Tony Gault, associate professor in the Department of Mass Communications and Journalism Studies, was featured in the Sundance Film Festival with his film “Count Backwards from Five,” which explores the porous border between life and death.
“That border is not as well defined as I might like but crossing the line shouldn’t be as scary as it is,” said Gault.
The film deals with the recent death of Gault’s brother, Gault explained, adding, “Although he didn’t particularly like it when I made films about him, I feel like he had some influence on the Sundance judges – from some ethereal place, [and] he’s having a good laugh.”
The film was screened last month at Sundance, a highly competitive film festival. Out of more than 5,000 short film submissions, only 83 were selected and screened during the festival.
“For an independent filmmaker like myself, it represents one of the pinnacles of my career,” said Gault, who was at the festival for eight days with his wife, fellow filmmaker Elizabeth Henry, who teaches in the mass communications department and at The Women’s College at DU. Gault said he and Henry observed the Hollywood scene unfold, and the competition among buyers and sellers of films.
Because his work is experimental in nature and not commercial, Gault said he “had the luxury of sitting back and observing while filmmakers and agents and distributors duked it out in the Hollywood mosh pit.”
“Count Backwards from Five” may be one of the most recognized of Gault’s accomplishments, but Gault has been making films for 14 years. He took Best of the Fest award at the Rochester International Film Festival in 1997 for his short film, “Picture #4.” His “Somewhere, I Was Born” took second prize at the Black Maria Film Festival in 2000, and his short, “Not Too Much Remember” was awarded Best of Festival at the New Orleans Film Festival in 2004.
Of his films, “Tabernacle” is Gault’s favorite. In 1999, it took U.S. Super 8 Film Festival’s grand prize, but according to Gault it is also “one of my least favorably received films.” Gault and Henry shot the film while on their honeymoon.
“‘Tabernacle’ comes from my heart more than any other film, though it seems to be in a secret code that few people understand,” he said.
Gault fell in love with films at the age of 5, when his father took him to see “A Hard Day’s Night.”
“People were screaming and throwing jelly beans at the screen. It was mayhem. It was very exciting,” he recalled.
Since then, film has become a part of his life. He graduated from University of California in Santa Cruz, where a class on Alfred Hitchcock inspired his career as a filmmaker. His first effort mimicked Hitchcock’s style. “It wasn’t a very good film, but I was hooked on the process,” Gault said.
Gault’s films are mainly shorts, 10 to 15 minutes long with a great deal of care given to the filmmaking process.
“Each film takes me an average of one year to make,” said Gault.
When he does step away from the classroom or the camera, his favorite activity is to be near water, rafting, swimming and bodysurfing.
Gault is currently working on a film about a photographic safari focused on polar bears in Canada. The trip, according to Gault, was “lonely because our experience with the bears was pretty much limited to what we saw though our viewfinders.”
This goes to show that being an artist may be exciting, but not always easy. “It’s not an easy vocation,” he said, but “a good artist is someone who puts himself or herself on the front line of existence – exploring and expressing those aspects of being human that are the hardest to articulate. The indefinable, the inexpressible…that’s what I want to commit to film.”
