Robert Redford

A few years ago, we saw a new kind of storytelling beginning to emerge. As artists started to meld film with art and technology, their work gave rise to a new hybrid medium that continues to evolve. Through their work, these artists have shown us that cinema can extend beyond theatres, art can escape museums, and that emerging technologies can be harnessed to bring storytelling into daily life. Fascinated by it all, we responded with New Frontier, a Sundance Film Festival showcase created specifically for this breakthrough work.

This year will mark New Frontier’s fifth anniversary. If you’ve been to our Festival in the past few years, I hope you’ve taken the time to visit New Frontier and take in the level of creativity and innovation of the projects. It’s become one of my favorite elements of the Festival. Just a few of the artists we’ve featured are Matthew Barney, Pipilotti Rist, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, and Jennifer Steinkamp. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in the midst of a tour that marks a continuation of the piece he presented at the 2010 New Frontier.

During the month of October, we’ll share more news about how we’re increasing our commitment to New Frontier. We’ve added creative support for artists, established a new venue for our Festival program, and taken strides to allow more people to experience this work.

It’s an exciting time for us and, even more so, for artists. Just as they‘re harnessing new tools to tell their stories, the options for storytelling in a cross-media capacity are expanding. We look to the artists themselves to define this new realm as it continues to evolve, and we anticipate no end to the possibilities.