Theatrical Premiere - NYC
Independent Spirit Award Broadcast
Details here
Laura nominated for an Independent Spirit Award
This morning Film Independent announced their 2008 nominees. Laura is one of three finalists for the Truer than Fiction Award. In their words, “The 12th annual Truer Than Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant attention.” The other two finalists are Gary Hustwit for Helvetica and John Maringouin for Running Stumbled. The award show is Saturday, February 23, 2008.
Film Journey’s Review
Film Journey’s Doug Cummings wrote a nice review for the film. In his intro, he also neatly summarized the marketing challenge the film faces.
My favorite documentary at AFI FEST turned out to be one I had initially passed on. The Unforeseen was described in the catalogue as “the story of how big developers spoiled a city treasure, and about the consequences continued development has on us all,” which didn’t exactly sound like cinematic gold. But after talking with critic Robert Koehler, who assured me that I couldn’t miss it, I did some last-minute rearranging and was very glad I did.
Sadly, the film will become even more relevant as we witness bankruptcies hit bigger home builders, mortgage lenders and investment firms. (Thanks Mish)
Laura’s AFIFest Interview
Laura answers questions for an AFIFest reporter about The Unforeseen.
Eye Weekly gave the film another plug
Adam Nayman recently gave the film a 5 star review in advance of the Vancouver Film Fest. Now, only a few weeks later, he offers a different slant, though no less positive, for Toronto’s Planet in Focus festival.
The best film on display this year happens to be the last: Laura Dunn’s The Unforeseen (Oct. 28, 7pm, Royal, 608 College) is probably the American documentary of the year. It’s the story of an oasis within an oasis — a limestone aquifer in the middle of Austin, Texas that served in the 1970s as a sort of ground zero for the city’s famously left-leaning constituency. The real estate developers looking to raze the area were rebuffed, time and again, until the election of a certain smirking Texas governor in the mid-1990s left the back door wide open.
It’s an infuriating development, but the story is larger than Texas: its subject is nothing less than the death of idealism, and Dunn is generous enough to allow her apparent villain — the former wunderkind developer at the centre of the conflict — his own heartfelt lament. She also neatly integrates the seemingly disparate aesthetic imperatives of her famous producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, resulting in a film that’s both achingly lyrical and blisteringly direct.
I know I speak for Laura when I say that I don’t know where the film would be without critics. It’s not exactly the feel-good movie of the summer. We really owe folks like Gavin Smith, Robert Koehler, both Nathan Lee and Scott Foundas at Village Voice and Adam Nayman an enormous debt of gratitude for their writeups.
[p.s. We’re also grateful to the Federal Reserve, CDOs and the collapsing mortgage market for increasing the topicality! ]
Woodstock Film Fest writeup
This is over a month old but we missed it. The author couldn’t be called the biggest fan of the film. The response is reminiscent of the audience response in San Fran, which is to say they want “solutions.”
But first, in the morning, I catch Laura Dunn’s documentary about the effects of aggressive development on the city of Austin, Texas, The Unforeseen. This film clearly has some money behind it – Robert Redford and Terrence Malick are listed as executive producers – which explains the delicate and expensive-looking animations showing the growth of suburbs and razing of farmland around Austin.
Dunn traces Austin’s development since the 1970s, when it was lauded as a place where “the cowboys and the hippies are getting along better than anywhere else in the world.” Alas, the good vibes didn’t last: with suburban sprawl came serious environmental damage, and the result was a heated standoff between developers and environmentalists. Chronicling all of this in painstaking detail, Dunn makes no bones about her agenda (it could be summed up as “development is bad for children and other living things”) but she does makes some effort at balance. There’s a poignant interview with Gary Bradley, an Austin developer who lost everything in the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s, and who comes across as a fundamentally decent guy.
Unfortunately, Dunn never explores more sustainable alternatives to the big, bad development projects, and the film suffers from an excess of earnestness. (There are a few too many Malick-like close-ups of waving wheat stalks and water drops on branches.) My neighbor in the audience, who outs himself as a former developer from the Bay Area, grouses that the film is “long on criticism, short on solutions” and reluctantly, I have to agree.
AFI Fest Screenings on Tuesday and Thursday
We hope to see you there.
Denver Film Festival
The Unforeseen
USA, 2007, 94 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Documentary, Political
Language: English
(Buy tickets)
Taking its title from a line in a Wendell Berry poem, The Unforeseen springboards from Berry’s description of the wilderness as “a sort of blessing, by the face of its unexpectedness.” When West Texas farm boy-turned-real estate tycoon Gary Bradley attempts to trade that blessing for profit from the suburban subdivision he’s planning, an environmental battle ensues among Austin residents, who step up to protect their pristine hill country from development – particularly Barton Springs, a fragile limestone aquifer that has served as a local swimming hole for generations. Sharing his own memories of the springs with director Laura Dunn, Robert Redford (who, along with Terrence Malick, serves as executive producer) articulates the film’s main point: that Austin is actually a microcosm of America itself, representing every community that aims to preserve its natural resources in the face of seemingly unstoppable growth. Dunn also talks, in one of the political icon’s last interviews, with late Texas governor Ann Richards about the related debate over private property rights that paved the path to power for Richards’ nemesis, George W. Bush.
Yet Dunn is no propagandist but a meticulous documentarian, and The Unforeseen doesn’t hesitate to tell both sides of the story. Rather than vilifying Bradley, Dunn traces both his dramatic rise from poverty to wealth and his poignant fall amid bad press and the failure of many of his get-rich-quick schemes.
Like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, The Unforeseen contemplates the implications of human behavior for the future of the planet. But unlike the sometimes didactic Gore, Dunn convinces via lyricism, incorporating poetic voice-over narration, mesmerizing motion graphics and aerial photography (in one instance comparing Austin’s sprawl to a cancerous tumor). While the hard evidence it presents yields a strong case for conservation, The Unforeseen makes its most lasting impression via its haunting visuals.
Denver Film Festival
The Unforeseen
USA, 2007, 94 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Documentary, Political
Language: English
(Buy tickets)
Taking its title from a line in a Wendell Berry poem, The Unforeseen springboards from Berry’s description of the wilderness as “a sort of blessing, by the face of its unexpectedness.” When West Texas farm boy-turned-real estate tycoon Gary Bradley attempts to trade that blessing for profit from the suburban subdivision he’s planning, an environmental battle ensues among Austin residents, who step up to protect their pristine hill country from development – particularly Barton Springs, a fragile limestone aquifer that has served as a local swimming hole for generations. Sharing his own memories of the springs with director Laura Dunn, Robert Redford (who, along with Terrence Malick, serves as executive producer) articulates the film’s main point: that Austin is actually a microcosm of America itself, representing every community that aims to preserve its natural resources in the face of seemingly unstoppable growth. Dunn also talks, in one of the political icon’s last interviews, with late Texas governor Ann Richards about the related debate over private property rights that paved the path to power for Richards’ nemesis, George W. Bush.
Yet Dunn is no propagandist but a meticulous documentarian, and The Unforeseen doesn’t hesitate to tell both sides of the story. Rather than vilifying Bradley, Dunn traces both his dramatic rise from poverty to wealth and his poignant fall amid bad press and the failure of many of his get-rich-quick schemes.
Like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, The Unforeseen contemplates the implications of human behavior for the future of the planet. But unlike the sometimes didactic Gore, Dunn convinces via lyricism, incorporating poetic voice-over narration, mesmerizing motion graphics and aerial photography (in one instance comparing Austin’s sprawl to a cancerous tumor). While the hard evidence it presents yields a strong case for conservation, The Unforeseen makes its most lasting impression via its haunting visuals.
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About The Unforeseen
The Unforeseen, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Called "the best film at the festival, hands down" by Film Comment's Gavin Smith, the film documents the struggles between development and preservation of Austin Texas.