Los Angeles, CA — 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 for the first time ever in Washington State. Filmmakers traveling with the program are Julia Meltzer (The Light In Her Eyes) and Jerry Rothwell (Town Of Runners). For a full schedule of events in Washington, visit sundance.

On the final day of NEXT WEEKEND, as screenings expanded to some of our favorite cultural organizations across the city, Festival Director John Cooper hosted a panel at Sundance Cinemas to properly bookend the four days of festivities.
NEXT – Then, Now and Beyond featured four quintessential NEXT  filmmakers from various eras of cinema: Gregg Araki (Totally F***ed Up, Mysterious Skin), Allison Anders (Gas, Food Lodging; Mi Vida Loca), Hannah Fidell (A Teacher), and Shaka King (Newlyweeds). The group would be tasked with exploring the parallels and contrasts between being a NEXT filmmaker today, as opposed to the early days of Sundance.

Director Chadd Harbold’s brazen new comedy How To Be A Man made its world premiere on day three of NEXT WEEKEND, and actor/comedian Gavin McInnes stuck around after the screening to extend the unruly behavior. McInnes stars as Mark, an eccentric New Yorker who is so certain that the lump in his man boob is in fact breast cancer that he hires a young cameraman (excellently played by Liam Aiken) to document a series of instructional videos on life for his unborn son. Unfortunately for Bryan, Mark’s life tips range from how to fight a bully to lessons on picking up women, and the impressionable 20-something is coerced into playing an active role in the teachings.

In the brief lifespan of the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT<=> section, the popular boundary-breaking category which spawned the NEXT WEEKEND film festival, the program has been strictly limited to feature-length films. Last night, on Day 2 of NEXT WEEKEND at Sundance Cinemas in Los Angeles, short films made the case that they inhabit the same blue collar, daring region of cinema that defines NEXT <=>.
In collaboration with YouTube, NEXT WEEKEND presented a shorts program that showcased a robust slate of films from 14 leading channels on the video-sharing website.

Last night Sundance Institute lifted the curtains on the first-ever NEXT WEEKEND film festival with an outdoor screening of the hilarious, idiosyncratic doc American Movie (1999) at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. (For those unfamiliar with the popular Cinespia summer screening series, yes, this means screening a film in a cemetery at night). Director Chris Smith and the film’s subject, quirky independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt, were in attendance along with a vibrant crowd for a double feature that saw a screening of Borchardt’s short horror film Coven, the making of which is documented in American Movie.

Beginning Tuesday, new Sundance titles will be available on iTunes via our #ArtistServices platform, which gives filmmakers unprecedented control and revenue splits. You can preorder them now, here www.itunes.

As part of our upcoming NEXT WEEKEND film festival in Los Angeles, we have programmed a fantastic shorts lineup consisting of 10 shorts that we played at the Sundance Film Festival in January, presented by YouTube. The NEXT section of the festival champions feature films with bold filmmaking style using innovative ways to tell stories. Short films fit perfectly within this adventurous realm of cinema Rather than be limited by a short run time, the filmmakers in the NEXT Shorts Program use the short format as motivation to craft something special with a personal vision.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 15 independent films that will make their digital debut this fall through a variety of platforms and storefronts, via the Institute’s Artist Services program, which provides access to self-distribution for artists supported by the Institute. Titles will roll out between August 13 and September 17. For details visit sundance.

I remember taking a walking tour of Berlin many years ago, where the guide stopped every 10 meters to share a new and dramatic story about the surrounding space. The experience climaxed in the middle of an old city square, where she revealed layers of history: the Cold War, the Third Reich, World War I, Prussian aristocracy, even 9th Century Slavs. I visualized the atoms in my feet vibrating with the atoms of that well-trodden ground.

We’re less than two weeks out from kicking off the first-ever NEXT WEEKEND film festival (Aug. 8-11) at Sundance Sunset Cinemas and partner venues throughout Los Angeles. Recently, we unveiled the 10 feature films screening throughout the weekend, and now each filmmaker has produced a video to introduce their film.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright participating in the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at Sundance Resort with her project Really Really Really Really Really. And yes, that is a calculated and precise five ‘Really’s’. Below Sibblies Drury delves into the varying themes of loss that pervade her play, the rationale behind her engimatic title, and the greatest creative challenge she’s faced at the Lab.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute announced today that it has been awarded a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The grant, which was made through the Academy’s Educational Grants Program, supports four annual Labs hosted by the Institute’s renowned Feature Film Program (FFP): the June Screenwriters Lab, the Directors Lab, the Creative Producing Lab, and the Creative Producing Summit.
FFP Labs, built on a model established by Sundance Institute President & Founder Robert Redford in 1981, give aspiring independent filmmakers the skills and knowledge they need to make theatrical motion pictures.

David Lowery attended the 2012 Sundance Institute January Screenwriters Lab with his screenplay for Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, an Official Selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Below is the first part in a series of blog posts examining a single frame from the film. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints opens in theatres August 16 and On Demand August 23.

Danny Yourd was a producer on the 2013 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary Blood Brother, and is collaborating once again with filmmaker Steve Hoover on their new film, Gennadiy. The team is using Kickstarter to help complete production of the film in Mariupal, Ukraine. Click here to support their campaign.