Park City, UT – Sundance Institute today announced Chase SapphireSM, a premium rewards credit card, as a Presenting Level Sponsor of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Chase SapphireSM joins Entertainment Weekly, HP, Acura and Sundance Channel as Presenting Level Sponsors of the Festival, which runs from January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. As a program of the nonprofit Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival operates with the support of corporate sponsors as well as that of private foundations, nonprofit associations and guilds, government agencies, and individual donors.

NEW YORK, NY- Sundance Institute today announced the seven artists selected for The 2011 Sundance Institute’s Playwrights’ Retreat at Ucross to take place February 7 through February 25, 2011 in Ucross, Wyoming. This unique residency program offers playwrights and theatre composers — both emerging and established artists — peer mentorship, professional growth, and a chance to explore unpressured creativity at an idyllic 20,000 acre cattle ranch in northeastern Wyoming. The Playwrights Retreat, supported by the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, is made possible through the generosity of Ucross Foundation.

PARK CITY, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the line up of artists selected for the 2011 edition of New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival. The program, celebrating its fifth year, brings together established and emerging artists from film, art, performance, gaming, and new media technology, to provide for them a film festival environment to share their work, and for festival audiences to explore the latest in cinematic innovation and transmedia storytelling. Curated by Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer, these works can be experienced at New Frontier, located at the Historic Miners Hospital, 1354 Park Avenue across from the Library Theatre in Park City, and, new for 2011, at Salt Lake Art Center, located at 20 South West Temple, in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.

All Hallows Eve is fast approaching, and the 1993 Festival film Dead Alive is quite appropriate for the occasion. Peter Jackson’s gore fest screened as part of the Park City at Midnight category and has since become a cult classic among all things severed limbs, blood, and guts. Dead Alive is especially appropriate for this time of year, as Jackson’s birthday falls on October 31.

Katie Metcalfe is the newest addition to the Sundance Film Festival Shorts Programming Team. We wanted to introduce you to one of the six people who are currently deciding on the fate of thousands of submissions.
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As beneficiaries of this summer’s World Cup basked in its euphoric glow, a much dimmer reality played out in the slums of South Africa. Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza, codirectors and producers of Dear Mandela, took their project to Sundance Institute’s Film Composers and Documentary Lab and the Documentary Producing Lab this summer in search of music and structure capable of evoking the passion and emotion of the Shack Dwellers Movement. What they discovered was a tireless support group, a lifetime’s worth of lessons, and a renewed drive for completing their film.

Over the next few months we’ll be chronicling memorable moments in Festival history as we reveal the mystery behind the 2011 snowflake icon. While the snowflake itself shares an obvious relationship with each winter’s Festival, the symbols within the icon tell the individual stories that have made the Festival what is today. Citing Festival Director John Cooper, the snowflake’s uniqueness and transient existence reflect the 10 days of joy that the Festival and its films provide us.

Mid-October means different things to different people. To people like my son, it means that Halloween, and the requisite belly full of candy is so close they can touch it. To people who live where there are actual seasons (i.

What: Sundance Institute, Levantine Cultural Center, and New Voices in Middle Eastern Cinema present a special preview screening of the Sundance Institute-supported film and 2010 Sundance Film Festival hit, THE TAQWACORES (Strand Releasing) on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at The Harmony Gold Theatre in Los Angeles. This new feature film from director Eyad Zahra explores the complexities of being young and Muslim in today’s America, with a unique focus on the Muslim punk rock scene. The Taqwacores will open to the public in Los Angeles beginning Friday, November 12th at the Laemmle Sunset 5.

The title of a panel from the 1985 U.S. Film Festival is just as relevant when discussing documentary film today.

Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival are two of the many major reasons why my first feature film, The Taqwacores, is debuting in New York City this Friday. The Taqwacores is as indie as it gets. It’s an ultra-low-budget film about a subculture of a subculture: punk-rock Muslims.

Jon Korn has been a Sundance Film Festival shorts programmer since the 2009 Festival, and he’s now in his third year with the team. We wanted to introduce you to one of the six people who are currently deciding on the fate of literally thousands of submissions.Tell us a bit about your background.

In late January 2010 the documentary community lost a vibrant talent and valued member of its community. Editor Karen Schmeer was killed in a hit-and-run accident in New York City. She was 39.

October 14, 2010-(Paris, France)- Robert Redford received one of France’s most highly esteemed recognitions today in Paris, the emblem of the “Légion d’Honneur” established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. Redford was acknowledged for his work as actor and director, his decades long involvement in nurturing independent voices in film and the arts through the Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival, and overall advocacy on behalf of artists, as well as his work as an environmental activist over 40 years.Redford received the award from French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Palais de l’Elysées.