SUNDANCE FILMS ABOUT BODIES & MINDS
From exploring new ideas and implications about disease to stretching minds and bodies to set new world records, this crop of Sundance films tells us stories that are incredibly moving, inspiring, and surprising. Here’s what Sundance programmers have to say about these films:
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from The Measure of All Things.
Acclaimed documentarian Sam Green began experimenting with “live documentary” storytelling at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival with Utopia in Four Movements. Green returns to Sundance to develop the form with The Measure of All Things, a playful and beautifully poetic meditation on humanity, loosely inspired by the Guinness World Records book series.
Photo: Courtesy of The Measure of All Things
Green interprets our collective fascination with the book of world records as a profound need to try and make some sense of who we are by calibrating human experience and marveling at its outer contours. Green himself travels to various reaches of the earth to collect original footage of record-holding people, places, and things—the tallest man, the woman with the longest name, the oldest living thing on the planet. He weaves into these original portraits a rich assembly of archival footage, his own live narration, and an evocative live soundtrack from the chamber group yMusic to create an indelible rumination on fate, human endeavor, and the nature of our existence on Earth.
About the Directors
Sam Green is a New York City–based documentary filmmaker. His most recent documentary, The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, features a live score by legendary indie rock band Yo La Tengo. His film The Weather Underground screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the Whitney Biennial. Green received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.
yMusic is a sextet made up of Hideaki Aomori, CJ Camerieri, Clarice Jensen, Rob Moose, Nadia Sirota, and Alex Sopp. Equally comfortable in the two overlapping worlds of classical and pop music, the ensemble was created in 2008 to bring a classical chamber-music aesthetic to venues outside the traditional concert hall.
Cast and Credits
Directors: Sam Green, yMusic
Cinematographers: Pete Sillen, Andy Black
Producers: ArKtype and C41
Creative Collaborator: Annie Dorsen
Composer: Mark Dancigers
Additional Music: Marcos Balter, Annie Clark, Nico Muhly, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Jeremy Turner
Additional Cinematography: Jason Lee Wong, Joshua Weinstein
___________________________________________________________________________
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from Alive Inside.
As dementia continues to affect millions of elderly Americans, Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory reveals a remarkable, music-based breakthrough that has already transformed lives. Spearheaded by social worker Dan Cohen and captured on camera over the course of three years by filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett, we learn that songs from a patient’s past can awaken memories and emotions that have been asleep for years, sometimes decades.
Within a moment of hearing “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys, Alzheimer’s patient Marylou jolts back to life, dancing around the living room and expressing a euphoria her husband hasn’t witnessed since her illness took effect. Countless instances in Alive Inside provide proof that music stimulates activity in dementia-affected parts of the brain and transforms the quality of life of those often left to languish in silence.
Through revealing conversations with renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks and musician Bobby McFerrin, as well as powerful firsthand experiments conducted by Cohen in nursing homes, this groundbreaking documentary demonstrates how connecting the elderly to the music they love not only combats memory loss but also supplements a broken health-care system often indifferent to interpersonal connections.
About the Director
Michael Rossato-Bennett is the founder and executive producer of Projector Media, a documentary production company dedicated to inspiring conversations that interrogate issues related to our cultural consciousness.
Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory is Rossato-Bennett’s first feature-length offering. Projector Media has several documentaries in various stages of production in addition to Alive Inside. Each of those projects is inspired by Rossato-Bennett's dedication to the collective well-being of society.
Cast and Credits
Director: Michael Rossato-Bennett
Screenwriter: Michael Rossato-Bennett
Executive Producers: The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Projector Media, Eric J. Bertrand, Limore Shur, Ben Spivak
Producer: Michael Rossato-Bennett
Co, Producers: Alexandra McDougald, Barry Cole, Jonathan Clasberry
Editors: Michael Rossato-Bennett, Mark Demolar, Manuel Tsingaris
Composer: Itaal Shur
Cinematographer: Shachar Langlev
___________________________________________________________________________
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from The Lion’s Mouth Opens.
A stunningly courageous young woman takes the boldest step imaginable, supported by her mother and loving friends.
"And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closing with you underneath"
-- Bob Dylan
The title "The Lion's Mouth Opens" is taken from lines from a poem that Bob Dylan wrote about Woody Guthrie called "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" which Marianna can recite in its entirety (it takes about 7 minutes). The story of the poem is that Dylan went to visit Woody Guthrie (arguably his greatest early influence) in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, where Guthrie was dying from Huntington’s Disease.
Dylan recited the poem live only once, after he returned to the stage at the end of his April 12, 1963 performance at New York's Town Hall. Dylan explained that "there's this book coming out, and they asked me to write something about Woody, sort of like what does Woody Guthrie mean to you in 25 words, and I couldn't do it, I wrote out five pages".
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from The Lion’s Mouth Opens.
About the Director
Lucy Walker is best known for directing documentary features. Her films include Devil's Playground (2002), Blindsight (2006), Waste Land, which won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival; Countdown to Zero, which also screened at the Festival in 2010; and The Crash Reel, which screened at the Festival last year. Her shorts include The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, which won the Jury Prize in Documentary Short Film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Walker grew up in London, won a Fulbright to attend NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and has had two films nominated for an Academy Award. This is her sixth film to screen at Sundance.
Cast and Credits
Director: Lucy Walker
Producers: Lucy Walker, Marianna Palka
Editor: Joe Peeler
Cinematographer: Nick Higgins
Sound Recordist: Lucy Walker
Sound Design: D. Chris Smith
Co, Producer: Sabrina Doyle
Here's a link to an LA Times piece about the film.
Here's a link to an ABC News piece about the film.
For more info about the film.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MARIANNA PALKA
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HUNTINGTON'S DISEASE
For more info about the first of the fundraisers that the film will be used for to raise money for HD research - our LA premiere at the FreezeHD fundraiser in LA Feb 22nd
Photo: Courtesy of Marcella Purnama.
Read more about Beautiful Stories, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact in our posts throughout this week, including 10 Beautiful Sundance Films, 10 Beautiful Nature Stories, 10 Beautiful Nature Stories, 10 Beautiful Food Stories, 10 Incredible Sundance Art Works. and A Sundance Storybook Place & Time.
Enter this week’s BN Competition. Our theme this week is Beautiful Stories. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 01.26.14.
