The Latest
Cinema as Therapy: 7 Films to Watch During Mental Health Month
It’s almost never easy or convenient to broach the issues that warrant our attention. Admittedly, sometimes our collective aversion to truly confronting our world’s pain is a problem. When we channel the courage to do so, we usually find that the commonality offers its own sense of healing.
‘Pervert Park’ Gives Sex Offenders a Voice
People, places, and stories aren’t always what you expect them to be in Pervert Park, a moving and bravely humane documentary about a self-contained community of sex offenders in St. Petersburg, Florida. As Swedish director Frida Barkfors and her Danish husband Lasse Barkfors said at the film’s premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, they were also surprised by what they found in the park.
From Lebanon to Cannes: Go on a Journey with ‘Tramontane’
Vatche Boulghourjian’s debut feature Tramontane made its world premiere in Critics’ Week at Cannes on Tuesday. The film, about a blind man on the trail of his origins in post-war Lebanon, took four years to make. The following is a chronological account on the making of Tramontane, told from writer/director Vatche Boulghourjian’s and producer Caroline Oliveira’s points of view.
Sundance Institute Announces New ‘FilmTwo’ Initiative to Support Second-Time Feature Filmmakers
Andrew Ahn | Shaz Bennett | Bernardo Britto | Steven Caple Jr. | Jonas Carpignano | Marta Cunningham | Alistair Banks Griffin | Siân Heder | Marielle Heller | Anna Rose Holmer | Crystal Moselle | Felix Thompson | Yared ZelekeLos Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced a significant expansion of its signature artist development programs to include targeted support for second-time feature filmmakers, addressing a growing need in the field of independent storytelling, especially for women and filmmakers of color. The new FilmTwo Initiative, led by the Institute’s renowned Feature Film Program, with generous support from Founding Partner NBCUniversal, will offer selected directors specialized creative and tactical guidance in navigating the unique challenges of making their second feature films.
Indie Filmmakers: What Drives You, Matters
It can be easy to forget that everyone starts somewhere. We are often so preoccupied with our own distorted sense of inadequacy and dazzled by “sound bite” stories of overnight success, that we miss the true and abiding comfort that can be found in uncovering the far more frequent stories of failure>investigation>persistence>wisdom that culminate in hard won success.
In a conversation with, Joseph Beyer, director of digital initiatives at Sundance Institute, he asked, “So what was your take away?” If I could sum up one of the most profound benefits of attending Sundance Institute’s #ArtistServices Philadelphia Workshop, it would be that no matter how green you are when you begin – If you embrace your failures with an insatiable appetite to learn and improve, and funnel your passion into inspired strategy – You can overcome all odds and make a living telling the stories that drive you.
Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab Explores the Future with Six Creative Teams and Projects
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Video Games and Installations
Take Center Stage as New Frontier Turns 10
Peter Burr | Porpentine Charity Heartscape | Shawn Peters | Barry Cole | Josephine Decker | Jess Engel | Nicole McDonald |
Rob Auten | yako (Jean-Christophe Yacono) | Ziad Touma | Nicolas Peufaillit | Mark Farid | John Ingle | Nimrod Vardi
Los Angeles, CA – Sundance Institute announced today the six projects selected for the New Frontier Story Lab, the groundbreaking cinematic new media program that empowers creatives at the forefront of innovation in entertainment and storytelling, May 19-24 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. Past participants include Roger Ross Williams, Yung Jake, Chris Milk, Cory McAbee, Navid and Vassiliki Khonsari, Karim Ben Khelifa, Tracy Fullerton and Lucas Peterson.
The Sundance Institute New Frontier program, celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, supports and fosters independent artists working at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology.
Sundance Film Forward Brings Free Film Screenings and Discussions to London, June 6-9
Sundance Institute Invites Students, Artists and Film Lovers to Events at British Film Institute, Ravensbourne University, London Film School, and Regent Street Cinemas
Program Follows Sundance Film Festival: London, June 2-5 at Picturehouse Central
(L-R) Chuck Norris vs. Communism, Credit: Kevin Williams; Amy, Credit: Sundance Institute; Tig, Credit: Sundance Institute.
Los Angeles, CA — Immediately following the Sundance Film Festival: London, Sundance Institute will present Sundance Film Forward, a series of free film screenings and filmmaker discussions June 6-9.
Q&A: Kate Beckinsale Is a Pre-Tinder Temptress in ‘Love & Friendship’
Whit Stillman’s elegant, witty Love & Friendship, based on Lady Susan, an unpublished novella by Jane Austen, opens this Friday after premiering in the Premieres section of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, the pairing of Stillman, known for his sophisticated comedies of social mores, and Austen, beloved for her 19th-century romantic fiction, proved to be as well-made a match as any that might appear in the works of the English author. Before the film’s premiere, Stillman, who made his Sundance debut in 1990 with Metropolitan, even joked to the audience that his films “have often been accused of being set in Georgian times.
Watch These Films With Mom This Weekend
A mother’s love is of the most ineffable variety. In the
spirit of abiding by that rule, we won’t attempt to belabor the point here.
Instead, a range of films has expressed that truth for us.
Sundance Institute Selects Eight First-Time Filmmakers for Directors Lab, May 30-June 23
Frances Bodomo | Annie Silverstein | César Cervantes | Kibwe Tavares | Eva Vives | Sandhya Suri | Pippa Bianco | Boots Riley
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute has selected eight first-time filmmakers for its signature Directors Lab, which helped launch the careers of award-winning filmmakers Cary Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Marielle Heller, Benh Zeitlin and Quentin Tarantino. Taking place May 30-June 23 in the mountains of Sundance Resort in Utah, the annual Lab supports the next wave of independent filmmakers exploring new ideas and shaping the future of storytelling.
At the Directors Lab, under the leadership of Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter, Labs Director Ilyse McKimmie and the artistic direction of Gyula Gazdag, the Fellows will work with an accomplished group of creative advisors, professional actors and production crews to shoot and edit key scenes from their screenplays.
5 Reasons Why Michael J. Larnell Chose to Creatively Release ‘Cronies’
Michael J. Larnell’s stark ode to St. Louis is an earnest depiction of a day in the life of three friends as they rove aimlessly through their hometown smoking “squares,” pursuing girls, and testing their luck.
Dispatches from Sundance Institute’s YouTube Creators Intensive
For some reason, staring at the lamp on my desk doesn’t always get me jazzed for a long night of writing. Despite the pleasing geometry of its triangular IKEA frame, it’s always been a rather underwhelming view. It’s a sad reality here in Brooklyn that home offices are crammed with a clutter of things that didn’t make the grade for the rest of your apartment: futons, art that wasn’t quite nice enough to put up in your living room, a corner full of guitars, and a bookshelf that you just gave up on and started stuffing books into horizontally.
A Climate Change Film that Never says “Climate Change”: “Collisions” at the Skoll World Forum
Arriving in Oxford this year with the Sundance Institute delegation had the feeling of a homecoming. I have been lucky to have participated in the Skoll World Forum through their Stories of Change partnership four times, since Maren Grainger-Monsen and I brought the social change makers and stars of our documentary film The Revolutionary Optimists to participate in a panel on youth leadership. Experiencing their meaningful interactions with the Stories of Change community was exciting, and I have been lucky enough to work on film projects now with several Skoll Awardees—GoodWeave, Healthcare Without Harm, and Health Leads among them.
Lynette Walworth on Finding Storytellers for the Stories That Need to Be Told
At this year’s Skoll World Forum, I spoke on a panel about Empathetic Storytelling and the Moral Imagination and referenced Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” and the Auden poem “Musee des Beaux Arts’ that is now its companion.
The tiny white legs of Icarus disappearing into the sea are the subject of the work but, off to one side and barely visible, they will pass into the depths unnoticed unless someone calls attention to them. That act of drawing the eye to the urgent unwitnessed is an essential work of many documentary filmmakers.
Slithering Screens: Can Virtual Reality Be a Communal Experience?
In recent years as virtual reality has continued its foray into the creative zeitgeist, any number of interactions with the growing form could feel revolutionary. Whether it’s the real-time coalescence of story and technology, or the heady realization that the medium is still in its nascent stages, VR never lacks one thing: mystique. On Monday night at MoMA’s kick-off to “Slithering Screens,” a five-night retrospective exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of New Frontier at Sundance Institute, that truth was still extant.