Writer-director Matthew Bate’s documentary Sam Klemke’s Time Machine will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, further strengthening the Oz presence at the fest.
The profile of American caricature artist Klemke, who filmed and narrated nearly 40 years of his life, will be featured in the New Frontier section. That’s the third title from Adelaide-based Closer Productions to be showcased at the Park City event.
Bate’s Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure screened in competition in 2011. Sophie Hyde’s 52 Tuesdays took the best director prize in the world cinema dramatic section this year.
New Frontier champions films that “expand, experiment with, and explode traditional storytelling…recognizing the crossroads of film, art, and media technology as a hotbed for cinematic innovation.”
In 1977 Klemke started obsessively documenting his entire life on film, from an optimistic teen to a self-important 20-year-old, morphing into an obese, self-loathing 30-something and onwards into his philosophical 50s.
The doc was produced by Hyde and Rebecca Summerton, who said, “Without the vision of our investors to fund documentaries with creative treatments and for an international audience, we wouldn’t have the chance to make a film like this.
“At Closer we are dedicated to telling unique stories, stories that resonate across international boundaries and Klemke does just that: it delves into the human psyche and it soars into space.”
Bate said: “We are chuffed to be asked back to Sundance. We’ve made a strange beast of a film about a unique man, and unleashing it to the world in the snow and mayhem of Park City will be a lot of fun.
“I’m also looking forward to bringing Sam himself to the festival which in a way will be the culmination of his life in front of the camera – what a perfect stage on which to reveal him to a cinema audience.”
The film was financed by Screen Australia's Signature fund, the SAFC’s documentary innovation fund and the Adelaide Film Festival’s investment fund.
"Closer Screens will do a specialised release in Australia after the AFF premiere in October 2015," says Summerton. The international sales rep is Visit Films.
As IF reported yesterday, Ariel Kleiman’s Partisan, Kim Farrant’s Strangerland and John Maclean’s New Zealand-shot Western Slow West will compete in the world cinema dramatic section of Sundance.
The Australian contingent will also be represented by Margot Robbie in Z for Zachariah, Guy Pearce in Results, Toni Collette in Grassland and Callan McAuliffe in The Stanford Prison Experiment.
Sundance runs from January 22 until February 1.