Each person who attends the Sundance Film Festival, whether for a weekend or for the full ten days, takes with them key moments that define the experience. For one filmgoer, it was finding herself at the premiere of Shake Hands with the Devil, the documentary that chronicles the experiences of General Roméo Dallaire who, as head of the United Nations’ 1994 peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, attempted to prevent the genocide there. She told me that she would never forget Robert Redford’s remarks about the importance of documentary film in our society, and that his comments resonated still more when she realized that General Dallaire was present in the theatre. Where else can one at once encounter a film, its director, and even its subject, and openly engage with them in a Q&A?

Each January at the Festival, filmmakers take part in that rite of passage that is sharing their film with an audience for the first time. And just as the work of these artists comes to fruition in Festival venues, the work is just beginning for another group of filmmakers – those in residence at Sundance Village for our January Screenwriters Lab. At the Lab, emerging writers focus on script development, one of the earliest stages in a long process that will end only when their films find their audience – be it at a festival or their local theatre.

At Sundance, we embrace the process itself as much as we do the completed films. And we value the fact that when led by an individual artist through his or her own creative process, we have an opportunity to wrestle with some of the most prescient issues of our times.

	Ken Brecher Executive Director, Sundance Institute

General Romeo Dallaire, the subject of the documentary film Shake Hands with the Devil, with Institute President and Founder Robert Redford at the Festival this year.

Don’t despair! The Festival lives on at www.sundance.org, where the Sundance Online Film Festival (SOFF), brings short films, filmmaker interviews, video highlights, experimental digital arts and more to any desktop in the world – all for FREE.

For filmmaker profiles, the stories behind the films, features on everything from the first World Cinema competition to how this year’s Frontier films pushed the edges of filmmaking, and even a little humor, check out each of the ten daily issues of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider at www.sundanceonlinefilmfestival.org.

Click here to visit the Sundance Online Film Festival now, and relive the best of this year's Festival, or experience it all for the very first time.

	Director Ellen Perry answers questions following the premiere of The Fall of Fujimori.
	Shops, restaurants, movie theatres and other Festival venues line Park City's Main Street, a center of Festival activity.
	5th World director Blackhorse Lowe and Trudell director Heather Rae at the Filmmaker Lodge panel Writing the Land.
	Director Jun Ickikawa at the Q&A following a screening of Tony Takitani.

Herzog’s Grizzly Man Wins Third Annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
By Andy Bailey
Originally published on Saturday, January 29, in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider

German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, a co-production of the U.S. and Canada, was awarded the third annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize during a cocktail reception at the Sundance House in the Kimball Arts Center last night. The film, a selection of the Festival’s inaugural World Cinema Documentary Competition program, is about the late outdoorsman Timothy Treadwell, who spent several years living among grizzly bears in the Alaskan wilderness prior to his mauling death by a grizzly bear last year. Lions Gate Films will release the film in theatres later this year.

Herzog, who combined Treadwell’s own documentary footage of his time spent with grizzlies with footage of the filmmaker’s month-long investigation into Treadwell’s life and death, described the high-definition production as, “the beginning of some sort of perfect storm,” before acknowledging his film’s subject in a brief acceptance speech.

“I’m very proud of this and I’d like to share it with Timothy, who is not here with us anymore. So I’ll have to stand here alone,” Herzog said. The filmmaker, now based in the U.S., also thanked the Sloan Foundation for the $20,000 cash prize, which Herzog said would help fund a forthcoming science fiction film, parts of which will be set under the ice shelf in Antarctica; he also thanked the Institute for fostering, “new perspectives, new alliances, and new ways of launching and distributing films.”

Herzog was awarded the prize by Doran Weber, Program Director of the New York City-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization that seeks to increase the visibility of science and technology in creative works by providing grants and other funding to select recipients. Doran praised Herzog and his film for, “exploring the life and work of a troubled amateur naturalist and for puncturing the romantic myths of nature.” The Prize is awarded through a partnership between the Foundation and the Sundance Institute.

In a brief opening statement prior to the award ceremony, Ken Brecher, Executive Director of the Institute, thanked the Foundation for its support and for its, “leap of faith into the mysterious and unusual world of a film festival, where ideas come and quickly and people see in the dark in beautiful ways.”

Grizzly Man was selected by a jury that included John Underkoffler, MIT Media Lab alumnus and science consultant on Minority Report and The Hulk; Shane Carruth, recipient of the 2004 Sloan Prize for Primer, which also won the Festival Grand Jury Prize; Professor Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek; Professor Margaret LeMone, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); and Miguel Arteta, director of Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl.

Q&A with Director and Cast Members of The Jacket
By Jeff Hanson
Originally published on Friday, January 28, 2005, in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider.

The Jacket is more than just a psychological thriller with flashy, pyrotechnic-like effects and white-knuckle moments in tight, confined spaces. It’s a spellbinding story of a man’s search for self from director John Maybury (Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon). The film looks into the fractured mind of returning war veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) who escapes a near-death experience in Iraq, only to be stricken with amnesia and later pegged for a murder he didn’t commit. After being sentenced to an insane asylum, his prescribed therapy from an experimental him on a trippy ride of self-discovery, sensual awareness, and good old fashioned hallucination. With the help of a woman he has strangely known
before (Keira Knightley), Starks tries to put the pieces of his fractured life back together. After a recent screening, John Maybury and members of the cast, including Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Marano, and Mackenzie Phillips, answered questions from the audience.

Jeff Hanson: You apparently believe that ambiguity is the soul of art. Would you expand on that?

John Maybury: I think what was interesting to me, was that this was an enormous challenge. The screenwriter, Massy Tadjedin, produced an extraordinarily sophisticated, complex piece of writing from a premise that was essentially nonsense. And she gave it a resonance and a depth. She gave these characters, which were so brilliantly portrayed by my actors, reality and space. And these characters are like all of us — unresolved, ambiguous. None of us knows the answers to our life. What I liked about this film is on one hand it is a kind of popcorn movie, you have big handfuls of popcorn, you drink your cola, you smoke a joint, it’s like a roller coaster ride.

But at the same time, it offers viewers intellectual challenges and it rewards repeated viewings. It’s very simple and it’s very complex. What became very disturbing to me while we were filming, and then later in postproduction, was that what seemed like a kind of subversive psychological thriller turned into a metaphor for Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. It wasn’t intentional on anyone’s part, but somehow the world around us started to outdo our special effects.

Hanson: What is the significance of the blue beads and the patient we see at the hospital?

JM: They were tied to Starks’ rucksack and obviously you’re meant to think that the stranger has stolen them with the rucksack. Just to wind you up as an audience I gave them to Daniel’s character in the movie, too, for no other reason than that it doesn’t mean anything.

Jeff Hanson: How did the production style, being such a large process, change your creative process as a director?

JM: It kind of didn’t, actually. I had the same production designer I’ve worked with for 20 odd years. There’s an intimacy to this that’s different from the Super8 and video work I did 20 years ago. Some people got paid very well — I didn’t. The great thing about this was, despite the grand names that are on the film, it actually is an independent film. And all the people who worked on the film worked against enormous pressures, and rising to the occasion out of commitment to the project, for the cast and myself. And out of a commitment for filmmaking.

Hanson: Did you shoot any other endings?

JM: Several.

Hanson: Will they be released?

JM: I’m sure there’ll be appalling DVD extras.

Hanson: This is a question for Adrien Brody. What was your reaction when you first read the script? Were you able to wrap your brain around the whole thing the first time through?

Adrien Brody: It’s difficult to comprehend a script of this nature. First of all, it’s not linear. It’s a structured story, but it’s difficult to comprehend anything on the page before it reaches John Maybury’s hands. A lot of the stuff that my character experiences in The Jacket is very internal. I was unable to know what I was capable of delivering on [any given] day because it was based on what level of the truth I could connect to emotionally in that moment. And I didn’t have the luxury of all the CG that we see later. But it’s a very compelling story. It’s a wonderful, contemporary, “everyman” character and that’s really rare for an actor.

Hanson: How did Adrien and Keira prepare for their roles?

Keira Knightley: John got me a really great dialogue coach named Judy Adams and I worked with Judy for about a month before we started. Then he gave us lots of music. We watched lots of films, and we talked through various emotions and all that kind of thing. Oh, and I watched Edie Sedgwick in Ciao! Manhattan on a loop — and Marlene Dietrich.

AB: Obviously, there were a number of things that were necessary to prepare me for understanding someone under those conditions. The
most exciting and interesting part of the preparation was that production managed to find me a sensory deprivation chamber in Glasgow, which I subjected myself to for hours on end. A normal session is 15-30 minutes to help you relax and unwind from the outside world. If you stay there long enough, you don’t need drugs. You’re in a kind of body temperature saline solution, so you’re no longer affected by gravity and in silence for the most part and in complete darkness.

I became very cognizant of the lack of connection to my physical body, experiencing more of an awareness of space around me while completely
leaving behind the physical being. I also had the opportunity to work with William Hurt prior to this. I talked to him extensively about the research he had done in Altered States. But it was a very exciting process. I also have a friend who was a G.I. injured in Iraq, so I have a personal connection to this. I felt very connected and very moved to have the opportunity to have a greater understanding of the people who are, in a sense, victims of these systems.

Against the Current: Rebecca Miller on The Ballad of Jack and Rose
By Andrea Meyer
Originally published on Saturday, January 22 in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider

Rebecca Miller movies get right inside the minds of bold, fascinating people on the verge of transformation. Her haunting first feature, Angela, about a troubled girl coping with her mother’s mental illness, won a 1995 Gotham Award and both the Sundance Filmmakers Trophy and Cinematography Award for Ellen Kuras’ work. Next the writer-director made Personal Velocity, based on her own short fiction, a trio of stories about women struggling to fulfill themselves independent of the men in their lives. This sharply-observed, smartly-written work won the 2002 Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and Cinematography Award (again for Ellen Kuras) at the Festival.

Now the seasoned auteur is back, this time in the Premiere section. The Ballad of Jack and Rose stars Miller’s husband Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York) as an obsessively idealistic environmentalist living with his teenaged daughter (Camilla Belle) in total isolation on a former commune. The titular pair is so wrapped up in each other and the idyll they have created that the world’s intrusion could only bring cataclysmic results. Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider staff writer Andrea Meyer spoke with Miller about her latest film and how it fits into the indie film canon.

Andrea Meyer: What is this film about for you?

Rebecca Miller: I’ve always been interested in commune life. The country looked like a different place. People thought it was going in a different direction, and I guess I have a kind of nostalgia for that time, even though I didn’t live in it. In a sense, the film is about the war against nature, both in an external and internal sense. There is always a war between civilization and things that are inside of us, which aren’t civilized, which aren’t tamed.

Meyer: You have really stuck to your personal creative vision. How do you do it?

Miller: I can’t say I’ve had great luck because it’s taken me a long time to cultivate my luck, but I was very lucky to meet Lemore Syvan, who’s produced all three of my films. Lemore really understands what I need as a director. I also was lucky in that when I made Personal Velocity, I started working with IFC. They really, truly are about trying to foster unique voices in a world, which is fairly hostile to them. Trying to make films the way that I do is fighting against the current. You need allies and without allies, you can’t do it. I started trying to get this film made in 1995. I knocked on pretty much every door, and it wasn’t until the success of Personal Velocity that I was able to make it.

Meyer: You have shown a real commitment to independent film. Is that important to you?

Miller: What’s important to me is being able to tell the stories that interest me. If studios gave me the money to do that and gave me final cut, I would be very happy, but that doesn’t happen so much. If that happens for me, I’m not going to say no! I think every filmmaker has dreams of making bigger stories that are more expensive, but at the same time you have to know yourself and what you can tolerate and what kind of working environment you need.

Meyer: How would this film be different if you had a $15 million budget and were working with a studio?

Miller: I had a great cast. I had Daniel. I think even studios would have been happy with the cast, but I don’t think I would have gotten the movie made. I wouldn’t have gotten the movie made. I happen to know, because I didn’t get the movie made. (laughs)

Meyer: You have the reputation for being a filmmaker who accurately reflects women’s inner lives. Do you agree with that?

Miller: I’m always trying to get inside of people, but to me this movie is as much about Jack as anybody else. He’s the one in conflict and that’s always very compelling, and Daniel’s performance is so powerful and so human and touching. In the end, a film has its own will and you have to embrace it.

Meyer: What was it like directing your husband?

Miller: It was wonderful. We talked about things in a very easy, economic way, and he was involved with every aspect, with rewrites, with what the set looked like, with building the set. Then in the cutting room, he was very involved, especially at the end. He was very involved in producing the music with the composer. It was a wonderful collaboration, very close, very intense, but in a nice way.

Meyer: Is it harder for a woman to build a body of work?

Miller: It must be, because there are so few women making films. But it’s changing gradually and I think it will continue to change. Maybe women are trying to make stories that are harder to get made. I think it’s hard for me to measure, because the kind of films I make are hard for anyone to make. If I were a man trying to tell these stories, I would still have a hard time.

Fund Announces Support for Fourteen Films
The Sundance Documentary Fund recently announced its first round of funding for 2005. Grants were awarded to fourteen projects, each of which focuses on current human rights issues, freedom of expression, social justice or civil liberties. A committee of film professionals and human rights experts selected the feature-length documentaries from 450 films submitted from around the world.

Diane Weyermann, Director of the Sundance Documentary Program said, "These films range from depictions of the very broad topic of globalization to very personal explorations of individual identity, and they ultimately reveal the human stories within the larger events and forces that shape our world.” She added, “Many of these filmmakers are expanding the art of documentary filmmaking by pushing cinematic boundaries, and we are proud to support their new work."

The Sundance Documentary Fund awards three types of grants designed to support filmmakers at specific points in the documentary process. Development grants are awarded to projects in the early stages of research or in the pre-production stage. The most recent round of funding included development grants to Richard Hankin’s Home Front (US), a portrait of a veteran of the Iraq war who, after being blinded in combat, returns to the US and struggles to readjust to his friends, family, community, and his new reality; Azza el-Hassan’s The Feather Man (Palestine/Germany) which takes the 1982 Israeli invasion of West Beirut as a point of departure and examines relationships between individual Palestinians and Israelis and ultimately reveals that in constructing an image of the enemy, one also defines oneself; Melissa K. Lee’s Yukai! (Australia), a tale of the political maneuverings, international espionage, and present-day repercussions of the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean spies in the 1970s and ‘80s; Secrecy (US) by Robb Moss and Peter Gallison, a film that explores the fundamental threat to democracy stemming from the exponential growth of systems of classified information; and Jonathan Stack’s Rebirth of a Nation (US), a sequel to Liberia: An Uncivil War that documents the democratization of Liberia that is currently beginning.

Work in Progress grants are awarded to films currently in production or post-production. Eight projects received this type of funding, including Deborah Dickson’s The Secret History of the Hmong (US), a portrayal of the large Hmong refugee communities that grew up in Thailand and in the US as a result of the conflict in Laos during the Vietnam War; Mark and Nick Francis’ Black Gold (US), a look at Western coffee consumption and its relationship to the collapse of the Ethiopian coffee economy, the subsequent starvation of the farmers and a growing national dependence on foreign aid; Maquilopolis (US), by Victoria Funari and Dergio de la Torre, a film that tells a story of globalization through the eyes of Mexican women factory workers as Tijuana is transformed; Maria Teresa Larrain’s The Trial of Pascual Pichun (Canada/Chile), which focuses on the protests and subsequent trial of Mapuche Indian Chief Pascual Pichun, and ultimately explores the conflict over land rights between the Mapuche Indians (Chile’s Indigenous people), present-day landowners, and the Canadian forestry company MINICO; Zack Niles’ and Banker White’s The Refugee All Stars (US), which follows six Sierra Leone refugees living in Guinea and their struggle to keep their hope and music alive as they play together as the Refugee All Star Band; Laura Poitras’ The War After, a cinema veritè chronicle of the US military’s strategic planning and on-the-ground efforts to implement democratic elections in Iraq; Juan Carlos Rulfo’s In the Pit (Mexico), a cinematic look into the daily lives of construction workers building the second deck of Mexico City’s Periferico Freeway; and Rodrigo Vázques’s An American Martyr, the story of American peace activist Rachel Corrie who is crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting in Gaza in March, 2003.

Projects that have previously received development grants from the Fund and are currently in production or post-production are eligible for supplemental funding. The committee awarded one supplemental grant to Cristina Ibarra and John Valadez’s The Last Conquistador (US), which explores the complex legacy left by conquests by chronicling the controversial construction of a larger-than-life public memorial in El Paso, TX and the long-standing racial tension that it reignites.

The Fund accepts requests for funding throughout the year.

Sundance Playwrights Retreat at UCROSS Foundation Wraps Up
For the past three weeks, five playwrights and one composer have been in residence UCROSS Foundation’s idyllic working ranch in Wyoming, focusing on and exploring the creative possibilities of their new work during the sixth season of The Sundance Playwrights Retreat at the UCROSS Foundation, a collaborative project of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program and the UCROSS Foundation. The residency comes to a close on February 25.

Each year, artists are selected and invited by Philip Himberg, Sundance Theatre Program Producing Artistic Director. This year, Himberg invited playwrights Douglas Carter Beane, Noah Haidle, Adam Rapp, Betty Shamieh, Edwin Sanchez and composer/lyricist Kirsten Childs to participate in the three-week retreat. Dramaturg Mame Hunt served as a creative advisor for the program.

“The artists in this sixth annual Ucross/Sundance Theatre collaboration reflect Sundance’s commitment to supporting playwrights and theatre composers at different stages in their careers,” remarked Himberg. “Our ongoing relationship with the esteemed Ucross Foundation is a vital partnership for the Sundance Institute. While our July Theatre Lab in Utah and December Lab at White Oak in Florida focus on rehearsal time with actors, the Ucross residency offers writers a quiet environment in which to begin or refine new work. This fits in perfectly with Sundance’s vision for play development, which looks to support artists at various steps in their writing process.”

Projects that began their life at the Sundance Playwrights Retreat at the Ucross Foundation continue to open to resounding success at theatres across the country. Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife won both the Pulitzer and Tony Awards in 2004, and Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’ musical, The Light in the Piazza opens at the Lincoln Center Theatre in April.

Douglas Carter Beane writing credits include the plays As Bees In Honey Drown, Advice From a Caterpillar, The Country Club, Music from a Sparkling Planet, and the forthcoming The Little Dog Laughed, and the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. The film adaptation of Advice From a Caterpillar received the award for Best Feature at the Aspen Comedy Festival. As Artistic Director of New York’s acclaimed Drama Dept., Beane has produced award-winning revivals of Kingdom of Earth, June Moon, As Thousands Cheer, and The Torch-Bearers as well as new works by Paul Rudnick, David Sedaris and Charles Busch. He has received the John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Lucille Lortel Playwrights Sidewalk Award and is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild.

Composer Lyricist Kirsten Childs has written songs for jazz singer Dianne Reeves, co-starred with Chita Rivera in the musical Chicago, co-starred with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the film See no Evil, Hear No Evil and performed on Broadway in Dancin’ Jerry’s Girls, and Sweet Charity. She is an alumna of NYU’s Musical Theater Writing Program. Her play The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin won the Edward Kleban Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant and a Richard Rodgers Development Award for the year of 1999, as well as the recipient of an Audelco Award, a Richard Rodgers Production Award, a Lucille Lortel award nomination, three Drama Desk nominations, and an Obie Award for the year of 2000.

Noah Haidle was born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI. He graduated from East Grand Rapids High School, Princeton University, and The Juilliard School. He has been in love exactly three times. Once, during high school in Michigan, once during college in New Jersey, and once during graduate school in New York City. He now lives in New York and is still in love with the girl from graduate school. He would include the names of his plays and where they've been produced/work shopped but for some reason he finds that embarrassing.

Adam Rapp has been the recipient of many awards including the Herbert & Patricia Brodkin Scholarship, two Lincoln Center le Compte de Nuoy Awards, a fellowship to the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the 1999 Princess Grace Award for Playwriting, a 2000 Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. His Plays include Nocturne, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, Animals and Plants, Blackbird, and Stone Clod Dead Serious. Candlewick Press just released Mr. Rapp’s 6th novel, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, and the forthcoming The Year of Endless Sorrows will be published by FSG in the fall of 2005. A graduate of Clarke College in Dubuque, IA, Mr. Rapp also completed a two-year playwriting fellowship at Juilliard. He is the resident Playwright for Edge Theater Company.

Edwin Sanchez’s newest play, This Can’t be Love, received its first reading at Primary Stages last October. His most recent production, Diosa, which was produced in the spring by Hartford Stage after a successful workshop by New York Stage and Film. Other productions include Trafficking in Broken Hearts at the Bank Street Theater in New York, Unmerciful Good Fortune at the Intar Theater in New York, for which he received the Princess Grace Playwriting Award in 1994, Barefoot Boy with Shoes On at Primary Stages in New York, Icarus produced by Fourth Unity, Actors Theater of Louisville as part of their Humana Festival, San Jose Rep and regionally throughout the U.S.; and Trafficking in Broken Hearts, Atlantic Theater in New York, and productions in Brazil and Switzerland. He was also among the playwrights involved with Brave New World, an organization commemorating the events surrounding September 11th.

Betty Shamieh's play Roar premiered off-Broadway under the direction of Tony-nominated Marion McClinton, was chosen as the New York Times Critic's pick for four weeks and will make its Midwest premiere at Madison Rep. Her play The Black Eyed will premiere at the Magic Theatre in 2005. She performed in her play Chicolate In Heat off-off-Broadway and around the country. She is currently working on a commission for Trinity Rep.

First Person: From the Screenwriters Lab
By D.W. Harper

At my first meeting at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, I saw that the title of my screenplay, Dreamland, was circled, and creative advisor Zach Sklar had scrawled “I love the title!” next to it. I guess it hadn’t occurred to me in a long time, but I suddenly thought to myself “hey, I love the title too,” and then, more or less all at once, realized the Lab wasn’t going to be how I imagined it, at all. I was more used to industry pitch meetings that began with questions like “what’s this weird title mean?” (the script is about the guy that bombed the Oklahoma City Building, after all) and then went downhill from there.

I’m not sure how I imagined it going: maybe 14 people with long white beards (women included) possibly wearing gowns, holding up score cards? Something as ludicrous, probably. Certainly not, “I love the title!” Definitely not Zach Sklar – who more or less is the one person in the world I would have wanted look at my screenplay – talking to me with genuine excitement about what was actually good and bad about the script.

It was after breakfast, and Zach and I were sitting at one of the tables, the bright light bouncing off the snow outside making it seem much earlier than it was. Across from us, Allison Anders was talking to Adam Bhala Lough about his new project, I think maybe David Veloz was talking with Vald Lazar at another table. Someone else was over by the fireplace. Ski jackets and scarves were everywhere. It was a great room to be in.

So it was my first meeting of the workshop, and I spent the first ten minutes feeling goofily self conscious. After that, I got on task and starting listening to everything Zach had to say; some of the most incisive, respectful, and useful things that have ever been said about my script. I did a lot of talking too, probably more than I should have. But Zach clearly got it – the good and the bad. I got really excited and wanted to talk for hours, and that’s what happened, miraculously, in every meeting.

The advisors are all people who understand that whatever it is that makes a good movie is always a moving target. And as much wisdom and experience as they brought to bear, they also brought a very real humility to the task of helping me with my screenplay, and that’s what was so completely radical about the experience. I went on to meet with Howard Rodman, Craig Lucas, Naomi Foner, David Veloz, and Frank Pierson, and all of them focused on my particular project and its particular life, its needs, its possibilities, appreciating the work and approaching the re-write with the simple sense that we were somehow in this together. Outside of my writing partners and film collective, I hadn’t expected to ever enjoy that kind of community.

I met the other advisors, too. . .at dinner, at screenings, at drinks. I yelled at Guillermo Arriaga for claiming that, “America is a meritocracy,” and I was yelled at by Frank Pierson for my rather economical first film.I talked about music some - but not nearly enough - with Allison Anders... And hanging out with the other Fellows was as much a privilege, and as edifying, as any of the formal meetings. These are the people who will make the movies that I will love, and I hope to make a movie they will love – and that sense of fraternity is, now that I think of it, maybe one of the best things I took from Lab.

Now, I don’t like these kinds of things – wrap-up letters from the club retreat, concert reviews, party reports, whatnot - they’re so often problematic, and rarely do justice to the event, nor, do they usually serve any clear purpose past self-congratulation. But, smiling, here goes: I have say how enormously happy I am that the workshop truly was, above all, about the work and about making a community. I am profoundly grateful to Michelle and Matthew and Michael and Ilyse and Alesia and everyone else who worked so hard to provide this amazing environment for good honest work and community to grow. Community is so rare to come by, and it is only through the vision and sweat of people like Michelle that community is ever forged.

I returned to my life and my ten dozen commitments and the great scrambling mess of trying to get my next movie made feeling very different, not simply because of the support, the direction and advice, the connections made. But because, most of all, of the great counter-example that the workshop represents to the film business as usual. We’re in this thing together, after all.

D.W. Harper was in residence at the January Screenwriters Lab to develop Dreamland, his current feature film project which looks into the heart and mind of Timothy McVeigh.

Sundance/NHK Award Winners Announced
By Ann Lewinson
Originally published on Friday, January 28, in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider

On Thursday, January 27 at the Sundance Film Festival, Ken Brecher, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute, and Makoto Ueda of NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) announced the recipients of the 2005 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards: Catalin Mitulescu of Romania, Rodrigo Moreno of Argentina, Richard Press of the United States, and Mipo Oh of Japan.

The award is presented annually to filmmakers who “show a tremendous gift for storytelling,” said Brecher. And Ueda spoke of the importance of encouraging filmmaking outside of Hollywood. “Films should be made by various countries by various people,” he said.

Since 1996, the Sundance Institute, in partnership with NHK, Japan’s largest broadcaster, has given the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award to four emerging filmmakers - one from the United States, one from Europe, one from Latin America and one from Japan - to support their next films. The award is given to a director who has not made more than two films. Selection is based on the applicant’s previous films and a finished screenplay for a film that has not yet begun principal photography. Although the award goes to a director, generally the recipients have written or co-written the submitted screenplay, as is the case with all of this year’s winners. Recipients receive $10,000, an acquisitions agreement with NHK for Japanese broadcast rights for 15,000,000 yen (US $125,000-$150,000), an invitation to attend this year’s Sundance Film Festival, meetings with key industry executives and publicity through the Sundance Film Festival and the Institute.

This year’s recipients are all award-winning short filmmakers who have yet to make their first feature. Catalin Mitulescu’s film, How I Spent the End of the World, takes place in the last year of Ceausescu’s regime, when the filmmaker was 18. He said the award “will help me to make a film in the language of my country.” Rodrigo Moreno’s film, The Minder is based on his experience being the son of Argentina’s Public Health Minister. “My film is about a bodyguard that has to protect someone who no one wants to kill - it’s very peculiar.” Richard Press’s film, Virtual Love, is based on a New Yorker article he optioned about the writer Paul Monette’s friendship with a 15-year-old abuse survivor whose voice he had only heard over the phone - and may not even exist. He developed the screenplay in Sundance’s 2004 Filmmakers Lab. Mipo Oh’s film Yomoyama Blues, takes place in the countryside, where she grew up. Speaking through a translator, she said, “This is about a small country town but with this story I can warm people’s hearts all over the world.”

This year’s recipients were selected by an international jury comprised of Walter Salles (President), Antonia Bird, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Carlos Cuaron, Peter Carlton, Toshio Endo, Yoshio Kakeo and Shun’ichi Nagasaki. The awards are part of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, directed by Michelle Satter. Alesia Weston, Senior Manager, Feature Film Program, International, finds candidates for the award and administers the selection of award recipients.

Previous Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award recipients have included Walter Salles of Brazil with Central Station, winner of the 1999 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film; Chris Eyre of the United States with Smoke Signals, sinner of the of the Audience and Filmmaker Awards at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival; and Rodrigo Garcia of the United States with Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Past award recipients with films screening at this year’s Sundance Film Festival are Miranda July of the United States for Me and You and Everyone We Know, which screened in the Dramatic Competition; Sebastian Cordero of Ecuador for Crónicas, which screened in the World Dramatic Competition; and Michael Kang of the United States for The Motel, which screened in American Spectrum.

The awards were presented at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Saturday, January 29 at the Racquet Club Theatre in Park City.

Award winners, Richard Press, Catalin Mitulescu, Mipo Oh, and Rodrigo Moreno at the NHK/Sundance Award Reception at the Festival.

Mark Silverman Independent Producers Fellowship Presented
By Andrea Meyer
Originally published on Monday, January 24, in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider

Yesterday the Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers was presented to Ted Kroeber, whose first feature, American Gun, will be released by IFC Films this year. The fifth annual Producers Brunch was held at the restaurant 350 Main. Michelle Satter, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, opened the program. “Over many years we heard at the Festival that the directors got all the love,” she said. “So five years ago we established this brunch that really celebrates the enormous and extraordinary contributions of producers to the films that are here at the festival.”

Satter introduced Deborah Reinisch, director of the Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers, a fellowship presented in partnership with the Sundance Institute The award began as a tribute to Mark Silverman (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona), an independent producer who died in 1989 at 36. “He was a storyteller,” Reinisch said. “He was a money guy, yeah, but he was also . . . an alchemist, in bringing together the very best people and helping them do their very best work, and it’s in that spirit that we give support to a producer every year.”

Last year’s fellowship recipient, Gina Kwon who is at the Festival this year with two films, Me, You and Everyone We Know and The Motel, introduced Kroeber. His current project, Four Sheets to the Wind, is written and directed by Sterlin Harjo who developed the work at the 2003 Screenwriters Lab and the 2004 Filmmakers Lab. Kroeber will receive a cash grant of $5,000 for pre-production costs on the project. He will also be introduced to five mentors of his choice, who will offer advice and support throughout the Fellowship year, and he will attend the 2005 Sundance Producers Conference. In expressing his gratitude, Kroeber told the crowd, “I got weak in the knees today talking to a couple of people whose careers I’ve been following like a nerd.”

Kroeber was followed by keynote speaker Anthony Bregman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Thumbsucker). After offering his personal tips on how to live a fulfilling life as a producer, Bregman ended on a positive note. “I always get an incredible thrill when I crack open the first page of a new script, because there’s always a chance that you might be entering a world that will be exciting and new, that will absorb you for the next two to five years,” he said.

Feature Film Program Director Michelle Satter with Silverman Fellowship Recipient Ted Kroeber.

Life After the Labs
Completed Projects
Two Lab projects received Jury Awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Ira Sachs’ Lab project Forty Shades of Blue (1998 Screenwriters Lab) won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Film and Miranda July received a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision for her film Me And You And Everyone We Know (2003 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs). Immediately following the Festival, July’s film was screened in New York as part of MoMA’s Premieres screenings, and will be released this summer by IFC Films.

Lab filmmakers had a presence at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now (2003 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs) premiered in competition where it received three awards: the Blue Angel Award for European Film the Amnesty International Film Prize, and the Berline Morgenpost Readers Prize. It will be distributed in the U.S. by Warner Independent Pictures. Also showing at the 2005 Berlinale were Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, Yesim Ustaoglu’s Waiting for the Clouds (2002 Screenwriters Lab) and Malgosia Szumowska’s Stranger (2002 Screenwriters Lab) screened in the Panorama section of the Festival. In addition, Michael Kang’s The Motel (2002 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), Doug Sadler’s Swimmers (2002 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), and Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin (1997 Screenwriters Lab) all had market screenings at Berlin.

Finally, Maria Full of Grace (2002 Screenwriters Lab), directed by Joshua Marston, was recognized with a Best Actress Academy Award nomination to Catalina Sandino Moreno for her performance in the film.

Post-Production
Recently wrapped films now moving into post-production include Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft’s Dot (2004 Screenwriters Lab), directed by Jamie Babbit (But I’m a Cheerleader) and starring Camilla Belle, Elisha Cuthbert, Edie Falco and Martin Donovan; Laurie Collyer’s Shall Not Want (2001 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal; and David Ayer’s Harsh Times (1997 Screenwriters Lab), starring Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez.

Pre-Production
And gearing up for spring starts are the international projects Scar, written and directed by Teboho Mahlatsi (2003 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), and Sweet Mud, written and directed by Dror Shaul (2003 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs). American projects scheduled to begin production this spring are A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, written and directed by Dito Montiel (2004 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs), and Paper Man, written and directed by Kieran and Michele Mulroney (2004 Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs) and starring Paul Giamatti.

Patron Circle Members Meet Filmmakers at ’05 Festival
At the Festival this year, Patron Circle members enjoyed a range of special events and screenings. On Sunday, January 23, members joined Festival filmmakers and Institute trustees at the restaurant Zoom on Park City’s Main Street for the Patron Circle Celebrates the 2005 Sundance Festival Filmmakers Reception. At the event, Rodrigo Garcia, director of the ’05 Festival film Nine Lives, and Institute Trustee Glenn Close who stars in Nine Lives, spoke about the importance of supporting independent artists and thanked the Patron Circle for their financial commitment to Sundance.

Patron Circle member Anne Padgett meets Hank Rogerson, director of the documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, at a private reception at the Sundance House.

The Sundance Institute Patron Circle donor group shares the Institute’s commitment to the development of artists and projects of independent vision. Members of the Patron Circle 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. For more information, please contact individualgiving@sundance.org.

Benefit Gala to Honor Risk-Takers in the Arts
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Gotham Hall, New York City

The Sundance community will gather in New York City to celebrate the spirit of risk-taking by recognizing individuals whose own work embodies independence, boldness, and creativity. Sundance President Robert Redford serves as Honorary Chair.

Proceeds from the event help to fund the Institute’s activities in support of emerging artists. To purchase tickets and for more information, contact the Benefit Office at 310.360.1981, extension 140, or visit www.sundance.org.

Documentary Series Presents American Hollow on
March 3 in Park City
On March 3 in Park City, the Institute's Documentary Film Series presents American Hollow, the first film from director Rory Kennedy. The free monthly screenings are followed by open forum discussions with filmmakers, critics, and subjects of the films. Screenings begin at 7 p.m. in the Jim Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library, 1255 Park Avenue. Tickets or reservations are not required. The series is part of the Institute's Arts & Audiences Utah Initiative and is generously supported by the Summit County Recreation, Arts, and Parks Program.

Deadline: Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Program Fellowship
Application Deadline: February 25, 2005
The Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship is awarded to a project that explores science and technology, or depicts scientists in engaging and innovative ways. As a participant in the Sundance Feature Film Program, the Sloan Fellow receives year-round support for his or her project – from script development to the pre-production stage. Sloan submissions for the June 2005 Filmmakers Lab are now being accepted through February 25, 2005.
Apply

Deadline: Feature Film Program
Application Deadline: May 1, 2004
Applications for the January 2006 Screenwriters Lab are now being accepted through May 1, 2005.
Apply