The Latest
Alejandro G. Iñárritu to Receive Sundance Institute Vanguard Leadership Award
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced it will present its Vanguard Awards to Academy Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu and filmmaker Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) at the fifth Sundance Institute Celebration benefit hosted by Acura in Los Angeles, bringing the creative community together to highlight a great visionary in independent film and an emerging artist with unique talent and creative independence. Iñárritu will be presented with the Vanguard Leadership Award for the originality and independent spirit of his films.
Native Filmmakers, Here’s Everything You Need to Know About the Sundance Institute Full Circle Fellowship
Sundance Institute’s Full Circle Fellowship, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, aims to elevate young Native filmmakers to more competitive ranks in what is often considered a homogeneous and privileged realm of content creation.
Reflections On the Female Filmmakers Initiative Financing Intensive
Lauded as a tremendous success by filmmakers, advisors, and supporters alike, the third annual Female Filmmakers Initiative Financing Intensive hosted by Sundance Institute and Women In Film Los Angeles helped demystify the independent film financing process while encouraging confidence and collaboration amongst over 125 filmmakers and dozens of industry advisors and panelists. Below, filmmaker attendees share their insightful reflections on the all-day convening.So rarely do you actually get practical, specific and actionable advice that this was startling.
Sundance Institute Brings $83.4 Million to Utah with 2015 Sundance Film Festival
Park City, Utah — Sundance Institute today announced that its 2015 Sundance Film Festival, which took place in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah in January, generated an overall economic impact of $83.4 million for the State of Utah, according to the independent annual economic and demographic study conducted by the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the David Eccles School of Business (BEBR).
The Economic Report, posted in full on the Institute’s website, also found that the 2015 Festival generated $7 million in state and local tax revenue; supported 1,350 jobs; and was attended by more than 46,000 people.
#TBT: 8 Groundbreaking Sundance Directors Lab Alumni
Most lists require a caveat, and this one is no different: it is non-exhaustive, and for good reason. Over the course of Sundance Institute’s Directors Lab’s history, the Feature Film Program has supported a relative who’s who list of independent filmmakers making strides in cinema. And while some of these names have quite adeptly ventured into the world of studio films, their bloodlines invariably trace back to the indie world.
Calculated Serendipity: Stories of Change Convening at the Skoll World Forum
Some filmmakers are reactive and volatile – especially the independent ones. The “reactive and volatile” I’m talking about aren’t the high maintenance ones prone to unnecessary drama. I’m referring to ones who are like atoms that readily react with other atoms when the conditions are right – when they’re stimulated to form molecules and compounds.
Storybook Meets Six Shooters: John Maclean on His Sundance Hit ‘Slow West’
The Western may be among the most American of genres—if not the most American of genres—but that has never stopped filmmakers from around the world, from Italy to Japan and beyond, from trying it on for size. In Slow West, winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2015 Festival, English writer-director John Maclean doesn’t transpose the genre to Europe—he brings a European sensibility to the American West. Considering the preponderance of immigrants who migrated to and settled in America, it wasn’t exactly a crazy notion.
5 Resolute Movie Moms For Mother’s Day
There is a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln that avows, “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” One can doubt the veracity of the citation (it wasn’t found on Instagram, so that’s a start), but the notion itself is hardly disputable. As with all relationships, great cinema has a way of capturing the nuances that define a mother-child connection–from the joys of infancy to the precarious years of adolescence (during which I, for one, was goodness incarnate).
Sundance Institute Announces 14 Projects Selected for 2015 June Directors and Screenwriters Labs at Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah, May 25-June 25
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 14 projects selected for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah from May 25 through June 25. The Labs are the centerpiece of the Institute’s year-round work with narrative feature filmmakers and are part of 24 residential labs the Institute hosts each year to discover and foster the talent of emerging independent artists in film, theatre, new media and episodic content.
Projects and participants selected for the 2015 June Directors and Screenwriters Labs are from the United States, Brazil, China, France, Georgia and the United Kingdom, and the Fellows bring experience from an unprecedented diversity of creative backgrounds, including documentary, theatre, music, new media, visual art and animation.
Blake Neely on ‘Star Wars’ and the Moment He Knew He Wanted to Compose
It’s easy to dismiss musical composition as an abstruse kind of necessity in film and television.
It’s an element of the artistic equation that the average viewer knows little about despite its universal resonance. We’re acutely aware that Jaws’s most menacing moments would be toothless without its iconic John Williams score, or that The Social Network’s nefarious ambiance is owed to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s calculated score, but that tends to be the depth of our wisdom.
Playwright Ellen McLaughlin on Creating a “Brand-New Something” at Flying Point
When we five playwrights came to Joan and George Hornig’s astonishing house on Flying Point Road in Long Island for the alumni writing studio, the spring was still groping around without much conviction. After our brutal New York winter, it was hard to believe that such a promised warmth and regeneration was even possible. But then it seemed just as unlikely that the five of us would be put up in such luxury and fed for a full week by our own private chef (oh, the food!) on grounds just a few minutes’ walk from a glistening beach.
7 Groundbreaking Mexican Filmmakers to Celebrate This Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo can be a puzzling holiday for some Americans. First, there is the prevailing notion that May 5 is Mexico’s equivalent of the United States’ July Fourth. In fact, Cinco de Mayo is the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, during which Mexico defended itself against French invasion in a proverbial David versus Goliath clash.
Michael Almereyda, Sara Colangelo, and Kenny Riches Offer Up Advice on Making a Short Film
Last week, Sundance Institute and the Knight Foundation held ShortsLab Miami, a free workshop dedicated to informing and supporting aspiring filmmakers in an open forum. In attendance were filmmakers Michael Almereyda, Sara Colangelo, and Kenny Riches, who participated in Q&A discussions moderated by Sundance short film programmer Mike Plante on topics such as the actor-director relationship, transitioning from shorts to feature films, finding financing and producers, and how to engage with and draw inspiration from your local arts community. Below, we’ve distilled the day down to include some of the most enlightening points overheard at ShortsLab Miami.
May Now Playing: “Slow West,” “Results,” and more
Michael Fassbender stars as a bounty hunter in romantic pursuit of a female fugitive in John Maclean’s award winner Slow West, a European rendering of the classic Western that brandishes its six-shooters with a serving of gallows humor. Also coming to theaters in May, director Andrew Bujalski trains his lens on the idiosyncratic world of fitness trainers in Results, starring Guy Pearce, Kevin Corrigan, and Cobie Smulders. Check out all of this month’s releases below.
If You Want Your Stories to Change the World, They Have to Belong to the World
The Skoll World Forum happens in Oxford every April; it is a gathering of over 1,000 social entrepreneurs who are leading organizations that are changing the world, at tremendous scale. From global health to child trafficking, literacy to poverty, climate change to global corruption — the commitment, vision and passion of this community is breathtaking. Every year I meet someone who just picked up her Nobel Prize, or just had lunch with the Dalai Lama, or just helped lead the movement that created 1,000 new health centers in India and is now headed to Africa to do the very same thing.