The Latest
In Memory of Audrey Wells
We lost Audrey Wells, one of the greats this past week. Audrey was a beautiful, fierce, brilliant and spirited mother, wife, friend, writer, and devoted creative advisor at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab.
I first met Audrey in 1999 at our Sundance Film Festival when we premiered her feature directorial debut Gueniviere, which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Native Filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: “Sovereignty Is Home”
The Sundance Institute Merata Mita Fellowship for Indigenous Women Artists pays tribute to the immense artistic contributions and memory of Merata Mita (Ngati Pikiao/Ngai te Rangi). Merata served as an advisor and artistic director to the Sundance Institute’s Native Filmmakers Lab from 2000 to 2009, where she mentored and championed many of the top Indigenous talent in today’s film industry.In commemoration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program is pleased to issue a call for projects for the Merata Mita Fellowship for Indigenous Women Artists.
Robert Redford: A Brief Statement About Big Things
Tonight, for the first time I can remember, I feel out of place in the country I was born into and the citizenship I’ve loved my whole life. For weeks I’ve watched with sadness as our civil servants have failed us, turning toward bigotry, mean-spiritedness, and mockery as the now-normal tools of the trade.How can we expect the next generation to step up and serve, to be interested in public life, and to aspire to get involved when all we show them is how to spar, attack, and destroy each other?It’s hard to blame young people for calling us out, and pointing to our conflicts between the values we declare, and those we stand behind only when it’s convenient to partisanship.
Sundance Institute Announces 2018 Episodic Lab Fellows
Fifth Year of Program Introduces 12 Fellows and 9 New Television Pilots Selected for Lab and
Customized Year-Round SupportLos Angeles — Sundance Institute has selected nine original television pilots for support at its
fifth annual Episodic Lab, which runs from September 27 to October 2 at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah. With
topics and formats ranging from half-hour comedies about friendships put to the test to historical dramas about the
struggle for Native American land sovereignty, the broad scope of this year’s projects – and the diverse backgrounds
of their creators – speak to the Institute’s long-term support of the episodic format. The Episodic Lab is the
centerpiece of the Institute’s year-round continuum of support for emerging television writers.
Q&A: Wash Westmoreland Revisits a Timeless Story of Female Empowerment in ‘Colette’
This interview was originally published following the world premiere of “Colette” at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.A lot has changed since the last time Wash Westmoreland attended the Sundance Film Festival. While here in 2006 with Richard Glatzer, his partner and eventual husband, to support Quinceañera, the couple were shocked to win the Audience Award, as well as the Grand Jury Prize for a movie that had begun as a personal conversation about their neighborhood’s gentrification.
Introducing the 2019 Sundance Film Festival Visual Identity
Greatness is rarely birthed in places of comfort. As the saying goes, “No risk, no reward.”
Whereas comfort is often born, bred, and laid to rest in one place, risk is an expedition into infinity.
Poetic Portraits of the 2018 New Frontier Story Lab
In May 2018 I was invited to join Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab in Utah as a Creative Observer. As an inclusion producer from the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed in Bristol, UK, it was a treat to be invited to observe a naturally intersectional and representative lab process in the U.S.
‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’ is a Perceptive Meditation on Life in the South
This article was originally published following the world premiere of “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film comes to theaters in New York and Los Angeles on September 14th and September 21st, respectively. Find a screening here.
Gerardo Coello Escalante: “The Only Truly Necessary Element to Make a Film Is an Idea”
As a young filmmaker, figuring out what steps to take in the process of making your first feature film is like attempting to find a path through a curtain of smoke. There is no readymade answer or right way of going about it. But none of the routes are easy.
Remembering Master Screenwriter Tom Rickman
I first met Tom Rickman in 1981 at the inaugural Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab. We were all figuring out how to create a safe, creative space for writers, and Tom, along with Frank Daniel, Frank Pierson, and Waldo Salt, were instrumental in our early days as our founding Creative Advisor group.
Over three decades, Tom continued to be an inspiration to hundreds of emerging writers, transformed by the time and care he put into each meeting, each interaction.
The Dreaded ‘P’ Word: How to Learn to Love Pitching
Documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter (Gideon’s Army; Trapped) opened a conversation last month by leveling with everyone about the cringeworthy nature of the pitching process. “Very few people enjoy pitching. People should realize they are not alone in their loathing of pitching.
Money and Marketing for Creatives: Tips from the Creative Distribution Master Class
Michael W. Pannell is a writer and one-time filmmaker based in Georgia.I wondered if I wanted to spend my Saturday at a workshop on how to creatively raise money to make movies and then ingeniously promote them and get them in front of an audience.
What to Watch in September
In a month when more Sundance-supported films make their releases than any other in recent memory, a slew of badass women are dominating the screen. To canvass the indie film slate in September is to find yourself among intimate portraits of women brimming with conviction. In Kusama – Infinity, it’s Yayoi Kusama’s against-the-odds journey from the rigid conformity of her home life in Japan to becoming the top-selling female artist in the world; in Colette, Wash Westmoreland revisits the eponymous vanguard French writer whose own husband stripped her of authorial credit; and in Bad Reputation and Matangi/Maya/M.
The Metroplex and Sundance Institute Proudly Present 2018 Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong September 20 to October 1, 2018
(Hong Kong – August 16, 2018) Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong returns for the fifth edition this September with a selection of 12 independent films, direct from this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, U.S.A.
Writer/Director Sky Bruno on His Experience at the Sundance Institute Directors Lab
Insecurity had been commonplace for me in the months leading up to the summer of 2018. Seeing that all my friends and mentors had plans and were working on films, being stagnant was the last thing I wanted. The pressure to create weighed heavy on my shoulders as I sat at my desk staring at blank pages, praying for inspiration to descend.