Video and Film Production in Springfield, Branson and Southwest Missouri

From the Cinematical website comes this introduction to Director Debra Granik and her new film, Winter’s Bone, shot on location in Taney County, Missouri.

Back in 2004, Granik premiered her debut feature, Down to the Bone, at the Sundance Film Festival, and now she’s back several years later with another unique story about a female protagonist struggling to fight the odds stacked against her.

Winter’s Bone will premiere on Saturday January 23rd in the US Dramatic Competition category at Sundance, and it stars Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Lauren Sweetser, Kevin Breznahan, Tate Taylor, Casey MacLaren, Cody Brown and Charlotte Lucas. Cinematical caught up with Granik to ask her some brief questions about the film and the festival life.

Cinematical: Give us the “dude on the street” description of your film.

Debra Granik: Ree, a teenager living in the Missouri Ozarks, has to find her father. He put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she can’t turn him up, she and her family will lose the house. She is blocked and threatened by her relatives who have something to hide. With the help of her closest friend and her intimidating uncle, she begins to piece together the truth.

Cinematical: You don’t see many movies shot in the Missouri mountain region. What were some of the unique challenges you came across, and what is it about this story that makes it accessible to people who aren’t familiar with the region?

Debra Granik: Ree has got some of the daunting challenges that many young people have in remote areas, places where ways of making a living are scarce and marginal. She is a kid with a lot of responsibilities who witnesses the adults around her making dangerous and dead-end choices. Without many buffers, Ree has to navigate her survival in a place that is hardscrabble to its core. She has no map to follow except for loyalty to her family. The particulars of the region that are “foreign” are found in some of the language, eating wild game, learning to hunt and ride ATVs at a young age. These things were all unfamiliar in my existence. Yards may have an accumulation of objects and debris, and this may feel strange or reinforce certain assumptions, so perhaps the only thing a film can do is to try to show the life, the specific life attached to that yard. The author of the novel from which this film is based did not try to speak in broad strokes. He zoomed in and tried to focus on one girl, depicting in detail her moxie to survive.

Visit the website for the rest of the interview. For more on Debra Granik and Winter’s Bone, here is a video profile from the Sundance Film Festival:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBepZwxde7I]