Sundance Docs About Famous People Are Getting More Cinematic. Will They All Find Buyers?
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Given the current dismal political and cultural climate as well as streaming servicesā massive appetite for celebrity driven content, it comes as no surprise that the 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival is chock full of portrait documentaries. Frida Kahlo, Christopher Reeve, Luther Vandross and Tammy Faye are just a few of the boldface names that are being examined in various docus featured in the Sundance nonfiction lineup.
The festival is no stranger to star-driven docus. In recent years, films about Ruth Bader Ginsburg (āRBGā), Fred Rogers (āWonāt You Be My Neighbor?ā), Harvey Weinstein (āUntouchableā), Michael Jackson (āLeaving Neverlandā), Kanye West (ājeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogyā), Bill Cosby (āWe Need to Talk About Cosbyā) and most recently Judy Blume (āJudy Blume Foreverā) and Michael J. Fox (āStill: A Michael J. Fox Movieā) had world premieres in Park City.
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But unlike films self-produced by their star subjects, the profile docus selected for this yearās Sundance are not targeted marketing devices. They are also not traditional biopics. The increased popularity of profile docs in recent years has helped the genre become much less formulaic and far more innovative and cinematic.
Case in point: āFrida,ā a docu about Frida Kahlo that debuts Thursday at the festival. Director Carla GutiĆ©rrez uses the artistās own words as well as exquisitely constructed animation to give audiences an intimate glimpse into Kahloās life. The film, which will be distributed by Amazon later this year, includes animation of 48 of Kahloās original paintings and 13 illustrations from her diary.
āIn the beginning of the project it was very much like how are we going to get into her inner thoughts and how are we going to feel her heart,ā says GutiĆ©rrez, who received an Emmy nomination for editing āRBGā and is making her directorial debut with āFrida.ā āWe decided that the art is going to do that for us. We knew that it could be amazing to see colorful art coming out of this black and white world that surrounded her.ā
In āSuper/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,ā filmmakers Ian BonhĆ“te and Peter Ettedgui explore Reeveās rise to stardom after being cast in 1978ās āSupermanā while also depicting how he became a real-life superhero after suffering a tragic accident in 1995 that left him quadriplegic. To tell the dual narratives the directors seamlessly move back and forth in time during the filmās 104-minute duration, which results in a nonfiction biopic that is as devastating as it is captivating.
āItās very easy to make a standard issue biopic, and that is pretty deadly to us,ā says Ettedgui. āSo we laid out this story in the chronological timeline and we started seeing that there were all of these little mirror moments and counterpoints in (Reeveās) life before the accident and after the accident. We started thinking, God, we could actually put those together and we could create a flashback structure that enables us to contrast his life before and after, but also find these touch points, whether itās about the whole theme of what is a hero or whether itās the theme of family, which was pretty crucial to us.ā
Unlike last yearās high-profile docs āStill: A Michael J. Fox Movieā and āJudy Blume Forever,ā the buzzy project, independently produced by London-based Misfits, U.S. based Words + Pictures and Passion Pictures, is coming to the festival without a deep-pocketed distributor. āSuper/Manā premieres Sunday.
āA lot of celebrity oriented documentaries these days feel quite formulaic,ā says Ettedgui. āIf you want to do something a bit different, you need to remain independent.ā
Director Sarah Dowland also relied on going back and forth in time to tell the story of WNBA basketball legend Sue Bird. In āSue Bird: In the Clutch,ā Dowland documents the point guardās record-setting fifth Olympic gold medal, her 21-year professional career, life with fianceĢ Megan Rapinoe, as well as Birdās retirement.
āThis is a character driven film, and in approaching that I was trying to do a couple of things,ā says Dowland. āI wanted to chart Sueās career, but I also wanted to weave that with the contemporaneous story of her retirement. I could use it as a device to flick back to moments of her career and build up that aspect of her.ā
Despite five Olympic gold medals, four WNBA championships, and being 12-time All Star and WNBA all-time leader in assists, games and minutes played, Bird isnāt a household name, which played a role in the edit of the docu.
āI knew that there were building blocks that I needed to put in the film for people who were learning about her for the very first time,ā she says. āI didnāt want them to miss those very important parts of her career that really frame her as a GOAT, and as the best point guard in womenās basketball history.ā
Like BonhƓte and Ettedgu, Dowland is hoping to sell her doc, also debuting Sunday, out of Sundance.
āWeāve been seeing some fantastic documentaries about male athletes, but we donāt see as many films about female athletes even though the market is very robust for documentaries of that type right now,ā says Dowland. āI certainly thought when we set out on this project, not that it was going to be easy ā I donāt think finding finance for any film is ever easy or a no-brainer ā but I thought that we stood a good chance of selling it from the beginning.
āThat is not what happened at all,ā she says. āI think there was a lot of enthusiasm for Sue and for a story about Sue, but that didnāt translate into anyone reaching into their pockets to finance the film. That was really surprising for us.ā
Also seeking distribution at Sundance are two profile docus about musicians: Dawn Porterās āLuther: Never Too Much,ā about the R&B superstar Luther Vandross, and Gary Hustwitās āEno,ā about composer, producer, self-professed ānon-musicianā Brian Eno, who is known for producing David Bowie, U2, and Talking Heads.
To tell Enoās story Hustwit relied on generative artificial intelligence. The director used interviews with Eno and his contemporaries as well as hundreds of hours of video from the artistās own archive, to assemble a āmodularā film which shuffles unpredictably between time periods and mediums while offering a composite portrait of his subject. Each Sundance screening of āEno,ā starting with the filmās Park City premiere on Thursday, will be different.
āItās a composite portrait of 50 years of Brianās life and work and ideas,ā says Hustwit. āIt still to me feels like a normal cinematic documentary except that it changes every time. So one of the ways we do that is having way more content than you normally would have in a 90-something minute film. Thatās so the software can choose which scenes are going to appear and in what order theyāre going to appear. The software can also choose how to build transitions between those scenes and it can build its own scenes from scratch using our raw material.ā
In addition to telling a life story, filmmakers are increasingly using that life to delve into something deeper.
While making the four-part docuseries āBetter Angels: The Gospel According to Tammy Faye,ā director Dana Adam Shapiro (āMurderballā) realized that not only were his preconceived notions about Faye wrong, but also that the story he was telling wasnāt solely about the former American evangelist.
āThis isnāt just this portrait of a woman that we were wrong about,ā says Shapiro of the Vice funded series seeking distribution. āWe wrote it and shot it and scored it and cut it more like a thriller, because it had many of those twists and turns not just about Tammyās life, but also American culture at the time.ā
Shapiro relied on Fayeās family, friends, enemies and plenty of archival footage to examine the evangelistās rise, fall, and unlikely resurrection. Despite an earlier doc (āThe Eyes of Tammie Fayeā) and a narrative adaptation featuring Jessica Chastainās Academy Award performance, Shapiro says that he didnāt shy away from telling her story again. āBetter Angelsā debuts Friday.
āWhen you have four hours to really stretch your legs, I think it becomes more novelistic,ā he says. āWhen you are making a (one-off), oftentimes it just has to be so lean.
āKilling your darlings is really hard,ā he notes. āWith four hours you actually get to let them live. Sometimes those darlings are the best parts of the film.ā
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