Sundance 2022’s Quarantine Edition Delivered Smart, Mindful Cinematic Works Amidst Covid’s Omicron Surge
Leave it to the Covid-19 pandemic to throw a wrench into the plans for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. When…
Neil Kendricks
Neil Kendricks is a filmmaker, artist, photographer, writer, and educator. Kendricks earned a Master’s degree in Television, Film and New Media from San Diego State University in 2006. His award-winning short films like 2002’sLoop have screened at numerous international film festivals including the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, the Havana Film Festival, and a special short-film screening at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival’s American Pavilion. Kendricks’ 2015 experimental short Memory Lines screened at the Stockholm Experimental and Animation Festival, among others. His 2015 experimental short Suspension is currently on the film-festival circuit and the film has screened at the London Experimental Film Festival, Serbia’s Experimental Superstars Festival, and the Staunton International Film Festival, among others.
Kendricks’ photography has also been exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Art, the African-American Museum of Fine Arts, London’s Royal College of Art, and other venues. His first solo photography exhibition, “Bruised Eye Candy” was shown at San Diego’s Spacecraft gallery in 2008. Kendricks also produced, production designed and storyboarded media theorist Jordan Crandall’s film, “Heatseeking,” which was exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s “BitStream” exhibition, the first digital-arts exhibition shown at a major American art museum. Kendricks is currently working on his feature-length documentary-in-progress Comics Are Everywhere!
SUNDANCE 2019: Just Philippot’s Short, Acid
Artist/ Writer Neil Kendricks talks with Filmmaker Just Philippot about the inspiration behind his apocalyptic vision of environmental collapse in his terrifying film, Acid. The short was one of 73 featured at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
SUNDANCE 2019: Robert Machoian Graham
Filmmaker Robert Machoian recruited his father Bruce Graham and this three sons Arri, Ezra, and Jonah to create the short film The Minors. The Writer/Director/Producer spoke with Neil Kendricks about the end result: the film not only gave Machoian’s family an opportunity to combine quality time with creating cinematic art, but The Minors premiered at Sundance winning a Short Film Jury Award for directing. Not bad for a family with artistic aspirations finding an audience on the film-festival circuit.
Sundance 2019: Writer/Director Soudade Kaadan
Filmmaker Soudade Kaadan lends her darkly comic voice to humanity under siege in the short film Aziza, winner of the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. In this interview, Neil Kendricks speaks with the filmmaker about how she transformed her experience as a Syrian exile into this award-winning short.
Sundance Coverage: The Fire This Time
With its kitchen-sink realism and cinematographer Ante Cheng’s moody, black-and-white camerawork, the filmmaker’s quasi-autobiographical Gook stems from his childhood memories about his father defending the family business during 1992’s Los Angeles riots following the notorious, not-guilty verdicts of the four LAPD officers involved in the 1991 beating of the late Rodney King.
All for One, One for All: Laps
Three filmmaking musketeers, writer-director Charlotte “Charlie” Wells, producer Joy Jorgensen, and editor Blair McClendon, enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, put their heads together to create the short film Laps. It premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
A Love Triangle in Hell
After a post-screening Q&A session, Cabral, 28, spoke to Neil Kendricks about his risky modus operandi and tackling the challenging logistics of filming on location in the Najayo prison where approximately 70,000 prisoners are crammed into a facility built for 20,000 inmates. Sometimes, art can emerge from the most unlikely places.
Sundance 2016: Where Black Lives Matter
Slave rebellion, a romance for the history books, and girls being their odd, tough selves combine for one potent antidote to Hollywood’s dearth of black lives on screen. Credit goes to Sundance 2016, according to staff writer Neil Kendricks, who says this festival “defiantly flies a multi-racial flag of true diversity.”
Sundance 2015 – Underdogs On Parade
Staff writer Neil Kendricks assesses the feature-length films that stuck with him at Sundance 2015, including The Bronze, Call Me Lucky, Finders Keepers, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, and Sembene!