Sundance 2014: A.J. Edwards’ The Better Angels Leads Fivesome of New Frontier Offerings

I honestly had very little to go one when I added A.J. Edwards’ The Better Angels to my predictions list and the fact that it has been included among the New Frontier offerings means that we’re in for something out of the ordinary, as the section has often challenged conventional form. Produced by Terrence Malick, and filmed in B&W, it features Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger, Brit Marling, Wes Bentley and a newbie actor taking on the role of a young Lincoln. Here is the entire listing of five (plus installation projects), which will include Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s on-going HIT RECORD project.

The Better Angels / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: A.J. Edwards) — Set in the harsh wilderness of Indiana, this is the story of Abraham Lincoln’s youth. It tells of the hardships that shaped him, the tragedy that marked him forever, and the two women who guided him to immortality. Cast: Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger, Brit Marling, Wes Bentley. World Premiere

The Girl from Nagasaki / Germany, U.S.A., Japan, Italy (Director: Michel Comte, Screenwriters: Anne-Marie Mackay, Ayako Yoshida, Michel Comte) — This 3D feature film production of the classic Puccini opera Madame Butterfly is directed by world-renowned photographer Michel Comte. It’s a modern-day tale that starts with the young madame emerging from the ashes of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Cast: Christopher Lee, Sasha Alexander, Michael Wincott, Michael Nyqvist, Robert Evans, Polina Semionova. International Premiere

HIT RECORD ON TV / U.S.A. (Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — HIT RECORD ON TV is a new kind of variety show with host Joseph Gordon-Levitt directing a global online community of artists as they create short films, music, animation, and more. Anybody with an Internet connection is invited to contribute, and each episode focuses on a different theme. World Premiere

Living Stars / Argentina (Directors: Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat) — Argentinians open their homes to the public and perform dance numbers they normally only do alone, in front of a mirror. The directors portray them in their houses, with improvised sets, revealing a collection of urban curiosities. World Premiere

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People / U.S.A. (Director: Thomas Allen Harris, Screenwriters: Thomas Allen Harris, Don Perry, Paul Carter Harrison) — Through a Lens Darkly is an epic film that moves poetically between the present and the past through the work of contemporary photographers and artists. Their pictures and stories seek to reconcile legacies of pride and shame while giving a voice to images long suppressed, forgotten, or hidden from sight. World Premiere

NEW FRONTIER INSTALLATIONS

The Source (Evolving)
Artist: Doug Aitken
The 2014 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival will host the U.S. premiere of The Source (evolving) by renowned artist Doug Aitken. The Source (evolving) is a series of filmed conversations about creativity in the 21st Century in which Aitken conducts short candid conversations with groundbreaking pioneers in different artistic disciplines. The piece creates a fast and rhythmic kaleidoscope of dialogues with the creative individuals who are shaping modern culture. The conversations are grounded by two questions: where does the creative idea start, and what is the journey to the finished creation? The Source (evolving) is filmed on location in unique and diverse destinations throughout the world and premiered at the Tate Liverpool last year. The Source (evolving) will be housed in the Pavilion, a new 2,000-square-feet, stand-alone, circular structure to be custom-built by the Festival in a location adjacent to Park City’s Main Street. The architecture was created in collaboration with David Adjaye. Six-channel video projections of The Source (evolving) span the entire width of the structure’s interior and are also visible from the outside, wrapping the structure’s exterior.

Klip Collective Exterior Projections On Egyptian Theatre
The 2014 Festival will include a showcase of the Festival’s 30-year legacy as told through a pre-roll trailer showing 3D-mapped projections of clips from iconic Festival films on the façade of Park City’s legendary Egyptian Theatre. Featured film clips include Reservoir Dogs, Clerks, Little Miss Sunshine and Beasts of the Southern Wild. The innovative projections were designed by Klip Collective, a creative and production shop specializing in immersive visual experiences. For their third year as a participant at the Festival, Klip Collective will premiere its newest 3D video-mapped narrative, “What’s He Projecting In There,” an indie style salute to the history of cinema on the exterior of the Egyptian Theatre as part of the Festival’s New Frontier exhibition.

Clouds
Artists: James George, Jonathan Minard
Assembled from code and stunning 3D-scanned conversations, Clouds is a cutting-edge interactive documentary that features the emerging generation of artists and hackers who are creating tools for poetic and socially engaged experiments in technology.

Digital Diaspora Family Reunion
Artist: Thomas Allen Harris
The transmedia companion to the feature documentary, Through A Lens Darkly, Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR) re-imagines the social network the the building of ONE WORLD-ONE FAMILY ALBUM, a database of family photographs. Audiences are invited to upload images to Instagram at #DDFRtv, or bring them to New Frontier to participate in a special LIVE event.

EVE: Valkyrie
Artists: CCP Games
In one of the most anticipated video-game releases of 2014, award-winning Icelandic independent-game developer CCP Games presents EVE: Valkyrie—a virtual-reality experience like no other. In this special preview, audiences can put on an Oculus Rift headset, take a seat inside the cockpit of a spaceship, and enter a 360-degree-surround dogfight against enemy invaders.

I Love Your Work
Artist: Jonathan Harris
I Love Your Work is a beautifully designed interactive documentary by Jonathan Harris about the private lives of nine women who make lesbian porn. It consists of more than two thousand 10-second video clips, taken at five-minute intervals over 10 consecutive days—around six hours of footage. Cast: Dylan Ryan, Jincey Lumpkin, Ela Darling, Ryan Keely.

I Want You To Want Me
Artists: Jonathan Harris, Sep Kamvar
An alluring work of data visualization, this interactive installation explores the world of online dating. A giant touch screen displays a sky filled with balloons containing silhouettes, each one representing a real person’s dating profile. Viewers can touch the balloons to learn personal information about the person inside and rearrange them to view things like top turn-ons, most popular first dates, and people’s biggest desires.

The Measure of All Things
Artists: Sam Green, yMusic
The Measure of All Things is a live documentary featuring a series of portraits of record-holding people, places, and things. Inspired loosely by the Guinness Book of Records, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green and yMusic create a poem about fate, time, and the contours of the human experience.

Mesocosm
Artist: Marina Zurkow
Mesocosm (Wink, Texas) and Mesocosm (Northumberland, UK) are two parts of a series of animated landscapes that change over time in response to software-driven data inputs. Individual hand-drawn animated elements are dynamically choreographed according to algorithms that dictate constraints in real time: one day takes 24 minutes to elapse; a year takes 144 hours.

My 52 Tuesdays
Artists: Sophie Hyde, Sam Haren, Dan Koerner
Picture an interactive photo booth where you get more than just your printed picture. It’s a year-long, participatory project accessed via smartphones with a series of questions designed to ‘’tune in” to your life. Like its companion film, 52 Tuesdays, this work explores themes of desire, responsibility, and transformation. How much are you willing to share? Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

Not Eye
Artist: Lauren Moffatt
Not Eye is an immersive, 3D stereoscopic experience that invites you to meet a woman who can no longer take the constant violation of being looked at and spied on every day of her life by the devices that populate the modern landscape. She is so tormented that she decides to take action, creating a helmet designed not only to defend herself but also to strike back. Cast: Danièle Hennebelle, Julien Bucci.

Reifying Desire Anthology
Artist: Jacolby Satterwhite
Comprised of live performance, custom-made wallpaper, and six CGI-animated and rotoscoped videos, Reifying Desire Anthology is a fantasy hyperlink that transcends brick and mortar, as well as electronic and biological realms, to source a universe where sexuality runs hungry and wild through the psycho-bioelectric matrix seeking transformation and liberation. Cast: Jacolby Satterwhite, Antonio Biaggi.

Sound + Vision
Artists: Chris Milk, Beck
When Beck reimagined David Bowie’s 1977 single “Sound and Vision,” Chris Milk set out to recreate its experience—literally its sound and vision—for both the live concert and its recording. He captured the performance using newly patented technologies like full spherical video and 360-degree binaural audio. This is the first live-action VR film designed for the Oculus Rift. Cast: Beck.

Street
Artist: James Nares
Street employs a high-speed Phantom Flex HD camera to slow down the densely busy streets of New York City and create this mesmerizing video installation. Hot dog vendors, children on scooters, lovers, fighters, pigeons, bike riders, traffic cops, even a flicked cigarette butt sailing onto the curb—all acquire an ethereal dimension enhanced by cofounder of Sonic Youth Thurston Moore’s evocative, acoustic 12-string guitar soundtrack.

This World Made Itself; Myth and Infrastructure; Dreams of Lucid Living
Artist: Miwa Matreyek
In a body of work that spans six years, Miwa Matreyek will present three of her multimedia solo live performance pieces featuring projected animation and her body, traversing ocean scapes, cityscapes, and dreamscapes. Cast: Miwa Matreyek