One of the bitter laments emanating from contemporary female audience members—and actresses, for that matter—concerns the scarcity of great, meaty female characters who are complex, morally ambiguous, even controversial. Several films at the Sundance Film Festival this year counter that complaint, defying the typical stereotypes and delivering instead feisty, bitchy, raunchy, complicated, conflicted, and even heroic women in stories whose struggles and achievements take center stage.Overhauling Stereotype #1: The Drowning WifeIn Smashed, playing in the U.

Lizzy Caplan is a woman on the verge of stardom. Just don’t tell Lizzy Caplan. With two high-profile, markedly different films in this year’s Festival—dramedic romance Save the Date and the jet-black comedy Bachelorette—Caplan is showing the kind of range and adaptive likeability that is bound to push her career forward.

Moderator and New York Times media columnist David Carr kicked off Monday’s Cinema Cafe panel at the Filmmaker Lodge with an allusion to the “giant elephant in the room,” the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills whose passage was recently waylaid as a result of an internet uprising voicing concern and anger over the bill’s perceived threats to free speech.The Cinema Cafe series of panels is designed to foster free-ranging conversation among artists and industry leaders about issues that affect independent filmmakers. Presided over by a trio of knowledgeable and high-powered panelists former Senator Christopher Dodd, the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, John Fithian, the president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, and independent producer Christine Vachon—today’s Cinema Cafe landed right on top of the news, with an illuminating debate of the issues surrounding copyright protection and the creative community.

Celebrated filmmaker Stephen Frears was positively giddy about introducing the world premiere of his latest film, Lay the Favorite, on Saturday night at the Eccles Theater. Festively outfitted in a long red scarf and wordlessly roaming behind the podium, he seemed as excited for film’s world premiere as the audience. After all, he said, “I just finished it last Friday.

Congratulations to the seven Sundance Institute- and Sundance Film Festival-supported films and filmmakers nominated for the Academy Awards.
Documentary (Feature)
Hell and Back Again, directed by Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, directed by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman
Documentary (Short Subject)
The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, directed by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, directed by Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen
Foreign Language Film
Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau (Canada)
Short Film (Animated)
A Morning Stroll, directed by Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Margin Call, written by J.C.

Some of the brightest young inhabitants of Hollywood’s thriving comedy community were on hand for the world premiere of Celeste and Jesse Forever at the Eccles Theater on Friday night, from film’s top-flight cast to supporters Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari.
Directed by Sundance veteran Lee Toland Krieger (The Vicious Kind), and written and starring Rashida Jones (The Social Network, NBC’s “Parks and Recreation”) and Will McCormack, the film chronicles the long, strange breakup of the titular married couple, played by Jones and Andy Samberg (“Saturday Night Live”).
Shifting between broad comedy and insightful drama, sweetness and bitterness, the film proves to be a great showcase for the two leads as well as for an ensemble that includes Emma Roberts, Elijah Wood, Chris Messina, Eric Christian Olsen, and Ari Graynor.

In addition to the 181 of films being presented at this year’s Festival, there’s also an ambitious slate of panels, populated by an eclectic mix of artists, film industry professionals and an array of leading edge thinkers, politicians and academics. What they all have in common is a shared interest and investment in how film impacts and intersects with the culture at large. To that end, we’re conducting a series of conversations with some of the more notable participants whose expertise lies in disciplines that on the surface might seem to have little to do with the filmmaking process.

John Hawkes is the man who sets a movie a little on edge, who upends your expectations of what you thought you were going to see. Because he becomes his characters so thoroughly, and because he doesn’t seek publicity, you could be forgiven for not knowing that paying attention to Hawkes’ characters should be on your agenda. Take Winter’s Bone.

How have documentaries changed the notion of change? That philosophical conundrum animated the lively exchange at the Power of Story: How Docs Changed Change panel at the Egyptian Theatre on Saturday afternoon between moderator Soledad O’Brien and panelists Robert Redford, Sheila Nevins (president of HBO Documentary Films), and Nick Fraser (commissioning editor of the BBC’s Storyville). “I think it’s impossible to know really what documentaries do,” said Fraser, adding that demonstrable proof of social change can be difficult to gauge. “That’s why documentaries are interesting, because you engage with a documentary and allow them to go in a direction you don’t know about.

Documentaries tell us both who we are and what we could be. By spotlighting challenging issues, documentaries can also be instigators of social change. The subjects of these films are often pioneering social entrepreneurs—enterprising idealists who dedicate themselves to affecting positive social change.

Park City, UT — Keri Putnam, Executive Director, Sundance Institute, and Cathy Schulman, President of Women In Film Los Angeles, announced today that the two organizations will collaborate to support independent women filmmakers working in both narrative and documentary feature film.  The announcement was made at a joint event at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival hosted by Putnam, Schulman, Sundance Institute trustee Pat Mitchell, and Women Moving Millions Co-Chair Jacki Zehner.
Putnam noted, “Sundance Institute has long believed in the value of diverse storytellers contributing to a vibrant culture.

On screen and off, Spike Lee always makes it interesting. Returning to Sundance with the entertaining and explosive Red Hook Summer, which in turn is a return to Lee’s micro-indie and Brooklyn roots, the director was on hand along with his cast and crew for the film’s World Premiere the Eccles Theater on Sunday night. The film takes place over the course of a hot summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where 13 year-old, Atlanta-raised Flik (newcomer Jules Brown) spends an eventful school break with his old school preacher grandfather, Enoch (The Wire’s astonishing Clarke Peters).

Los Angeles, CA – The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and the Skoll Foundation today announced a special Celebrating “Stories of Change” panel to be held at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The panel celebrates the fifth anniversary of the Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary initiative, dedicated to exploring film’s role in advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship.
At this special event on Tuesday, January 24, 3:00 p.

The word “arbitrage” is often used in the cutthroat world of high finance, defining the practice of buying low and selling high (and hopefully getting filthy rich in the process). It’s the founding principle of capitalism, and the force many believe to be behind the greed attributed to America’s current financial crisis.In Nicholas Jarecki’s directorial debut, Arbitrage, the definition of the word is more nebulous.

Sometime around 10:30 am on Day Three of the Sundance Film Festival, a pack of road-weary filmmakers piled out of a snow-shrouded bus and into a halcyon vision of rustic repose otherwise known as the Directors Brunch. As they were ushered into a large open-air converted barn at the Sundance Resort where tea and sympathy (and a mid-morning feast) awaited them, the group seemed to exhale a collective sigh of relief — as if this were the creative homecoming they’d been hoping for much of their professional lives. Or, in the immortal words of David Byrne (and the title of one of this year’s Premiere selections): This must be the place.