Huge congratulations to photojournalist turned filmmaker Danfung Dennis for winning the top prize in the Documentary Filmmaking category of the Sundance festival awards. He also scooped the World Cinema Cinematography Award for Documentary Filmmaking. His film “Hell and Back Again” was shot on the 5DmkII and follows the story of a Marine fighting in the Afghan war and his subsequent rehabilitation.
The film is also a big win for DSLR video for journalism, proving that you can bring a cinematic aesthetic to real world events. All the clips I saw in an early edit looked absolutely amazing. I’m sure it looked even better on the big screen.
Hell and Back Again clip from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.
According to the Sundance festival blog, Danfung dedicated the award to the fallen, with the words: “This is for those that didn’t come back”.
Regular followers of this blog will remember Danfung told us about how he filmed it using a 5DmkII and a customised Glidecam attached to his bullet-proof vest. You can read the original post here.
Below is a short video where Danfung Dennis talks to Eric Hynes about his work.
Danfung Dennis: Reverse Shot Talkies #26 from Reverse Shot on Vimeo.
For more on the documentary check out the film’s website here.
There’s also a review from Variety here.
I’m pretty sure this film will get a wider release now so more of us can get a chance to see just how good it is.
