Stanley Nelson has been writing, directing, and producing documentary projects for more than two decades. His 2009 Sundance Film Festival entry, Wounded Knee, is the fifth and final episode in his series chronicling key moments in Native American history and culture (the series airs on PBS’s American Experience). Wounded Knee centers on the events that took place among inhabitants of the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973 and the occupation of the town Wounded Knee as an act of resistance against the U.

In Barking Water, the latest film from Sundance Institute Lab alum Sterlin Harjo, Irene (Casey Camp-Horinek) takes Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) on one last road trip, driving him from the hospital across Oklahoma to see his daughter and grandchild. Along the way, they meet and spend time with friends, family, and random strangers, each encounter shedding a bit more light on the couple’s on-again, off-again relationship and the complicated nature of love and regret. After a recent screening of the film, the director and actors gathered to answer questions from the audience, offering insights into how and why the film was made.

What makes a person want to reveal private family history to a wide public? What makes us want to watch a movie that accomplishes that act? Natalia Almada (El General) and Dana Perry’s Boy Interrupted) documentaries are unflinching, brooding, unapologetically dark, and personal. Almada, who won the Festival’s Directing Award: U.S.

PARK CITY, UTAH — The 2009 Sundance Film Festival is pleased to announce that Adam, directed by Max Mayer, is the recipient of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the filmmaker provided by the Alfred P.

Park City, UT–The jury and audience award-winners of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival were announced tonight at the Festival’s closing Awards Ceremony hosted by actor Jane Lynch in Park City, Utah. Films receiving jury awards were selected from the four categories: U.S.

Sin Nombre, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s harrowing first feature, is one of the most emotionally devastating films in the Festival lineup this year; it is also one of the most thrilling and emotionally redemptive. Sin Nombre, which was supported by the Sundance Institute Labs, is the story of two Central American immigrants, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) and Casper (Edgar Flores), whose journey from Honduras, through Mexico, and into America is the same one an estimated 70,000 Central Americans take every year in an attempt to leave behind the numbing poverty of their lives. They perch uneasily on top of Mexican freight trains, and it’s far from a safe passage.

Los Angeles — Sundance Institute and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) today announced the winners of the 2009 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. The four winners were selected from 12 finalists by members of an international jury which included: Ira Sachs, Yesim Ustaoglu, Katherine Dieckmann, Fernando Eimbcke, Sebastian Cordero, and Ronan Bennett; and a Japanese Jury that included Masato Harada, Bong-Ou Lee, and Hiroyuki Takazawa.These annual awards were created in 1996 by Sundance Institute in partnership with NHK to celebrate 100 years of cinema and to honor and support emerging independent filmmakers.

What, exactly, is a Sundance Lab movie? People sometimes talk about Lab films as if they constitute a genre — like they’re all romantic comedies or horror films — or share some stylistic agenda, narrative pattern, or set of themes. Insiders flatly reject that idea.
“I hope that there’s no such thing as a ‘Lab movie’ because, to me, that connotes a sense of sameness,” says Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.

Los Angeles, CA – Sundance Institute announced today the first five grant recipients of the STORIES OF CHANGE: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN FOCUS THROUGH DOCUMENTARY initiative, a $3 million, three-year partnership with the Skoll Foundation designed to explore the role of film in advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship. This partnership creates new opportunities for leading social entrepreneurs and outstanding documentary filmmakers to collaborate and to create new projects about the innovative approaches found in both fields. The development and production grant awards announced today support the creation of feature-length independent documentary films that examine social entrepreneurship as an innovative approach to the central challenges of our time.

Park City, UT –The 2009 Sundance Film Festival announced today the jury prizes in shorts filmmaking based on outstanding achievement and merit. The Sundance Film Festival runs January 15-25, 2009 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Full awards will be announced the evening of January 24th at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony at the Park City Racquet Club.

One thing about Justin Nowell is clear: he’s not solely concerned with pleasing the crowd. Nowell, returning to Park City for the second time since a successful 2008 Festival run with Sick Sex, doesn’t have false expectations about how his newest film, Acting for the Camera, will go over.That’s primarily because of the way Sick Sex was received at last year’s Festival.

Palestinian filmmakers Najwa Najjar and Cherien Dabis met at Sundance Institute’s 2005 Middle East Screenwriters Lab in Jordan. Najjar, who is based in Ramallah, was working on her first feature project Pomegranates and Myrrh, about Kamar, a dancer whose husband is imprisoned soon after they are married because he refuses to give up his land. Dabis, who is based in Brooklyn, was also at the Lab writing a first feature, Amreeka, the story of Muna Farah, a Palestinian single mom fighting to maintain hope amidst the daily grind of life in the West Bank.

Even when he eventually ventures into longer format storytelling, director Patrik Eklund, director of the beguiling short Instead of Abracadabra, doesn’t plan to give up short form content. “I love the format and the freedom,” says the Sweden-based filmmaker, who heads to Park City with a film that sheds comedic light on and reveals the heart in the timeless practice of magic.
Instead of Abracadabra is the hilarious, endearing story of a 20-something slacker who lives at home with his disapproving parents and has only one goal: to be a great magician.