Sundance Institute Celebrates Risk-takers in the Arts
April 22, 2004 in New York City
Five hundred and fifty guests turned out at New York City’s Gotham Hall on April 22nd for the third annual celebration of risk-takers in the arts by the Sundance Institute. Institute founder and president Robert Redford welcomed guests and set the tone for the evening’s program. “Art, creativity, independent voice, and dissent will always be tested, and sometimes threatened. Here we are tonight celebrating independent vision and the inherent risk in achieving it. Each of tonight’s honorees advances freedoms in their own way and each embodies the spirit of the Sundance Institute – and its commitment to champion new, compelling voices.”

Filmmakers Errol Morris and Todd Haynes, writer Walter Mosley, and Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina were honored at the annual benefit, which raised $900,000 toward the Institute's work in support of independent film and theatre artists. Sundance Trustees Sally Field and Steve Tisch co-chaired the event, along with Redford who served as honorary chair. Guests included a range of established industry figures and up-and-coming filmmakers.

	Pictured from left to right are: co-chair Steve Tisch, honoree Errol Morris, honoree Todd Haynes, honoree Walter Mosley, honoree Carly Fiorina, co-chair Sally Field, and honorary co-chair and Institute founder Robert Redford.
	Kenneth and Maria Cole arrive at the New York's Gotham Hall for the Institute's benefit gala. Kenneth Cole has recently joined the Institute's Board of Trustees.
	Harry Belafonte introduces honoree Walter Mosley at the 2004 Risktakers in the Arts benefit.
	Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley and Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of PBS and Institute Vice-Chair at the gala

Sundance Films To Screen at Cannes Film Festival
Seven films supported by Sundance Institute, through the Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Documentary Fund (SDF), and the Sundance/NHK Award, are screening at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, which began on May 12.

Walter Salles’ Motorcycle Diaries was selected for the Films in Competition category. The film traces the journeys of a young Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado as they explore Latin America. Guevara and Granado’s journals are the basis for the screenplay, which was written by Institute board member Jose Rivera. The film screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and is one of 56 feature-length Films in Competition at the Cannes Festival.

The line up for the Un Certain Regard category includes Whisky from Juan P. Rebella and Pablo Stoll of Uruguay, and Cronicas from Ecuadorian filmmaker Sebastian Cordero. Both projects were supported during their development by the Sundance/NHK Award which assists emerging filmmakers with their next screenplays. Whisky received the award in 2003, and Cronicas was supported in 2002.

Three films by first-time directors that screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival are among the twenty feature films selected to show in the Director’s Fortnight section of Cannes. Jacob Aaron Estes’ Mean Creek, Jonathan Couette’s Tarnation, and Nicole Kassell’s The Woodsman are three of the four American films selected for the category.

Also appearing in the Directors Fortnight is the SDF-supported documentary Wall (Israel/France) by Simone Bitton. SDF first supported the project in 2003 with a development grant and recently awarded supplemental funding to assist in its completion. Wall documents the construction of the West Bank Wall and its effect on the region’s people and landscape. Bitton describes the project as a consideration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which she blurs lines by asserting her own double identity as Jew and Arab.

The Cannes Film Festival runs May 12-23.

	Jacob Aaron Estes’ Mean Creek premiered in the American Spectrum section of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. It goes on to screen in the Director’s Fortnight category of the Cannes Film Festival this week.
	Motorcycle Diaries directed by Walter Salles had its world premiere at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. It is a Film in Competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Annenberg Foundation to Support Feature Film Fellows
A new $5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation has created The Annenberg Film Fellows Program, a five-year initiative designed to provide sustained and varied support for emerging filmmakers who are selected from participants of the Institute’s Feature Film Program. The fellowships will support promising filmmakers over a two-year period throughout the development of a specific feature film project.

The goal of the Annenberg Film Fellows Program is to identify and foster a new generation of leading film artists, who generally have limited access to direct support for the development of new work. During their fellowships, filmmakers will typically develop their first feature-film projects.

Charles Annenberg Weingarten, an Annenberg Foundation trustee said, “This program will enable promising filmmakers to stay committed and focused on their work and to enrich their creative process through the programs and nurturing environment of the Feature Film Program and Sundance Institute.”

13 Projects to be Developed at Summer Labs
This summer the Institute’s Feature Film Program will focus on the development of thirteen feature film projects during its annual Filmmakers and Screenwriters Labs. The projects’ storylines, settings, characters, and the filmmakers themselves represent a range of new voices and diverse stories. Full Article

Live from White Oak
The second annual Theatre Lab at White Oak Plantation is now underway in Yulee, Florida. At the lab, A.R. Gurney is developing his new project The House of Mirth, and Roman Paska’s Dead Puppet ensemble is working on Dead Puppet Talk. Full Article

I Am My Own Wife Nominated for Three Tony Awards
The slate of nominees for the 2004 Tony Awards was announced on May 10 and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife appears in three award categories, including Best Play. The play’s star, Jefferson Mays, was nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Male Actor in a Play and director Moises Kaufman is nominated for Best Director of a Play. Wright brought the work to the Institute’s Playwrights Retreat at Theatre Lab in 2000 where he developed the play in collaboration with Mays, Kaufman, and a team of creative advisors.

The Tony nominations are the latest honor for the highly acclaimed play. Other theater awards it has received this spring are the Lucille Lortel Award for Solo Show, the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Broadway and Off-Broadway, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Broadway Play. The Outer Critics Circle also recognized Mays with their Award for Solo Performance. In addition, the work received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Tony Award winners will be announced during a ceremony on Sunday, June 6 at Radio City Music Hall.

Actor Jefferson Mays rehearsing I Am My Own Wife at the Institute’s Theatre Lab in 2000. Mays portrays nearly three dozen characters in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Patron Council Members Meet Filmmakers at Spring Events
The Sundance Institute Patron Council donor group shares the Institute’s commitment to the development of artists and projects of independent vision. Members of the Patron Council receive year-round benefits including invitations to special events that offer opportunities to meet Sundance film and theatre artists and get a first look at their works-in-progress.

This spring, Patron Council members turned out at events in LA and New York to meet some of the film and theatre artists supported by the Institute’s programs. Events included a Sundance Salon with a reading by Jacob Kornbluth at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, and Screenplay Readings in New York and LA.

Events are by invitation only. For more information on upcoming events or to join the Patron Council, please contact individualgiving@sundance.org

	A cast shot from the Screenplay Reading Series presentation of Paper Man, co-directed and co-written by Kieran and Michele Mulroney. Pictured from left to right Patrick Warburton, Brian Finney, Jenna Malone, and Colin Fickes.
	Elizabeth Subrin, director and co-writer of Up with filmmaker Todd Haynes at a screenplay reading of Up in New York City.

Exposure Documentary Film Series: Brother’s Keeper
Sunday, May 23, 2004
7:00 p.m.
George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Center for the Performing Arts at Park City High School, Park City, Utah

Brother’s Keeper is a film by Jim Beringer and Bruce Sinofsky that chronicles the way in which local citizens of a small town in upstate New York come to the defense of laborer Delbert Ward when he is accused of killing his brother. The film screened at the Festival in 1992, where it won a Grand Jury Prize and an Audience Award. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students, and may be purchased at the door. For more information and to purchase advance tickets call (435) 655-3114.

Deadline: Independent Producers Conference
Application Deadline: May 26, 2004
Applications are still being accepted for the 19th annual Independent Producers Conference, July 29 – August 1, 2004. The conference presents panels on a range of producorial subjects, including production, financing, marketing, digital technologies and the state of independent film. Recent panelist confirmations include indie film guru Bob Berney of Newmarket Films, Mark Gill and Laura Kim from newly formed Warner Independent Pictures, and Paul Richardson of Landmark Theatres. Apply

Deadline: Mercer Deadline: The Power of American Popular Song
Application Deadline: Extended to May 31, 2004
This third annual collaboration between the Sundance Theatre Program and the Johnny Mercer Foundation offers a weekend of classes, panel discussions and performances. Held August 4-7 at the Sundance Village, the intensive course focuses on the interpretation and personalization of the great American songbook. Master classes will be taught by Grammy Award®-winning singer and songwriter Melissa Manchester, Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Jimmy Webb, and other award-winning performers, composers and directorsA group of thirty professional theatre and film actors, writers, and directors are selected to participate in the program.
Apply