https://independent-magazine.org/2022/05/30/sundance-2022s-quarantine-edition-delivered-smart-mindful-cinematic-works-amidst-covids-omicron-surge/
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
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!
Leave it to the Covid-19 pandemic to throw a wrench into the plans for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. When the Omicron variant took the world by storm, Sundance circled the wagons and moved the festival online for the second year in a row. Adaptation to our new “normal” is how everyone rolls in our… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — Horror and apocalyptic visions took the 2019 Sundance Film Festival by storm—plainly in the case of Writer/ Director Just Philippot’s terrifying short film Acid. This nerve-wracking exercise in terror bursting from a world trapped in the thrall of environmental collapse emphasizes action. The filmmaker jettisons all exposition from his narrative allowing… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — Filmmaking dynasties like the Coppola and Huston clans, the Fondas and the Barrymores’ respective bloodlines are well known for proving that families who film together, oftentimes stick together. On a far more modest scale fueled by a resilient, independent spirit, Writer/Director/Producer Robert Machoian Graham (the filmmaker goes by his middle name… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — It is an almost impossible task to wrap one’s head around the shifting complexities of the Syrian refugee crisis. For Syrian Writer/Director Soudade Kaadan, however, the global dilemma is grounded on her home turf and her best strategy to set the record straight is by zeroing in on a married couple’s… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — Filmmaker Justin Chon scored a coveted spot in the NEXT section of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as a triple threat—the actor-writer-director behind the low-budget, indie comedy-drama Gook. With its kitchen-sink realism and cinematographer Ante Cheng’s moody, black-and-white camerawork, the filmmaker’s quasi-autobiographical film stems from his childhood memories about his father… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — It takes a small army or village of dreamers united by a common purpose to create a short film with something relevant to say. This hard-won lesson has been taken to heart by writer-director Charlotte “Charlie” Wells, producer Joy Jorgensen, and editor Blair McClendon. This posse of three filmmaking musketeers, enrolled in… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah — Most filmgoers don’t expect to see a Shakespearean tragedy of love, redemption, and the threat of death unfold against the backdrop of prisoners communicating through sign language in the Dominican Republic’s overpopulated Najayo prison. But these clever slights of talking hands expressing barely suppressed emotions are precisely what festival-goers witnessed while… Read more »
PARK CITY, Utah – Every once in a very long while, a special film or series of movies capture the zeitgeist with a sense of urgency and spot-on timing. At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, a small gauntlet of potent, new independent films dared to put black faces and lives front and center at a… Read more »
Park City, UTAH — Every year, the Sundance Film Festival commissions a series of new promotional videos to play before the main features to celebrate the festival’s volunteers and other unsung heroes of the popular, annual 10-day showcase to independent film that takes over Park City in late January. In this year’s amusing promo spot, an… Read more »
Park City, UTAH — One of the hottest tickets at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival wasn’t on any of the multiple screens peppered throughout the historic, mining town-turned-Mecca for independent filmmakers and committed cinephiles alike. Instead, a capacity audience of festival-goers filled the 285-seat Egyptian Theatre for January 29th’s Power of Story: Visions of Independence… Read more »