Keep the Lights On | movie | 2012 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection a | dG1fZXJJd05iT2FJcVk

Transcript

00:00 Sundance is the center of American independent filmmaking.

00:05 It's the place where that is most discussed, and I feel that Keep the Lights On is perhaps my most independent film.

00:13 And I think that's both in terms of how it was made, but also because I feel personally a sense of kind of,

00:20 like my voice just feels more my own than it has other points, if that makes any sense.

00:25 And I feel like that this film has a certain freedom to it that I think will be, Sundance will be the place to share that.

00:31 My name is Ira Sax. I'm the director and the co-writer of Keep the Lights On,

00:40 which is in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

00:45 Keep the Lights On is a relationship film. It's about the intricacies of love, both the highs and the lows between these two men.

00:53 I think in a way the film is about a certain kind of dependency these two men had on each other.

00:58 You can be in a relationship that in a way you should have left, but you don't have the perspective to know why.

01:06 I was in a relationship for ten years in New York City, and on the day that it was over, I knew that it was a story.

01:13 That there was some way in which there was a story to tell about these two men's life

01:18 that was different than other things that I've seen out there.

01:21 There's two actors, Tore Lindhart, who's a Danish actor who's making his first real American performance,

01:28 and an actor named Zachary Booth, and they both give everything of themselves to these roles.

01:35 It's a very sexual performance. There's nudity, there's nakedness, but also there's an emotional nakedness

01:40 that I think is really what's exciting to me as a filmmaker.

01:44 It was pretty obvious to us once we saw Tore and Zach that somehow they would make something that would surprise a lot of people

01:52 and surprise me, which is ultimately what as a director I want.

01:55 I want a sense that something is going to happen on set that's going to be dangerous and unknown and unexpected.

02:02 I was only able to tell this story when I was ready to, which meant to me a point in which I was very comfortable with the material.

02:09 I always find that as an artist you need to come to a place in which you have both extreme intimacy with the material,

02:16 but also a certain kind of distance.

02:18 That that distance allows for an objectivity, which means you're not just, it's not a confessional,

02:24 because it has the perspective of being an artist.

02:27 That parallel between being both inside and outside is really important to me

02:32 and makes it so that I'm not nervous about showing the film.

02:35 I just feel like I'm interested in the conversation that it will generate.

02:40 [Music]