Julia Kwan, director of Eve & the Fire Horse. Photo by Steve Carty.
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Vancouver-based filmmaker Julia Kwan attended this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah to promote her first full-length feature, Eve & the Fire Horse. The picture explores the religious awakening of two Chinese-Canadian girls living with their parents in 1970s Vancouver. The festival, which is held in both Park City and Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City, and ran Jan. 19-29, is one of the main events of the annual festival circuit, and is traditionally known for breaking new, independent talent. During the festival, Kwan kept an online diary as she attended all the hot parties and chatted up all the necessary contacts in the hopes of garnering international attention for her film.
January 23
Park City, Utah
I had the most spectacular day yesterday. We had our final Park City screening in the morning. It was full to capacity. It was a 9 a.m. screening on a Sunday morning; it was like going to church. It was at the Egyptian Theatre again. A woman who waited in line for an hour and a half and couldn’t get into the screening last time was there again yesterday morning — and finally got in. I intro’d the film, but again, I didn’t want to sit through it; I didn’t want to gauge any of the reactions. I left for coffee. I came back just as the closing credits came up. There was this thunderous applause. I walked in, and as I started introducing everybody, the film got a standing ovation! My first standing ovation! It was so exciting.
The audience asked wonderful questions. They were really interested in the multicultural themes in the film, and they were saying how much they related to the film, regardless of race and religion. It just struck a chord with people. Everybody fell in love with Phoebe, our lead actress. It was my best Q&A, performance-wise. Because it was early in the morning, my inhibitions were down. I also found out that director Jonathan Demme came to my screening! Just to be considered a peer by a veteran filmmaker like that is a dream come true.
Afterwards, a couple of big agents came up to me and wanted to talk to me about representation. It was very exciting.
And then I found out that Roger Ebert wanted to interview me!
I had my interview with Roger at 2:30 p.m. He’s just this very unassuming, sweet man with this intense love of film. He was engaging and warm and intelligent and insightful and he had great anecdotes. (I was so touched — he brought a gift for me. It was a vest; it has two thumbs up on the front.) Roger and I spent a lot of time talking about Ang Lee, and how much we respected him as a person and as a filmmaker, his humility and the fact that he has this outsider’s perspective on the world, which I certainly identify with. Roger said some other nice stuff about Eve & the Fire Horse, but I don’t want to repeat too much of it lest I sound like I’m bragging. It was just such a coup to be interviewed by him!
I saw my first film last night: Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep. And I fell asleep! I thought the dream sequences were wildly imaginative, but I wasn’t really engaged in the story. But the bonus is that Gael Garcia Bernal was in the movie, and he’s dreamy. He was there, along with Gondry and some other cast members. There were women that had waited seven to 10 hours to get into the screening.
After that, I was just too tired to go to another party.
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