This post is part of a series of brief, email interviews that we’re conducting with select filmmakers who are showing work at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. All of our Sundance 2009 coverage lives here.
Ry Russo-Young, whose first feature Orphans was recently released on DVD by Carnivalesque Films, makes her first trip to Sundance next week with You Won’t Miss Me. Described as a “kaleidoscopic narrative”, this New Frontiers section selection stars Stella Schnabel (daughter of Julian) and incorporates a wide variety of formats, including 16mm film and 1-chip video.
You can check out the trailer at the filmmaker’s web site; her answers to The Four Questions We Ask Everyone, including praise for Steve Martin and creative Xeroxing, are below the jump. Miss Me has its premiere on Friday, January 16 at the Holiday Village.
Tell us about your movie: who did you work with, what did you shoot on, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
You Won’t Miss Me is a portrait of a 23-year-old misfit recently released from a psychiatric hospital. The lead character Shelly Brown is played by Stella Schnabel, she and I co-wrote the movie together. I shot on five different formats to capture this character in fragments as she floats through love affairs and the earliest stages of an acting career. I guess the movie is like Don’t Look Back but in modern times.
If you funded your film through a day job or through working on projects that were not your own, tell us about that. If not, tell us a story from your past work life, before you became a professional filmmaker.
I mainly funded the film through grants. While making You Won’t Miss Me I was working as a freelance editor, cutting video content for websites mainly. I like to xerox my face because it looks cool so I was caught by a guy in the accounting department of my editing place while I was xeroxing my face, that was kind of funny and awkward.
Based on your impressions of Sundance, what are you most (or maybe least) looking forward to at/regarding the festival?
I keep hearing about how Sundance films are always crowded or sold out, that sounds like it could be a fun screening. I’d love to watch my movie with a full attentive audience at the festival.
Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?
Actually, one of the first movies I thought of was an Italian film called The Tree of Wooden Clogs. It’s about very poor pesants and a little boy who’s shoe breaks. It might help me cope with the impending execution. That and maybe a Steve Martin movie like All of Me.
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