Above: the new trailer for one of our favorite films from Sundance 2009, Ry Russo-Young’s You Wont Miss Me (and we weren’t its only fans; Tom Hall called it “a living, breathing demonstration of pure cinema.”) The film next screens at SXSW next month; check out our Sundance preview interview with the director here.

The Sundance Film Festival had it’s first major deal go down Saturday night as young distributor Senator Entertainment (in a co-venture with Sony Pictures Worldwide) picked up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua’s admittedly unfinished Brooklyn’s Finest for a price tag of less than $5 million (with a marketing commitment of $10 million).

Other acquisitions made just before and since the festival began include the following:

• Visit Films purchased worldwide rights to Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me, N.C. Heikin’s Korean War documentary Kimjongilia and David Russo’s comedy The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle.
• PBS’ P.O.V. series picked up television rights to two documentaries: William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe and El General.
• Another doc, Brothers at War, was bought by Samuel Goldwyn Films for a U.S. theatrical release.
• Danish documentary Burma VJ went to HBO for a theatrical run at NYC’s Film Forum and cable broadcast.
• E1 Films Canada picked up Canadian rights to Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls.
• Sony Classics finally confirmed that it had indeed bought North American rights to Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi.

All these pickups have been added to SpoutBlog’s Sundance Deals chart, which will continue to be updated throughout the festival. So remember to keep checking back and bookmark the post if you haven’t yet.

Stella Schnabel previously appeared in two films directed by her father, Basquiat and Before Night Falls, but in Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me, Schnabel makes her debut as a leading lady. And it’s a hell of a debut; I concur with Michael Tully, who recently confessed, “I cannot figure out how she manages to make Shelly so excruciating, so tender, so pathetic, so brave, so weak, and so hilarious all at once.” The magic of the performance is that Schnabel’s acting is invisible: you never see the gears turning, you never see her do anything that looks calculated.

Shortly before the festival began, I spoke with Stella (who is also credited as co-writer on Miss Me) about acting as catharsis, the attraction of a challenge, and why no one should hire her just because she’s Julian Schnabel’s kid.

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Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me is identifiable as a film about a young woman made by young women, which is unusual enough at Sundance that the film’s very existence is almost a revelation. By immersing us in the world of 23 year-old aspiring actress/recent mental patient Shelly Brown, and burying the point of view so deep within the character that Shelly’s social imbalance sometimes feels contagious, writer/director Russo-Young and co-writer/star Stella Schnabel remind us how rare it is to see a film about the inner life of a beautiful, troubled young lady without the objectifying filter of the male gaze, without the beauty and the trouble fusing into a fantasy cipher of a postmodern damsel in distress.
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This post is part of a series of brief, email interviews that we’re conducting with select filmmakers who are showing work at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. All of our Sundance 2009 coverage lives here.

Ry Russo-Young, whose first feature Orphans was recently released on DVD by Carnivalesque Films, makes her first trip to Sundance next week with You Won’t Miss Me. Described as a “kaleidoscopic narrative”, this New Frontiers section selection stars Stella Schnabel (daughter of Julian) and incorporates a wide variety of formats, including 16mm film and 1-chip video.

You can check out the trailer at the filmmaker’s web site; her answers to The Four Questions We Ask Everyone, including praise for Steve Martin and creative Xeroxing, are below the jump. Miss Me has its premiere on Friday, January 16 at the Holiday Village.

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The latest release from Carnivalesque Films, the DVD initiative spearheaded by filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, hits stores (and Amazon, etc) today. It’s Orphans, Ry Russo-Young’s debut feature, which premiered and won a Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival in 2006. It’s a family horror film of sorts, about two estranged sisters who get together for one weekend of boozy recollection and reconnection gone wrong. I’ve written about the film briefly before; you can see also a conversation with Russo-Young and Tom Hall, and a crazy in-depth “breakdown” of Orphans by Ry and Noralil Ryan Fores. The trailer is above. Also: last week Brandon talked to Ry about Fassbinder and her latent desire to make a film with Amy Winehouse.

Ry Russo-Young, who many will remember from her role in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, was a prize winner at two of the last three SXSWs - she won the jury award for best experimental film for her Psycho deconstruction Marion at the 2006 fest and shared a special jury prize for Orphans at the 2007 edition. Orphans hits DVD next week via David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s brand new label Carnivalesque Films. She chatted with us this week about Why Does Herr R Run Amok?, what working with the band “The Virgins” on her new film You Won’t Miss Me was like and why concert films aren’t really for her unless Amy Winehouse or The Rolling Stones are in them. …Read more

Exciting news from David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, co-directors of a couple of our favorite recent docs, Kamp Katrina and Intimidad: they’re expanding the purview of their production company, Carnivalesque Films, in order to start distributing DVDs. Their first release will be their own film, the 2005 Sundance premiere Mardi Gras: Made in China, and it’ll be available, to quote David, “everywhere,” on July 29. In the coming months, Carnivalesque will distribute two festival favorites: Ry Russo-Young’s SXSW Special Jury prize winner Orphans, and The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. The Mardi Gras trailer is embedded above; we’ll pass along more details on Carnivalesque’s upcoming releases as we get them.

Mumblecore, is it a bona fide movement in filmmaking? Some people believe it is. One thing is certain, for being so far outside the mainstream, filmmakers like Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair) and Susan & Arin (Four Eyed Monsters) have gotten a lot of people talking.

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Left to right: Scott Kirsner (Cinematech), Ry Russo-Young (Orphans), Lance Weiler (Head Trauma, The Workbook Project) and Alison Willmore (IFC News) on the future of filmmaking.

Spout invited Scott Kirsner (Cinematech), Ry Russo-Young (Orphans), Lance Weiler (Head Trauma, The Workbook Project) and Alison Willmore (IFC News) to come and talk. We like their minds and think they’re really tapped into the future of filmmaking and what the new distribution “sledgehammer” will be.