Victoria Gan is sophomore at Princeton University majoring in politics and is on the executive board of the campus film club Subtitles Film Society. She attended the 2011 Sundance Film Festival through the Film School Pass program and wrote about her Festival experience below.In a word, Sundance is immersion.

NEW YORK, NY — Sundance Institute today announced the artists and projects selected for its 2011 Theatre Lab to be held at The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, from March 27-April 17. The centerpiece of Sundance Institute’s Theatre Program, the Theatre Lab is a three-week developmental retreat designed to provide a private, creative environment for playwrights, directors, composers and librettists to devise and refine new work with the support of creative advisors, full casts and rehearsal space.  This year, Sundance has 31 fellows or generative artists, including playwrights, composers, directors and creative teams.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the live blog for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony. I’m Eric Hynes, writer for the Sundance website, and I’ll be your eyes and ears throughout tonight’s festivities. With traditional host the Park City Racquet Club closed for renovations, this year’s closing night Awards Ceremony moves a few miles north of Park City to the Basin Recreation Fieldhouse at Kimball Junction.

Park City, UT-The Jury, Audience, NEXT! and other special award-winners of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival were announced tonight at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony hosted by Tim Blake Nelson (star of Flypaper which premiered in this year’s Premieres section) in Park City, Utah. Highlights from the Awards Ceremony can be seen on the Festival website, www.sundance.

It’s an aspect of filmmaking that gets very little attention, and that very few people in the film industry know how to talk about. So rather than shed just a little light on the subject, Sundance Film Festival and BMI positively flooded it. Ten directors and eleven composers crowded onto the stage at Sundance House Presented by HP on Wednesday afternoon for “Music and Film: The Creative Process,” a roundtable discussion on the process of scoring music for film.

When asked about his favorite Festival experience thus far, veteran filmmaker David Zellner is quick to respond: “Sharing our feature Goliath with an enthusiastic audience. A close second was eating hamburgers on Main Street with Magic Johnson, Gaspar Noe, and Louie Anderson.”To call the Zellner Bros (David and Nathan) “seasoned vets” doesn’t fully summarize how crazy and uncommon their run has been.

Kelly Reichardt has a long relationship with Sundance, from her first feature River of Grass (1994) through the popular Old Joy (2006) and this year’s Meek’s Cutoff, the story of Western pioneers lost on the trail. Before River, Reichardt worked in the art department on many independent films, including seminal features by Hal Hartley and Todd Haynes’s Poison; she is still close friends with Haynes. “I worked on a lot of people’s first film,” Reichardt remembers.

On the center screen, a man sits behind the wheel of a car. Simultaneously, on a narrower screen to the left, the landscape blurs in retreat. And on another screen to the right is a close-up of the dashboard.

The big idea yesterday at the “Power of Story: The Big Idea” panel, presented by TimeWarner and Sundance Institute, was collaboration: how it works and why it’s necessary in filmmaking. But the panel also revealed that a smart filmmaker isn’t threatened by working with other creative people; it’s possible to hold fast to your vision while inviting in ideas from others. Boys Don’t Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce started things off with an emotional wallop by screening a rape scene from that now-iconic film.

David Mackenzie’s apocalyptic romance, Perfect Sense, is a sensuous experiment in sensory deprivation. A mysterious virus provokes a wave of sadness in its victims, followed by the permanent loss of the sense of smell. The condition confounds doctors and scientists, including a beautiful epidemiologist named Susan (Eva Green), and makes life difficult for master chef Michael (Ewan MacGregor).

** MEDIA ALERT **
WHAT: Sundance Institute and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have announced Cherien Dabis, director of May in the Summer, as winner of the 2011 Sundance / NHK International Filmmaker Award.
Originally created to celebrate 100 years of Cinema, the annual award recognizes and supports a visionary filmmaker on his or her next film. Sundance Institute staff works closely with the winner throughout the year, providing creative and strategic support through the development, financing and production of their films.

If she were American rather than Danish, Susanne Bier would likely be one of the more recognizable filmmakers in the world. She specializes in emotionally gripping, character-based dramas that manage to be both accessible and aesthetically accomplished. Pigeonholed in the American arthouse, she’s really making stories for the masses.

Park City, UT – Sundance Institute today announced that Another Earth, directed and written by Mike Cahill and written by Brit Marling, is the recipient of the 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Now in its ninth year, the Prize carries a $20,000 cash award by the Alfred P.

Based on the collaborations of director Jesse Peretz and writer Evgenia Peretz, the sibling-centered film My Idiot Brother takes brother-sister dynamics to every extreme. When Ned (Paul Rudd) is released from prison, his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, and Zooey Deschanel) take turns letting him crash at their place. The comedy really shines with Ned’s candid, trusting attitude.

Israeli filmmaker Yossi Madmoni brings the powerful portrait of familial conflict Restoration to the Festival this year, demonstrating deft directorial skills and a filmmaker to watch in the future. The film, written by Erez Kav-El, tells the story of an antiques dealer dedicated to restoring old furniture who gains a new apprentice while at the same time is losing his son. Screening in the World Cinema Dramatic competition, Restoration is at once a very specific story and a new take on classic themes of generational strife, and Madmoni’s graceful attention to the nuances of performance creates a film of surprising impact.