The Latest
Sundance Film Forward Brings Free Film Screenings and Master Classes to Atlanta and Macon, March 28-31
Los Angeles, CA — Expanding on ongoing efforts to engage the next generation of filmmakers and film lovers, Sundance Institute will host a free filmmaker roundtable, film screenings, discussions and master classes in the ATL and Macon March 28-31, in collaboration with Sticky Toe Pads. Independent filmmakers, local students and film fans are invited to attend the events, which are part of the Institute’s ongoing efforts to connect cultures and people through film.
Sundance Film Forward will host free screenings of acclaimed independent films Dope and Umrika, as well as guided discussions with filmmakers Mimi Valdes (Dope) and Prashant Nair and Swati Shetty (Umrika).
10 Films By Women That Prove We Need More Gender Parity
One would hope that on International Women’s Day in the year 2016 gender inequality, whether societal, economical, or within the arts, would have become a cultural pestilence of generations past. And while progress and parity are not entirely absent, there are still disturbing trends that indicate we (or our systems) remain fettered to a collective primeval intellect. The work of our Women at Sundance program and Female Filmmakers’ Initiative is conceived as a corrective to a dearth of opportunities presented to women in the film industry, but we are still nowhere near where we should be.
Sundance Institute Announces Eight Projects for Theatre Lab in MENA, May 2016
New York, NY — Sundance Institute today announced the eight new projects selected for its pilot Theatre Lab in the MENA region, held in Morocco, May 2016. The Lab is part of the Institute’s international cultural exchange programs for independent artists, which include a new, multi-year commitment to support artists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), broadening the work of its East African Theatre Exchange over the past 15 years. For the Lab, the Institute will provide promising, fresh voices from the U.
Malik Vitthal and Terence Nance On How to Develop and Sustain the Next Crop of Artists
For all the incessant parsing of cinema’s very real diversity problem, few voices have confronted the issues in earnest. The coverage has been pervasive, and has – if only superficially – begun to effect change. Last week on the heels of Black History Month, we gathered a pair of vibrant and urgent creative voices for a wide-ranging and pleasantly meandering conversation.
What to Watch in March: Love is Absurd in ‘The Lobster’
Yorgos Lanthimos’ relentless trademark absurdism is at its best and most pointed in The Lobster, the Colin Farrell-led drama that sees its protagonist defect from a matchmaking hotel where he has 45 days to find a partner or be transformed into an animal of his choice. The Lobster operates on any number of frequencies, from its acute sense of pacing to its dreary, nearly monochromatic visual aesthetic, Lanthimos’ writing and direction pull the viewer in varying directions while chopping at the cultural underpinnings of modern love – or worse, what it could become. The film finally makes its commercial theatrical run next Friday after premiering at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
So You Want to Be a Film Composer? A Day at Sundance Institute’s Film Music Master Class
Last weekend, Sundance Instite’s Film Music Program, in collaboration with the University of Miami Frost School of Music, presented a free daylong master class for composers, filmmakers, students, and other industry professionals. The program offered access to some of the top creators working in film and television, and was hosted by composer and Film Music Program director Peter Golub. As an opener, Golub discusses Sundance Institute’s recent programs in Miami, the Knight Foundation’s support of the day’s event, and divulges some best practices for submitting your artist application to the Institute.
From ‘Trainwreck’ to ‘Room,’ Brie Larson Shares Her “Tapestry of Weird”
At age 6, Brie Larson told her mother she wanted to be an actress. Twenty years later, Larson gleams in the Hollywood spotlight for her critically acclaimed performance in the gripping drama Room, which has earned her an Oscar Best Actress nomination. Early in her career—long before this award-buzzy role in which Larson plays a resilient mother held prisoner in a tiny shed with her son—the actress learned to say no to roles that did not personally speak to her.
6 Questions on ‘Cartel Land’ with Oscar-Nominated Documentary Filmmaker Matthew Heineman
An alumnus of Sundance Institute’s artist labs and a two-time Festival participant, Matthew Heineman has been making nonfiction cinema for a decade. Now, alongside fellow Sundance Documentary Film Program-supported filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (The Look of Silence), Heineman is in the running for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His film Cartel Land, which has been honored with a DGA Award and the prestigious Polk Journalism Award, is a deeply disturbing and wildly entertaining vérité film about the international drug war, set at the U.
Oscars Preview: Hertzfeldt’s Stick Figures Return in ‘World of Tomorrow’
It’s not a charge lobbed at filmmakers as frequently as musicians, but the former are far from impervious to the hackneyed accusation of “selling out.” Let’s just get this out of the way: Don Hertzfeldt is the antithesis of a sellout. This is a filmmaker who inhabits and galvanizes perhaps the most obscure, unheralded expanse of independent filmmaking – animated shorts.
Meet the 2016 Knight Fellows: 4 Emerging Storytellers
Sundance Institute annually selects up to four artists from the eight Knight resident communities to attend the Sundance Film Festival. These artists reflect Sundance Institute and the Knight Foundation’s commitment to developing and nurturing the next generation of creative voices. Knight Fellows are afforded a five-day residency at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where they participate in a specially curated program.
Oscars Preview: What Happened, Miss Simone?
Passionate, mercurial, prodigiously talented. They’re adjectives that could characterize any number of entertainers, but maybe none more than the utterly compelling, endlessly perplexing Nina Simone. In January at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, director Liz Garbus—a first-class artist in her own right—premiered her sweeping portrait of the complicated singer and pianist whose classically trained skills were paired with an undeniable fervor for activism.
A Week in the Life of a Director at the Sundance Film Festival
I will spare you the humblebrag. It’s too easy here: “I’m so honored to have had a film at the Sundance Film Festival.” True? Of course.
Oscars Preview: Saoirse Ronan Finds a Version of Herself in ‘Brooklyn’
Saoirse Ronan’s Best Actress Oscar nomination for her redefining turn in Brooklyn was something of a fait accompli among the awards forecasting crowd, and for good reason. But the film’s surprising Best Picture nod in some ways symbolized the Academy’s successive bow to her glowing performance – although supporting acts from Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson would also have their say. As Eric Hynes remarked in last year’s profile of the unassuming 21-year-old, her development from “precocious child” actor to a talent on the brink of womanhood has seemed almost surreal in its uniformity.
The Moral Imagination: A ‘Stories of Change’ Discussion at the Sundance Film Festival
The task is first of all to identify the immoral imagination. To shine a light on it. To help people see how it works.
Sundance Institute Brings Sundance Film Forward to Denver Feb 22-25
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute announced today the free public screenings of award-winning independent films as well as special events and student programs in Denver as part of Sundance Film Forward, taking place February 22-25 with the Denver Film Society. Filmmakers Ilinca Calugareanu (Chuck Norris vs Communism) and Bryan Carberry (Finders Keepers) will travel to Denver with the program to lead guided discussions around their films. Sundance Film Forward is a touring program designed for students and artists (18 – 24 years old) that offers film screenings and discussions to excite and cultivate new audiences for independent film.