Here is a 2010 article about Sydney Freeland’s “Drunktown’s Finest” on teh occasion of her getting into the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. Her completed film has been confirmed as a Sundance Film Fest official entry, premiering in the NEXT section of the festival 2014.
Academy Alum Sydney Freeland scores Sundance Film honors
“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
“It’s in the vein of Amores Perros or Traffic,” Freeland says. “The characters all have troubles that force them to interact with, and ultimately learn from, each other. I wanted to create something authentic to how I grew up,” says Freeland, a former Fulbright Scholar. “The films that I saw when I was young — Dances With Wolves, Smoke Signals — don’t really capture what life is like there. The people I grew up with weren’t the people I saw in those films.”
“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.<A
The film also grew out of a more gross misrepresentation of reservation life: “When I was about 8 or 9, the show 20/20 came to my hometown. They did a segment on my town called “Drunk-town, USA.” It’s a border town to the local reservation, and supposedly it had the highest rate of alcoholism in the country.” For Freeland, the show’s treatment of her town was a turning point. “That experience really stuck with me. My town has only 20,000 people, so when a film crew comes in, it’s a big deal. These people from the outside came in, and that’s really all they saw. If they had taken the time to look a bit deeper, they would have seen that there is a lot more going on. So Drunktown’s Finest came from this stereotype, this label. The title is personal for me.”
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