'Hurricane' Takes Sundance By Storm

A husband-and-wife team of film producers who have focused on working with new talent - directors, producers, screenwriters, and casts without previous filmmaking experience - made Sundance Film Festival history Sunday when one of their most recent projects won an unprecedented number of awards in the annual competition.

Kit Carson and Cynthia Hargrave of East Hampton were the executive producers of "Hurricane," which was honored with two jury awards and one audience award. The jury awards were given for direction (the film was Morgan J. Freeman's first directorial effort) and for cinematography (by Enrique Chediac). The audience award, for best film, was based on ballots filled out by filmgoers at the festival.

The film was one of 20 selected for competition from among 800 festival entries.

Emotional Turbulence

"Hurricane" was described this week by Mr. Carson as a film about a 15-year-old boy on the Lower East Side of Manhattan who goes through an "emotional hurricane" after he discovers some family secrets and then feels his world, which he thought was secure, collapsing. The main character, played by Brendan Sexton 3d, tries to avoid the life of crime that his teenage friends are heading toward.

The director, writer, producers, and most of the cast of "Hurricane" were first-timers, noted Mr. Carson, who himself had a small role in the film. "Hurricane" was the second project the couple worked on with a staff of new talent; their first was last year's "Bottle Rocket," and a third project is already in the works.

The couple became involved with "Hurricane" in the early stages of the script, after they were approached by the film's producers, Gill Holland and Galt Neiderhoffer. They invited the director and screenwriter to their East End house to discuss the project, then spent much of last summer on the set on the streets of East Harlem.

From Vision To Reality

The best part of working with new talent, Mr. Carson said, is "it's always about the first time you tangle with the world, the big world."

Working with the younger generation, Mr. Carson continued, was interesting, even refreshing. "They don't trust, they don't trust anyone," he said. He also admired their "authenticity. . . . There's nothing hokey."

"I always start more skeptically," Ms. Hargrave said, "but at the same time it's really a privilege . . . to help somebody bring their vision to reality." Though working with first-timers brings some problems of inexperience, the reward is that "it's so much fun to watch the talent really shine," she added.

Mr. Carson has worked with the Sundance Institute for 10 years, coaching budding screenwriters in their craft. Ms. Hargrave works as a mentor/advisor through the institute as well, concentrating on producing films.

Mr. Carson brings to his work with screenwriters a journalistic career of his own, having had articles published in various magazines and newspapers. He wrote his first piece for Esquire magazine while he was in college. Among his subsequent articles were ones highlighting up-and-coming filmmakers before they achieved fame - including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino.

And the next generation of filmmaking icons? "Everybody I work with," Mr. Carson confidently responded.

Mr. Carson, a founder of both the U.S.A. Film Festival in Dallas and the Taos (N.M.) Talking Picture Film Festival, brings in first-timers for Phoenix Pictures, a New York and Los Angeles-based company he works with. Two of the company's most recent projects were "The Mirror Has Two Faces" with Barbra Streisand and "The People Vs. Larry Flynt."

East-West Rivals?

Film festivals serve as a marketplace for selling distribution rights. At last week's festival, the foreign rights to "Hurricane" were sold to Mayfair, an English company, for more than $1 million, the film's approximate production cost. The sale of domestic rights to the film is in the works, too, Mr. Carson said.

The Hamptons International Film Festival, held annually here in October, has been seen by some as competition for Sundance. Films that have been shown at the East End festival, for instance, cannot compete in the Sundance contest.

Still, Mr. Carson doesn't see a fierce rivalry between the two. The Hamptons festival, which likewise specializes in independent film-making, "is just beginning to characterize itself." Sundance, going strong at 13 years, is a bit more established.

At A Crossroads

Mr. Carson sees independent films as being at a crossroads and suggested the East Hampton festival focus on the dilemmas faced by film-makers. These include how to stay independent when the forces of Hollywood and the desire and need to make money compete with the drive to make quality, but not necessarily profitable, films.

What advice would Mr. Carson give young independents struggling with such issues? "You don't lose your compass," he said.