FromSundance, a Los Angeles Festival
By Rachel Lee Harris
Every January, Park City, Utah, welcomes an onslaught of Angelenos to the Sundance Film Festival. The ski town transforms into a smaller, cooler (both literally and figuratively) Hollywood, crawling with producers and journalists shopping for the next generation of indie film taste makers.
This week, however, Sundance brings its cool to Hollywood, along with a selection of favorite films from the 2014 Park City festival to show at Next Fest, four days of screenings and live music taking up residence in and around the Ace Hotel theater in downtown Los Angeles, Aug. 7 to 10.
Organized to mirror its parent festival’s “Next” selection of offbeat films, Next Fest opens Thursday with a 10th anniversary celebration of “Napoleon Dynamite,” which became a cult classic almost as soon as it premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Six others will have their Los Angeles premieres at Next Fest, accompanied by a lineup of youthful entertainers.
“Imperial Dreams,” the story of a reformed gangster trying to live the straight life in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood, was an audience favorite in Park City and will screen this weekend followed by a performance from Tinashe, a 21-year-old singer and songwriter who mixes R&B with hip-hop, electronica and other styles.
Also showing are “Life After Beth,” the zombie love story starring Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”), which will be paired with a solo acoustic performance by Joshua Tillman, the folk musician known as Father John Misty; and “Listen Up Philip,” which stars Jason Schwartzman in the popular indie role of a writer who has made everyone in his life miserable. Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”) also stars, and a discussion with Mr. Schwartzman and the film’s director, Alex Ross Perry, will follow.
Next Fest is an expanded version of the Institute’s 2013 Next Weekend, which opened in Los Angeles last summer with another instant oddball classic, Chris Smith’s “American Movie.”
Why come to Los Angeles? “In the last few years, we’ve really focused on extending the experience of the Sundance Film Festival to audiences outside of Utah,” John Cooper, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, said in an email. “For example, we’ve hosted a film festival in London in each of the last three years and several other public events in locations across the U.S. and internationally.”
But the popularity of the festival’s Next section of films has also played a part in it, Trevor Groth, a director of programming at the Institute, said. “Next showcases some of the most stylistically adventurous and bold new independent films, like Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk With Me” and “Blue Caprice,” Mr. Groth said. “We added that section in 2010, and audiences have embraced it at the festival and beyond. It’s taken on a life of its own.”
With regard to the musical pairings, Mr. Cooper referenced a recent growth in the crossover between film and music.
“That encouraged us to create a public event that had film and music on equal footing,” he said. The selection team looked for films and performers that shared a complementary artistic sensibility, “in terms of tone, energy and style,” Mr. Groth added. “We think those unique pairings in such a breathtaking theater will enhance the audience experience and create a new breed of festival.”
Next Fest will make the Ace Hotel its home base, with additional screenings on the Fairbanks Lawn of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. National Geographic Traveller: © 2013 National Geographic Traveler. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate