As I was running around the Sundance Film Festival in January, one of the things I was struck by was the incredible diversity of work being done today. I could go from a film about Latino culture in Echo Park (the award-winning Quinceañera) to an outrageous yet touching comedy about bestiality (Stay) to a documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan (God Grew Tired of Us). All of the carping about crowds and swag aside, it was invigorating to be reminded of the medium’s potential to entertain and enlighten.

For the second issue of the Quarterly, we asked longtime Sundance director Geoff Gilmore to answer 10 Questions about the growth of independent film and the problems faced by directors attempting to go that route. Often the most impressive section of the festival is the documentary competition, and this year was no exception. It was not only the range of material that made the documentaries so strong, but the variety of ways in which filmmakers are now expressing themselves. Part of this is due to the effect of the digital revolution on documentaries, a subject Rob Feld thoroughly and thoughtfully explores in “Reality Check.”

Michel Gondry’s surreal dreamscape, The Science of Sleep, was another film that made a strong impression in its debut at Sundance, and Dade Hayes caught up with a much-harried Gondry for our Director’s Voice column as he and his film were catching a plane for the Berlin film festival.

Clint Eastwood is not usually thought of as a director of independent films, but looking at his body of work he is nothing if not independent-minded. It seems from his first film as a director, Play Misty for Me in 1971, to his latest and perhaps most ambitious project, Flags of Our Fathers, Eastwood has had the steely will and vision to pretty much make only the films he wanted to make. Scott Foundas sat down with Eastwood for the DGA Interview on the eve of receiving the Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the past month you may have been spending an inordinate amount of time in front of your TV screen watching the Winter Olympics (unless you were watching American Idol), and marveled at the quality of the coverage. Well, as you know, behind every indelible image, there was a director, some of whom we visit in “Calling the Shots.”

And in keeping with our goal of giving members the opportunity to say what’s on their mind, M. Night Shayamalan makes a passionate plea for the sanctity of the theater-going experience in In My Opinion. (I can’t wait to see the letters on this one.) Also speaking in his own words is Peter Jackson, who explains how he executed the breathtaking final sequence of King Kong in Shot to Remember.

I want to thank you all for your comments and the overwhelmingly positive response to the premiere issue of the Quarterly. As promised, we’ve tried to cover most of the bases in our second issue, but the work of directors and their teams is simply too diverse to get to all at once. Fortunately, that’s what the next issue is for. So for now, enjoy the spring issue (and the spring), and I look forward to seeing you again in the summer.

Best,
James Greenberg
Editor in Chief