We’re introducing the 12 new members of our Sundance Institute Alumni Advisory Board, a group of Institute-supported artists who volunteer their time and voices to share their experiences and to help tell the Sundance Institute story. The group represents the range of artists we support each year, including directors, screenwriters, actors, theatre artists and musicians.  These artists have been a vital part of the independent film and theatre community and Sundance Institute family for years, and now take on an even bigger role with the Alumni Advisory Board.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced today that Film Forward: Advancing Cultural Dialogue will host free screenings of eight films with moderated discussions, panels and artist roundtables in Harrisburg, Lancaster, Centre County and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For a full schedule of events in Pennsylvania visit sundance.org/filmforward.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced a significant expansion of its renowned labs for independent artists to include dedicated support for writers and creators of series for television and online platforms. The first Sundance Institute Episodic Story Lab will be held in Fall 2014 at the Sundance Resort in Sundance, Utah.
Building on the Institute’s 30-year legacy of developing new work from storytellers with distinctive and risk-taking stories, this new initiative addresses the need for more opportunities for learning and mentorship of singular and diverse voices in scripted TV and online series.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and TED today announced an open call for proposals for the second collaboration between the two organizations, which will jointly award $125,000 for a short documentary film project about the work of the 2014 TED Prize winner – Charmain Gooch, Co-founder and director of Global Witness. The Institute’s Documentary Film Program will accept proposals March 18 through May 1, 2014 at www.sundance.

“It feels like we made the music after the movie, it really does,” says Archive founding band member Darius Keeler, referencing the film Axiom and the band’s eponymous album. After all, isn’t that the modus operandi for nearly every film ever made? Perhaps not, or at least not in the case of Archive’s ninth album and first film, which spawned an inverted creative process that involved treating an album as a screenplay and the moving image as a soundtrack. 
Working with director Jesus Hernandez and the Spanish film collective NYSU, Axiom (the album) underwent an unprecedented alchemy of sorts, eventually producing a film that links “the actual lyrics with the picture.

New projects selected for support include a wide range of filmmaking styles and approaches including experimental, character driven narrative nonfiction, and investigative documentaries. Stories range from very personal  moments (Art and Craft, Never Better) to cultural  appreciation (Like Ants for Sugar) and examples of social inquiry (The Campus Project, Down By Law). Together these artists engage with distinctive stories in creative ways.

The experience of sharing Dancing in Jaffa with the San Diego and Tijuana communities was very profound for me, both in terms of people’s reaction to the film, and the stimulating dialogue that later ensued. 
Even though Southern California and Mexico are far away from Jaffa, these audiences were able to identify with the children depicted in the film — Noor, Alaa and Lois — in a deep way. This enabled me to see firsthand how the issues portrayed in the film are relevant in other parts of the world.

Is being a hero meaningless? Do we need superheroes or normal people who are doing good things every day? Who are they? Our neighbors, friends, people we know? That’s the question I asked people from the audience at Circles screenings over my four days in San Diego and Tijuana, during which we discussed our need to be good humans. I spoke with different people–young people from the public high school Lazaro Cardenas in Tijuana, people of all ages in Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, and people who came to watch Circles at the San Diego Public Library.

March 11, 2014 (Beverly Hills, CA) — The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Sundance Institute are collaborating to present two events exploring the role of music in film: ComposersLab: LA On Stage with world-renowned composer Harry Gregson-Williams on Sunday, March 30 at 2:00pm; and ComposersLab: LA on Saturday, April 12 for composers working in film and television. Both programs will provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes look into the creative process of a film composer.
ComposersLab: LA On Stage – March 30 Peter Golub, Director of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program will lead a conversation with Gregson-Williams, one of the most successful and exciting film composers working today and the talent behind the film scores of the Shrek series, The Chronicles of Narnia, Kingdom of Heaven, Man on Fire, and Spy Game, among many others.

I make films to share them with people, and personally one of the most interesting and important aspects is to see and feel the audience’s reaction to my work, and to engage with them in dialogue. When Film Forward chose to include Dancing in Jaffa in this year’s program, I was especially excited to have the opportunity to share the film and be present at these places where the audience wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to see the film, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet these people. I have been thinking about the themes Dancing in Jaffa presents and the ways they are relevant to the people who live in San Diego and Tijuana.

Last April, I attended the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England, as part of the Sundance Documentary Film Program delegation. The SWF is an annual convening of social entrepreneurs and world-renowned problem solvers to come together for critical debates, discussions, and work sessions aimed at innovating, accelerating and scaling solutions to social challenges. There’s even a little time set aside every year for some pretty darn good karaoke.