various reasons, I couldn't quite justify to myself why one film would be off my list of top 10 films one day and relegated (if that's the right word) to the honorable mentions the next. 

So I've decided this year not to do a top 10 list, but a slightly expanded list of 15 films that were - as far as I can gather - my tops in 2008, as well as some of the moments and exceptional artistic achievements in some of my other favorites. 

In alphabetical order, they are:

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL
Directed by Sascha Gervasi

From November 2008:

"Perhaps the most surprisingly beloved film at Sundance 2008 was Gervasi's portrait of Toronto working class heroes/heavy metal legends Lips and Robb.  But in the months after Park City, the surprise gave way to realization of the exceptional craft in the film.  Sure, it's hilarious and - at times - seems to be channeling mockumentary 101, but at heart it packs more emotion than most docs this year, particularly all those that seek appeals for you to join their righteous cause.  Years after everyone has forgotten the issue-of-the-moment doc, film and music fans will still be discovering ANVIL and downloading "Metal on Metal"."

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*
Directed by Christopher Bell

From January 2008:

"Starting with the small, personal story of anabolic steroid use within his own family (his two brothers have used steroids for years, Bell tried them once and felt so guilty that he stopped taking them), Bell expertly expands the tale to indict an American culture obsessed with winning at all costs. Like Spurlock and Michael Moore, Bell leads us on this journey and proves to be an excellent guide, equally at home quizzing his family as he is questioning U.S. congressmen and sports heroes. But Bell (aided by strong editing from Brian Singbiel) does something more and equally unexpected – he challenges our preconceived notions about steroids. What if, he wonders, much of what we’ve heard about steroids is a lie or an exaggeration? The best nonfiction films get us to see the world in new ways and on this point, BIGGER, STRONGER is an unqualified success."

THE ENGLISH SURGEON
Directed by Geoffrey Smith

Alternatingly hilarious and heart-breaking, Geoffrey Smith's film is a rich character study of Dr. Henry Marsh, a prominent London brain surgeon, as he attempts to bring better surgical procedures to the Ukraine.  But once he arrives, he must continually face the fact that the conditions on the ground - lack of equipment, money, other experts - limit what he can accomplish with his surgical powers.  One could call the film a mortality tale - of some of Marsh's patients as well as his own skills.  The man who is seen in the opening frames creating surgical tools from unused scraps or even from scratch will soon face those he can't help and those he failed.

A lesser filmmaker would take any one of several moments to hit you over the head with the inherent melodrama.  But Smith, working with his cinematographer Graham Day and his editor Kathy O'Shea employ an abundance of subtlety, so much so that late in the film the camera is so unobtrusive that you forget for long stretches that these are real people experiencing life and death situations.  Later still, waves of emotion come from a wordless, brief cut to a shot of a little girl seen earlier in the film.  An exceptionally assured debut by Smith.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY's Daniel Junge

#11 in this series...

Daniel Junge's THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY premiered ten months ago at the SXSW Film Festival, taking Austin by storm and winning both the jury and audience awards.  Just a couple of weeks later, his previous film, IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA (which had premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival) took the top prize at AFI Dallas, capping a rare Texas documentary sweep.

After SXSW, DOROTHY was acquired by HBO, which will broadcast the film this year, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award.  The film is also currently in the news, as prosecutors in Brazil have re-opened the case against a rancher tied to Sister Dorothy's murder based on evidence presented in the film.  (Shades of ROMAN POLANSKI...)

In this exchange, Daniel (who is, full disclosure, one of the filmmakers involved in the CONVENTION project) talks about gaining access to both sides of a dramatic trial in the Amazon, the power of a great nonfiction character and working the festival circuit with two acclaimed films simultaneously.

ATWT:  Watching THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY, I was reminded of IRON LADIES and one of the things that really impressed me with that film, which was the amazing level of access that you had.  You are behind the scenes with both the prosecutors in the trial of Dorothy's murderers as well as the defense team.  How did you gain the trust of both sides of this case to allow your cameras to follow them?

Daniel Junge:  While I believe SISTER DOROTHY is more cinematic than IRON LADIES, it’s true that they both benefit from unprecedented access.  I think people are most surprised by our access to the defense team, and, in fact, at times I myself was surprised by their candor.  I think their bravado is indicative of the power structure that exists in the Amazon and ultimately which led to Dorothy's death.  Ironically, it was access to Dorothy's side of the story which was actually a more difficult and constant negotiation, which I think speaks to the stakes and what they have to lose.

The lead defense attorney, Americo Leal, is an amazing nonfiction  character.  He really could have a film all to himself.  What were your impressions onmeeting him, particularly in that he's at least nominally the villain in the last act of the film.

If you wrote Americo Leal as a fiction character he would be unbelievable.  The first day I met him I asked if we could him film him at work doing rudimentary office things, and he said, "No.  Today, I'm going to the forest to ride my Harley Davidson.  Do you want to film me doing that?"  It was at that moment I knew we had a great character and in fact a film!  I would like to react to some of the words that reviewers have used for Americo, including "villain" and "evil."  I think it's important to point out Americo is a lawyer (and a very good one) and ultimately an actor.  Furthermore, as Sister Becky points out, half of the outrageous things he says are true.  If people walk away from our film with only the portrait of a sweet nun and some evil men then I've done this story a great disservice.  Because ultimately it has to be about the systemic failures which are leading to the destruction of the forest and loss of human life in the Amazon.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with THE GARDEN's Scott Kennedy

10th in a series of filmmaker interviews (links to the previous 9 after the jump)...

Scott Kennedy's sophomore effort, THE GARDEN - the story of efforts to save a large community farm in South Central Los Angeles, had its premiere at last year's AFI Silverdocs, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.  It has now been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was nominated for the Pare Lorentz prize at the IDA Awards last month.

In our exchange, Scott talks about working as a one-man crew even when you don't speak the language, compares festival premieres for his first two films and explains why the Oscar shortlist matters to filmmakers, for good reasons and sometimes bad.

ATWT:  One of the great things about THE GARDEN is how you are following this developing story over time.  By the conclusion so much has happened - twists and turns, amazing supporting characters who pop up - that you couldn't have imagined when you began.  Talk about what it's like as a filmmaker to have the story constantly evolving underneath you.
 
Scott Kennedy:  What you are asking about is both one of the most exciting and daunting aspects of making a documentary.  Of course, as a storyteller, you want great characters who have to deal with great twists and turns, but the question becomes: do you have the time, money, and sheer energy to capture all of this?  And on top of that, even if you do capture it, and we captured a ton, now you have to face it in the editing room.  What is good, what is bad, what MUST be in the film?  How do you structure it in such a way that is truthful, clear, and – god forbid – entertaining?  It’s hard, but very satisfying if you can figure it all out.
 
I have said that this film has swallowed me up and spit me out so many times. Every time I tried to wrestle it to the ground, it just shrugged me off.  But please don’t think I am asking for pity.  Documentaries are just plain hard to make, but in terms for documentary karma and serendipity, I have been very lucky.  The wonderful people in THE GARDEN, and the situations they struggled with gave me plenty of story; it was my job to not mess it up.
 
How much of the experience of making THE GARDEN was you and your camera with your subjects - just a one man show?

The ‘one man show’ of only me with the camera and a mounted mic on top?  A lot. And mostly I am very happy with what that gives me: small, mobile, mostly unobtrusive, and – to be honest – not super ‘professional’ looking, which I find allows people to relax a bit, not try to be ‘important’ because this big fancy crew is there.
 
At the same time, the non-crew thing made things difficult.  I don’t speak Spanish, and I shot lots and lots of scenes where the predominant language was Spanish.  Thankfully I had translators on many days, but there were several scenes in the final film that I had the - mostly - pleasant surprise of finding out exactly what was said later on in the edit.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with LOOT's Darius Marder

#9, #9, #9 (in a series)

Darius Marder's LOOT - a tale of Lance Larson, a treasure hunter on the search for war-era bounty - had its premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival last June where it won the fest's grand jury prize (as well as it's $50,000 cash prize).  Not long after the fest, LOOT was acquired by HBO.  In November, Marder was named a nominee for the Film Independent Spirit Awards' Truer Than Fiction prize for his work on the film. 

In this exchange, we talk about his experiences during and after LAFF, the unusual, narrative qualities of Marder's film, how keeping your distance can sometimes be a virtue and the joys of being lied to by Guillermo del Toro.

ATWT:  I guess I'd like to start at the beginning.  How did you find Lance and what was it about him that made you think he'd make a good subject?

Darius Marder:  Really I first learned of Lance while sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn watching my son play in the sandbox.  I had just quit all my freelance chef work on the theory that I was going to commit to a career in film making - not really knowing how that would work - when another father (Dan Campbell) sat down next to me and after some time started telling me about this used car salesman that he knew in Utah who had plans to help a blind veteran recover his stolen WWII jewels from Austria.  I told him that I would love nothing more than to make that film and so we decided then and there that we would do it - Dan would produce it and I would direct it.  One week later we flew to Utah and I met Lance for the first time. 

Lance was hard to grasp at first viewing - bleached thinning hair - slow apathetic delivery and no particular volition.  But I liked him - he was without pretense and it was this bullshit proof quality that ultimately made him a great subject.  Which is not to say that he doesn't try to bullshit (he's a used car salesman after all) but somehow in spite of everything, his eyes betray a man who is solidly good with a simple wisdom.  Looking back - the moment of deciding to tell the story through Lance was by far the most important decision that I made during the shooting of LOOT.  It's hard to imagine now making any other choice, but in those first moments it was quite a leap of faith. 

I wanted to tell a story that wasn't polemical - that reflected the heart and innocence and apathy of the modern American mindset.  Lance was the key to telling that story but it meant letting go of a lot of control and going on a crazy, sometimes frustrating but always rewarding Lance journey.  

You made some really specific creative choices.  I've said that when I saw LOOT it made me feel like I used to see when I saw the great indie narratives of the '90s.  Nothing about your film feels fake but it also doesn't look or move like other documentaries.  How did you approach the filmmaking?  How much of it was just you with the subjects?

I obviously could never have predicted how the events of this story would unfold but I knew that I wanted to capture them in a way that was unlike a documentary.  I wanted to help a story reveal itself as something much bigger than what the surface would suggest.  This is I think the essence of "narrative".

I always wonder why we don't refer to documentaries as narratives. Certainly they can be as narrative as any piece of fiction or at least I hoped that was true when I started.  I really wanted to capture this quest in a cinematic way - I tried to think about the moments that were occurring not just as events to document but rather as layered moments that with the right perspective could be viewed in deeper ways.  Ultimately this meant committing to the journey.  I committed to the idea that there is inherent symbolism in every moment and I always tried to stay aware of the fact that I wanted to show that symbolism without exposition.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON)'s Ellen Kuras

Part the 8th in this series...

Acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras first started working on her debut feature documentary, THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) in the mid-1980s.  Her collaboration with her subject, Thavisouk Phrasavath (who edited the film and gets a co-director credit), finally unspooled one year ago at the Sundance Film Festival.  Since then it has received the Spectrum Award at the Full Frame Film Festival, was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award in the same category.  It airs next year on P.O.V.

In this exchange, Kuras talks about her first Sundance experience as documentary director (rather than DP in the narrative world), how she met and began to collaborate with Phrasavath and whether or not a documentary needs to look like shit (oh, come on, you already know the answer to that one).

ATWT:  I must admit that whenever I hear about a filmmaker following a subject for 4 or 5 years, I feel a little inferior because I know that I probably don't have the patience level to wait that long or to commit to the same subject.  So when I saw THE BETRAYAL, I was completely floored because of the decades that you spent with Thavisouk and his family.  When you started the project, could you have imagined that it would have its premiere in 2008?

Ellen Kuras:  WOW, I never would've imagined that the years would slip by to 2008; to me, this project has always been a place where I could work out ideas so I didn't put a time limit on its completion.   As a Director of Photography, working on this film -- mostly in between shooting many features and commercials -- was a way of me getting back to hear my inner voice and thoughts. What THE BETRAYAL gave me was a way to express myself personally and to explore the idea of metaphor through imagery, words and story.  

With Thavi, working on the film became a on-going creative dialogue that included many aspects of the Lao culture past and present, specific and universal.  The making of the film was so much part of the experience; we really enjoyed working together and talking about the writing of the prophesies, how images could be visual metaphors and what we wanted to say on a universal level as well as about his family and their experience.  We were very much involved with trying to tell so many stories embedded in the subtext and images of the film -- that's why the film has many layers and why audiences discover more and more when they see the film for the second and third times. 

There were times, though, years actually, when we didn't work on the film; this was mostly due to my work as a Director of Photography in the feature film world. I've shot many films during the past 23 years, so there's a good reason why my friends and colleagues called me the busiest person they know. Yet during all of the years that I was shooting films with other directors, I always knew I would finish THE BETRAYAL. The real question was carving the uninterrrupted time out of a very active DP career-a year and a half- to concentrate on locking picture and overseeing the entire post process.

We were helped a great deal to finish by a number of people who believed in the film and believed in us. Cara Mertes, who is now the Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, is our Executive Producer.  While at P.O.V., she was instrumental in picking up the film for American broadcast and helped us again by inviting us to the Sundance Producers and Composers Labs when she moved over to the Sundance Institute.  We were also helped by Flora Fernandez-Marengo, who came on as a producer in 2006, Chiemi Karasawa and Wilder Knight, our co-producers and Neda Armian, who was key in organizing the latest interviews of Thavi's father and mother.  After we did Thavi's mother's interview, we then knew that we had captured the missing perspective of the story and could close the circle to finish the film.

2008 IN REVIEW: The Year in Nonfiction Heroes

Thinking back over this past year, I started to ponder those who had made our community a better place.  Whether they supported films and filmmakers, launched new initiatives or just spoke plainly, these folks are creating and sustaining a universe wherein those of us who make and watch nonfiction can benefit.

Here's to the nonfiction heroes of 2008 (in alphabetical order):

Heather Croall
Heather works as hard as anyone in the festival world and has (nearly) singlehandedly pulled Sheffield into the top ranks of international doc fests.  And when BritDoc was on the ropes, she found ways to pull some of the best of BritDoc into her own festival.

Matt Dentler
Matt ended his stint at SXSW having made that festival a premiere showcase for diverse nonfiction.  In his new role at Cinetic Rights Management, he's taking his patented promo skills and devoting them to getting docs (new and old) seen online.

Anthony Falzone
At Standford's Center for Internet and Society, Falzone has led efforts to expand fair use rights in documentary film.  His work representing the producers of EXPELLED against suits by Yoko Ono and EMI led to major victories for all filmmakers.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED's Marina Zenovich

#7 in a series...

Marina Zenovich took Sundance by storm one year ago with her fresh and cogent investigation of the decades-old Roman Polanski underage sex case.  HBO picked up the film very early in the festival (for a rumored seven figures), the Weinstein Company picked up international rights for a reported $600,000 and THINKFilm later signed on to do a theatrical release after the film had aired once on the pay cable channel.  It was something THINK had only done once before - with Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT - to little success.  This time, the release of ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED would come in the midst of THINKFilm's unraveling.  Some argued that HBO did the film no favors by disallowing traditional theatrical engagements in favor of an out-of-the-way Oscar qualifying run, particularly for such a well-received film.  Months later, the film was perhaps the most surprising exclusion from the Academy's Documentary Feature shortlist.

But by the end of the year, the film was still making headlines, as Polanski sought to use new evidence uncovered in the film to get his case thrown out.  Just yesterday, after this conversation was completed, Polanski's lawyers filed a new motion to move the entire case out of the Los Angeles Superior Court System and over to the California Judicial Council for review.  Polanski and his legal team allege judicial bias and misconduct.

And the debate spurred by the film is likely to continue - the film's DVD is due later this month, with two hours of extra bonus features.

Here, Marina talks about her magical Sundance experience, having a ringside seat for the THINKFilm implosion, why HBO was the right choice and what it took to get her reluctant interview subjects to talk about the case on camera for the first time.

ATWT:  I've been asking a lot of folks from last year's Sundance class what they were feeling at this time last year, so let me ask you the same question.  A little less than two weeks out from Sundance, what were you feeling and what was happening with your film?  Were you finished?

Marina Zenovich:  I remember last year quite fondly.  Lots of late night Chipotle dinners while color correcting, locking picture and sound mixing in New York and Los Angeles.  It was pretty nuts. 

The day before leaving for Sundance I showed the film to Polanski's agent who had asked to see it.  It was a perfect dress rehearsal for what was to come.

I'm curious about your sales strategy.  There's been a lot of talk recently about whether filmmakers should screen their film for select buyers prior to a festival or whether they should wait to show the film until their world premiere.  What did you do and did you have that discussion?

We had the discussion and decided not to do it.  Once we got to Park City it was amazing to see the whole sales team kick into high gear.  You hear and read about it for years but to actually be in on it was pretty enlightening and intoxicating, actually.

The best advice I got was from my friend Arianna who said, "Just try to manage your expectations."  Having made a film about the struggles of indie filmmakers at Sundance and Slamdance in 1996 and 1997 (INDEPENDENT'S DAY) I knew all the stories -- good and bad -- but I had never experienced it myself. 

Neil Labute sums it up best in my film -- "You get into Sundance but are you in the competition?  You're in the competition but did you win anything?  You won something but did you get distribution?  You get distribution but did you make any money?" The goal posts keep moving.  It's endless.  Thankfully you forget about all that when you remember the audience gasping at a great moment in your film.  That's what its all for.