(January 30, 2017 – Toronto, ON) The 33rd annual Sundance Film Festival wrapped over the weekend and Canadian filmmakers Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana walked away happy. Their documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling on Saturday.
Directed by Bainbridge and co-directed by Maiorana, the feature-length film was executive produced by Stevie Salas, and features Martin Scorsese, Tony Bennett, Toronto-born Robbie Robertson, Buffy Saint Marie, Quincy Jones, Iggy Pop, Slash, Steven Tyler, Robert Trujillo, Steven Van Zandt, and many more, all talking about the important role Native Americans had on shaping all aspects and offshoots of rock ‘n roll. The film is titled after the 1958 instrumental hit Rumble by guitarist Link Wray (Fred Lincoln ‘Link’ Wray, Jr.) that was initially banned from radio play. The documentary was produced by Montreal’s Rezolution Pictures.
Other Canadian projects at Sundance included Heather Condo’s short film My Father’s Tools; the Canada-U.S. co-production “noir mystery” Rememory, directed and co-written by Mark Palansky, which stars Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones ) and Julia Ormond, along with Anton Yelchin in one of his final performances prior to the actor’s accidental death in June of last year; Japanese director Kyoko Miyake’s U.K./Canada documentary Tokyo Idols, had its World Premiere at Sundance. It deals with obsessions about the increasingly younger girl pop performers in Japan; Rise which is a nine-part documentary series from Michelle Latimer; Toronto’s Jovanka Vuckovic is one of four directors in the long-awaited, all-female-helmed horror anthology, XX, which screened in Sundance’s Midnight program.
Meanwhile, actor Michael Cera turned up onscreen at Sundance in the film Person to Person, Victor Garber costarred in Rebel in the Rye and Kiefer Sutherland’s latest large screen film Where is Kyra? also screened at the festival founded by Robert Redford. Competing for attention in Park City, Utah is the growing in influence rival film festival Slamdance where eight Canadian films screened this year. Slamdance wrapped on January 26.