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Simply Absurd: Subversive Screenwriting

Simply Absurd: Subversive Screenwriting

Date
Feb 20th 2023
With
Gyula Gazdag, Kirsten Johnson
Few films can aspire to the irreverent playfulness of Kirsten Johnson's "Dick Johnson is Dead," a heart-stirring meditation on life that doubles as a reeling, rollicking act of love to her father, whose very real dementia inspired Kirsten to stage his multiple fake deaths and funeral. Clearly, reality is not always what it seems with Kirsten, and subversive humour is a way for her to speak truth and deal with the odds. A trait she shares with noted Hungarian writer-director and Berlinale Talents Script Station veteran mentor Gyula Gazdag, whose films have been banned for different periods during Communism and even afterwards. In this lively, thought-provoking chat, Kirsten and Gyula recall the conversations they had around the time of working on "Dick Johnson" and let us share in their approach to writing, their penchant for the absurd and empathy for the all-too-human paradoxes that make us laugh when everything else is to cry.

Gyula Gazdag

Gyula Gazdag is a screenwriter and director of film, theater, and television and a Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Theater, Film, and TV. He was born and raised in Hungary, where most of his films have been banned for different periods during Communism and have been denied foreign exhibition, some of them have been banned again in 2012. In 1993 he moved to Los Angeles to assume his responsibilities as area head of the newly created Film and TV Production Program at UCLA. He has served as the Artistic Director of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab since 1997 and has worked with young screenwriters at the Script Station of Berlinale Talents since 2006. His films, such as “Bástyasétány Hetvennégy” (Singing on the Treadmill) and “Hol volt, hol nem volt” (A Hungarian Fairy Tale), have been screened at numerous festivals.

Kirsten Johnson

Kirsten Johnson’s “Dick Johnson is dead” premiered at 2020's Sundance and won the Jury Prize for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling. Since then, it has also won Best Documentary and Best Director for the Critic’s Choice Award and Best Editing and Best Writing from the International Documentary Association, as well as being included on dozens of top films of 2020 lists and the Oscar shortlist. Her previous film, “Cameraperson”, named New York Times ‘Top Ten Films of 2016’ was also shortlisted for the Academy Award. Her short, “The Above” was nominated for the International Documentary Association’s ‘Best Short Award’ for 2016. Her camerawork appears in Academy Award winner “Citizen Four”, Academy nominated “The invisible War”, and Cannes Winner “Fahrenheit 9/11”. She is one of the only 4% of women members of American Society of Cinematographers.