Columbia filmmakers won big this year at Sundance with personal narratives.
Though the 13 films in competition made by School of Arts alums range in genre, length, and language, all have the same dedication to craft and storytelling, something that producer Jacob Jaffke, SoA ’10, and director Russ Harbaugh, SoA ’11, attribute to their years studying at Columbia.
“Sleepwalk with Me,” the “sleeper hit” produced by Jaffke, won the best of NEXT Audience Award at the Utah festival from Jan. 19-29. The film tells the autobiographical story of director and comedian Michael Birbiglia as he struggles to maintain his career and personal life while dealing with a case of severe somnambulism. The film is based on Birbiglia’s successful off-Broadway one-man show, which convinced Jaffke to help produce the film.
“To be an objective director was difficult, because it was ultimately something that he [Birbiglia] lived … personal investment often clouds your judgment, but Mike was able to serve the story rather than himself,” said Jaffke.
Similarly, Harbaugh, writer and director of the short film “Rolling on the Floor Laughing,” focused on a very personal form of storytelling in his work, which premiered in last spring’s Columbia Film Festival. The autobiographical film chronicles the awkward and uncomfortable meeting of a mother’s new boyfriend and her two adult sons, which produces scenes of malicious humor.
“The script started with interviewing my mom when she started to date again after my father’s death,” Harbaugh said. “She would have anecdotes about it that were just interesting from an artistic standpoint and that produces a lot of different feelings, emotions and some that were contradictions and it felt that I was removed enough from the fact that my dad was dead.”
Though the scenes feel like the improvised conversations of any family, Harbaugh said the documentary style was intentional and specifically prepared, a directorial tactic he learned while in the SoA.
“Columbia allowed more than just coursework. It allowed time to be seriously involved in film, time to work through different phases of what being a writer and director was,” said Harbaugh.
“It’s encouraging to go to a place where you don’t have to make ‘Transformers’ to be successful,” said Jaffke. “I got to learn what everything meant in a more theoretical sense, every decision affects the story in a way and will affect the outcome. It made me pick good projects and see things in filmmakers and scripts I don’t think I would’ve seen had I not gone through it.”
Both films have received praise from critics and filmgoers alike. During the third screening in Salt Lake City, Jaffke recalled a packed theater, proving that people respond “on a universal level” to stories that “act out every person’s inner monologue, and tell it in a really funny and interesting way.”
Likewise, Harbaugh is in negotiations to expand “Rolling on the Floor Laughing” into a feature film where he hopes to delve deeper into the “neighborhood of personal storytelling.”
At the festival, three films from Columbia filmmakers took home awards: the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing, the Best of NEXT Audience Award, and the World Cinema Jury Prize for “Smashed,” “Sleepwalk with Me,” and “Violeta Went to Heaven” (“Violeta se Fue a Los Cielos”), respectively.
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