{"id":13877,"date":"2015-12-03T09:11:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T13:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13877"},"modified":"2015-12-03T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T13:11:26","slug":"miles-joris-peyrafittes-first-feature-sundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/miles-joris-peyrafittes-first-feature-sundance\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s First Feature @ Sundance!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news broke\u00a0last night & the Times Union<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, the paper from Albany where the film was shot was quick to take notice:<\/p>\n

Local film \u2018As You Are\u2019 gets selected for Sundance<\/h3>\n
By Amy Biancolli, arts writer<\/a> on December 2, 2015 at 4:45 PM<\/span><\/div>\n
\"Director<\/a>

Director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte with one of his stars, Amandla Stenberg, on the set of \u201cAs You Are\u201d (Photo courtesy YouthFX)<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Only a month and a half after it wrapped filming in the Capital Region \u2014 at 24 days and 29 locations, it was more of a blitz than a shoot \u2014 the independent drama \u201cAs You Are\u201d has been tapped as an official selection to compete in the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

The film, a study of three teenagers in the early 1990s, is the debut feature directed and co-written by\u00a0Albany Free School alumnus Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. Also involved in the shoot were several students and graduates of Youth FX, the award-winning filmmaking program based at Albany\u2019s Grand Street Community Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been the dream of mine since I was seven,\u201d said Joris-Peyrafitte, 23, who now lives in Brooklyn. He\u00a0said he got the call from a Sundance official, who asked: \u201cHow would you feel about coming to Park City, Utah, and premiering your film in the U.S. Dramatic film competition?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018AHHHHHHHHHH!\u2019 I started, like, losing my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was two weeks ago. Keeping silent wasn\u2019t easy. \u201cIt\u2019s been the hardest two weeks of my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Co-written by Madison Harrison, \u201cAs You Are\u201d stars Owen Campbell (\u201cBoardwalk Empire\u201d), Amandla Stenberg (\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d) and Charlie Heaton (the upcoming \u201cShut In\u201d) as adolescents navigating friendship, memory and identity in the early 1990s. Mary Stuart Masterson (\u201cSome Kind of Wonderful\u201d) and Scott Cohen (\u201cKissing Jessica Stein\u201d) also star.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had our eyes set on Sundance from day one, because the script was just such a Sundance film. \u2026 Just the subject matter, the concept of it, really just screamed \u2018Sundance\u2019 to me,\u201d said producer Sean Patrick Burke. Specifically: \u201cTeenagers finding their sexuality. Teenagers in the early 1990s, the grunge era. It\u2019s just independent filmmaking at its finest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joris-Peyrafitte, who based the film on a short he made at Bard College, also acted alongside Harrison and Majestic Tillman \u2014 the three of them old collaborators from their Free School\/Youth FX days, back when they filmed ambitious little films with complicated sci-fi plots. A YouthFX crew worked on the \u201cAs You Are\u201d set, documenting the shoot with behind-the-scenes footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor someone of his age to be able to get his first feature film into Sundance is a huge accomplishment \u2014 and I\u2019m really proud of him, and really excited for what this means for him as a filmmaker,\u201d said Youth FX director Bhawin Suchak, who taught Joris-Peyrafitte at the Free School and oversaw many of his earliest productions. \u201cSo it\u2019s obviously a pretty big step for his career. \u2026 He\u2019s going to be a very sought-after filmmaker at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

After shooting wrapped in mid-October, the filmmakers quickly pieced together a cut and submitted it to officials at Sundance, who were impressed enough to issue a six-day extension for a second edit. They sliced it down a half an hour and resubmitted, scoring a place in next year\u2019s competition. \u201cWe still have to finish editing it, and do all the color, and do all the sound,\u201d Joris-Peyrafitte said. He\u2019s not sure when they need to deliver the final cut, but Sundance is set for Jan. 21-31.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just have goosebumps about this,\u201d said Albany film commissioner Debby Goedeke, noting that \u201cAs You Are\u201d marks the first locally shot film selected to premiere in competition at Sundance. (\u201cThe Place Beyond the Pines,\u201d the 2012 Derek Cianfrance epic filmed in Schenectady, opened at Toronto.)<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, they came here with a vision,\u201d she said. \u201cThey put it all together. \u2026 It\u2019s just incredible. It\u2019s a great honor for our region, and a great day for the local film community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Joris-Peyrafitte\u2019s view, the film\u2019s selection affirms not just Albany and its filmmakers but YouthFX, which puts cameras in the hands of teenagers. \u201c(It\u2019s) the kind of program that gives students the autonomy and also the support to go out and make things, go out and tell stories, and at the end of the day, that\u2019s what a place like Sundance is about: finding those voices, finding those stories. It\u2019s more than an affirmation of Albany,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an affirmation of that kind of pedagogy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news broke\u00a0last night & the Times Union, the paper from Albany where the film was shot was quick to take notice: Local film \u2018As You Are\u2019 gets selected for Sundance By Amy Biancolli,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1790,532],"class_list":["post-13877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-amandla-stenberg","tag-miles-joris-peyrafitte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13877"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13883,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions\/13883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}