The Latest
An Act of Hospitality: The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in North Africa
The upcoming season at the Sundance Institute Theatre Program is unprecedented and excites us as never before. For over three decades we have hosted our centerpiece Theatre Lab against the majesty of Mount Timpanogos, at the Sundance Resort in Utah. As I write, my staff and I are deep in conversation about how we will bring to life an entirely new iteration of this developmental workshop: our 2016 Theatre Lab will be a marriage of our U.
Sundance Film Forward Travels to Kolkata, India October 5-8
Park City, UT — Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced today that Sundance Film Forward will host free screenings of acclaimed independent films with moderated discussions in Kolkata, India October 5-8 in collaboration with the Documentary Resource Initiative (DRI). The screenings of films and guided discussions will take place at Rabindra Tirtha (HIDCO), Goethe Institute, Kolkata, Jadavpur University and Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute.
Sundance Film Forward is a touring program designed for 18 to 24 year olds, students and artists that offers film screenings and discussions to excite and cultivate new audiences for independent film.
Louie Psihoyos’s New Documentary About Mass Extinction Is Like ‘The Avengers’—But Real
Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and his team of activists and innovators that made The Cove are back with a new mission to save more endangered species. Where The Cove centered on the plight of dolphins, his latest film Racing Extinction, which premiered early this year in the U.S.
Sundance Film Festival: London Sets 2016 Dates
Picturehouse Central, London, 10 September 2015 — Sundance Institute and Picturehouse will host the Sundance Film Festival: London from 2 to 5 June 2016 at the recently launched Picturehouse Central. The festival will feature the international and UK premieres of films from the 2016 edition of the renowned Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, USA.John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, comments: “Building on our 30-year legacy of discovery and creativity, the Sundance Film Festival: London gives us the opportunity to share new independent films we love with adventurous and engaged audiences in the UK.
Sundance Institute and The Metroplex Proudly Present Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong From Sept 17 – 27, 2015
(Hong Kong – 10 September, 2015) With last year’s success of the Sundance Film Festival – Hong Kong Selects, Sundance Institute and The Metroplex will present the 2015 Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong from September 17 to 27, hosting the Hong Kong premieres of 11 quality independent films featured in the 2015 Sundance Film Festival at Park City, Utah, U.S.A.
‘Welcome to Leith’ Will Infuriate You, But That’s Why You Should See It
As often as cinema can operate as a vehicle for empathy, it can just as easily provoke the contrary. Co-directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker never intended for their film to pander to audience’s entrenched beliefs, and that was on display front-and-center at a hot-blooded screening of the film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where its most nefarious subject joined via Skype during a rowdy Q&A session.
6 Deadbeat Sundance Characters for Labor Day
I ‘ll sometimes find myself musing over the relevance of longstanding holidays and how, maybe, there ought to be qualifiers for who gets the day off. Exhibit A: Labor Day, celebrated by everyone from workers living a life of drudgery to students who may have never worked an honest day in their lives. It would seem that a career spent constructing high-rises, or diagnosing maladies, or defending indigent legal clients would probably merit a day off more than, say, a professional poker player (Dan Bilzerian, insufferable trust fund bro, I’m looking at you).
Filmmakers, There’s Still Time to Submit Your Films to the 2016 Festival
It’s no secret that writers—and plenty of other creative disciplines—have some sort of congenital penchant for procrastination. Filing filmmakers into this same category seems apropos, which is why we at Sundance have not one, not two, but three filmmaker submission deadlines. If that makes us enablers, then so be it.
Artist Services Workshop Heads to Oaxaca, Mexico
Oaxaca FilmFest announced today details of the Sundance Institute Artist Services Workshops highlighting the New Industry section during Oaxaca FilmFest 6. The workshops, which will feature unique conversations with industry experts from Kickstarter, Indiegogo and VHX, are designed to give filmmakers the necessary skills and tools to understand new and emerging trends in the ever-changing digital landscape.
The Workshops will be held October 12–14, 2015, and led by Sundance Institute Director of Digital Initiatives Joseph Beyer and Artist Services Manager Missy Laney.
Sundance Film Forward Travels to Taiwan September 19-23
Park City, UT — Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced today that Sundance Film Forward will host free screenings of acclaimed independent films and moderated discussions with directors in Taiwan September 19-23 in collaboration with the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and CNEX.
Sundance Film Forward is a touring program designed for 18 to 24 year olds, students and artists that offers film screenings and discussions to excite and cultivate new audiences for independent film. It uses the power of cinema to promote broader cultural understanding, inspire curiosity and enhance awareness of shared stories and values across generations, religions, ethnicities and borders.
10 Years Later: Hurricane Katrina Through the Lens of Filmmakers
There is truth in the conviction that “time heals all wounds.” But in New Orleans, exactly 10 years after one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S.
Three’s a Crowd for Ejiofor, Pine, and Robbie in ‘Z for Zachariah’
The last time Craig Zobel premiered a film at the Sundance Film Festival, he wasn’t sure he’d make it out of the theater. After debuting his film Compliance in 2012, the film’s post-screening Q&A session was reduced to a shouting match as a combative audience member lobbed criticisms at the director’s intentions with the film. Earlier this year during Zobel’s second time around in Park City, the drama stayed on the screen.
Beck, Cat Power, and Others Go ‘Station to Station’
Is a film really a film if it’s actually more of a kinetic collage that weaves through canyons and countrysides, picking up Beck or Cat Power or the Kansas City Marching Cobras along the way? We like to think so, and Doug Aitken, the ever-inventive multimedia artist, often makes it so. Aitken’s newest project, Station to Station, can seem inscrutable at first. The Aitken-prescribed tagline, “62 one-minute films.
A Trip Down Memory Lane On Robert Redford’s Birthday
Sundance Institute’s president and founder—or, more suitably, the original creative heartbeat of this organization—turns 79 today. His wide-ranging accomplishments within the industry and beyond couldn’t possibly be embodied in a blog post, so we instead choose to celebrate with a more manageable, photo-driven trip down memory lane. Redford founded the Institute in 1981 and inaugurated what are now known as the Screenwriters and Directors Labs in the mountains of Utah, which to this day continue to expand to include even more creative disciplines.
Marielle Heller’s Sundance Hit ‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’ Explores a Sexual Coming-of-Age
While introducing The Diary of a Teenage Girl at the Sundance Film Festival, senior programmer David Courier prepared the audience to meet two striking new talents. He noted that he was honored to have Marielle Heller, an alum of the Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs, return with her debut feature, and predicted actress Bel Powley’s future is “so bright that we’re going to be seeing her work here for years to come.”
This wasn’t typical pre-screening hyperbole.