The Latest
Staff Spotlight: Retiring Ticketing Director Linda Pfafflin on the Serendipity That Led to a Career
Linda Pfafflin is the director of ticketing at Sundance Institute and is retiring this month. She attended the Sundance Film Festival for the first time as a patron in 1998 before becoming a volunteer and then an employee.
After 21 years, it’s still all about serendipity.
Call for Applications: Score a Spot at the Film Music and Sound Design Lab
April 3 is National Film Score Day—and what better way to celebrate than by applying to the Film Music and Sound Design Lab? The lab will take place at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California. Composers who are selected for the program are assigned either a fiction or documentary film project, and each fellow collaborates one-on-one with their project’s director to score a selection of scenes, with guidance from experienced advisors in both the film music and directing fields. Apply now!
Inside the 2018 Film Music and Sound Design Lab
As for advice for those applying, it’s important to submit music that demonstrates your unique style.
What to Watch in April
In the opening minutes of Native Son, Big, a young man played by Ashton Sanders, rests a gun on his worn copy of Invisible Man. This image sets the tone for the catastrophic direction of the modern adaptation of Richard Wright’s seminal work—directed by Rashid Johnson and written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks—that shocked audiences throughout the 2019 Festival. The film premieres on HBO early this month.
“No Turning Back”: Keri Putnam on Women’s History Month
As we come to the end of Women’s History Month, I’m heartened to celebrate the recognition and discourse around the gaps in representation of women in media. This is no longer a problem that lives in the shadows. I think back to the history of early cinema and the women pioneers who were erased from the record (check them out here and here), and I wish we were celebrating more concrete progress.
When the Future Is Now: On Understanding AI and Being a Misfit Artist in a Family of Scientists
Shalini Kantayya is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who was an inaugural grantee of the Science Sandbox Nonfiction Initiative in 2018. Her untitled documentary project examines the bias programmed into computer algorithms and how they affect our civil liberties.A group of scientists sits gathered around a sunlit table in a cafeteria with views of New York City, all experts in various fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Composing Equity: 18 Women Composers You Should Know
Alana Hauser is the manager of Sundance Institute’s Catalyst and Women at Sundance programs.
In a recent New York Times interview, film composer Tamar-kali identified herself as “an outlier within the outliers.” As an Afro-indigenous punk rocker and composer for Sundance Film Festival features Mudbound and Come Sunday, Tamar-kali is one of few women, and even fewer women of color, in the male-dominated field of film music.
So You Want to Be a Film Producer? Monique Walton on ‘Bull’
Austin-based Monique Walton produced the 2014 short film Skunk (written and directed by Annie Silverstein), which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation and screened at festivals worldwide. She has produced numerous short films and documentaries and leads youth media workshops for students of color in Austin. Walton was selected for the 2016 Sundance Creative Producing Lab and was named the Mark Silverman Honoree for her upcoming feature Bull, about a wayward Houston teen’s run-in with her neighbor, an aging bullfighter who’s seen his best days in the arena.
Sundance Institute’s FilmTwo Initiative: Fostering Sustainability, Creativity in Storytelling
Two-Day Workshop Supported by Universal Filmed Entertainment Group Launches Year-Round Support for Fellows
Los Angeles, CA — The fourth annual FilmTwo Initiative launches today in LA to support the career sustainability of thirteen artists developing their second features. FilmTwo encompasses two days of focused programming, including a writing workshop (led by Joan Tewkesbury), industry mentoring sessions, and one-on-one story meetings, kicking off a year of tailored creative and tactical support as part of the Institute’s continuum of support for artists at key inflection points in their careers. The FilmTwo Initiative is supported by Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.
“Everything Is Changing”: A Conversation with MoMA Film Curator Rajendra Roy
Sundance Institute Programmer Hussain Currimbhoy sat down with Rajendra Roy, the Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, to discuss the shifts in the industry and how they’re affecting everything from festivals and theaters to distribution and the Academy Awards. Rajendra Roy: It’s super timely we would have this chat. Everything is changing and everything is going to have to function in new ways.
Native Filmmaker Erica Tremblay: “What Is #MeToo if Not a Movement in Decolonization?”
Erica Tremblay is a documentary filmmaker and
activist who belongs to the Seneca-Cayuga Nation and is also of
Wyandotte heritage. Below she reflects on her experiences as a Native
Filmmakers Lab Fellow and an Indigenous woman filmmaker in the age of
#MeToo.Sgę́:nǫˀ.
What to Watch in March
March loads up with a twofer of 100% Certified Fresh films out of the 2019 Festival.Not since Senna have we seen such a dexterous handling of exclusively archive material as we do in Apollo 11, director Todd Miller’s immersive journey through the first moon landing. NASA opened its vaults to reveal never-before-seen 70 mm footage of the spacecraft’s launch, landing, and return home, making for an indelible new portrait of a pivotal moment in American history.
A Silenced Voice? A Note Concerning ‘The Infiltrators’ Protagonist Claudio Rojas
Last week, Claudio Rojas, one of the main subjects in Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera’s documentary The Infiltrators, was detained by ICE. In the film, Claudio acted as the inside source about conditions in a for-profit detention center in Florida where he had been detained for overstaying his visa in 2012. The Infiltrators had just premiered to great acclaim at Sundance Film Festival, winning the NEXT Innovator and Audience Awards, and was about to be screened at the Miami Film Festival with Claudio in attendance.
Sundance Institute Selects 11 Emerging Storytellers for Screenwriters Intensive
LOS ANGELES — Eleven screenwriters have been selected to participate in Sundance Institute’s seventh annual Screenwriters Intensive in Los Angeles, to take place February 28 – March 1, 2019. Part of the Institute’s commitment to introducing the industry to an inclusive pipeline of exciting new storytellers, the Intensive is a two-day workshop for writers or writer/directors from underrepresented communities developing their first fiction feature. Fellows at the Intensive will advance the art and craft of their work under the guidance of experienced filmmakers and in collaboration with Institute’s Feature Film Program.
6 Sundance Institute-Supported Films Take Home Spirit Awards
A 28-year-old YouTuber. A hip-hop vocalist. A kid and his amateur skate vids.
Mary Lampson on the Art of Editing: “We Have Extraordinary Power and a Great Responsibility”
At the Sundance Film Festival last month, editor Mary Lampson presented a keynote highlighting the role of an editor and her journey through the ranks of the industry during Sundance Institute and the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship’s Art of Editing Reception. Below we’ve published Lampson’s speech in full.
First I’d like to thank Sundance Institute and the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship for asking me to speak today, and also Adobe for supporting this event.