Category: News

During the last few weeks I have been thinking about what impressed, touched, and moved me the most during our four days Film Forward in San Diego and Tijuana.

Definitely, I was most impressed and emotionally touched by the highly educated, smart and curious young people in Lazaro Cardenas High School in Tijuana.  We talked about who they consider heroes, how they experience humanity and courage, and what the values are that they admire.

The O2, 28 March 2014 — Sundance Institute and The O2 announced today that The One I Love from director Charlie McDowell has been added to the programme of feature films for the third Sundance London film and music festival, 25-27 April at The O2. Tickets to Sundance London screenings and events are now available online.

Turns out, Sundance London filmmakers’ palates rival our own programmers when it comes to cinema—heterogeneous but precise. Some standouts? Probably David Cross’ admission to his days as a fanboy of The Who, and thus his antsy excitement surrounding the Sundance London screening of Lambert & Stamp. 
With individual tickets for Sundance London on sale Friday, March 28, we polled a handful of this year’s filmmakers about which films they are most looking forward to seeing at next month’s Festival.

The O2, 24 March 2014 — Sundance Institute and AEG Europe announced today the programme of feature films, short films and panel discussions for the third Sundance London film and music festival, 25-27 April at The O2. Ticket packages are now available online, and individual tickets will be on sale from 9:00 a.

We’re introducing the 12 new members of our Sundance Institute Alumni Advisory Board, a group of Institute-supported artists who volunteer their time and voices to share their experiences and to help tell the Sundance Institute story. The group represents the range of artists we support each year, including directors, screenwriters, actors, theatre artists and musicians.  These artists have been a vital part of the independent film and theatre community and Sundance Institute family for years, and now take on an even bigger role with the Alumni Advisory Board.

“It feels like we made the music after the movie, it really does,” says Archive founding band member Darius Keeler, referencing the film Axiom and the band’s eponymous album. After all, isn’t that the modus operandi for nearly every film ever made? Perhaps not, or at least not in the case of Archive’s ninth album and first film, which spawned an inverted creative process that involved treating an album as a screenplay and the moving image as a soundtrack. 
Working with director Jesus Hernandez and the Spanish film collective NYSU, Axiom (the album) underwent an unprecedented alchemy of sorts, eventually producing a film that links “the actual lyrics with the picture.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and TED today announced an open call for proposals for the second collaboration between the two organizations, which will jointly award $125,000 for a short documentary film project about the work of the 2014 TED Prize winner – Charmain Gooch, Co-founder and director of Global Witness. The Institute’s Documentary Film Program will accept proposals March 18 through May 1, 2014 at www.sundance.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced a significant expansion of its renowned labs for independent artists to include dedicated support for writers and creators of series for television and online platforms. The first Sundance Institute Episodic Story Lab will be held in Fall 2014 at the Sundance Resort in Sundance, Utah.
Building on the Institute’s 30-year legacy of developing new work from storytellers with distinctive and risk-taking stories, this new initiative addresses the need for more opportunities for learning and mentorship of singular and diverse voices in scripted TV and online series.

Park City, UT — 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, panels and artist roundtables in Harrisburg, Lancaster, Centre County and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For a full schedule of events in Pennsylvania visit sundance.org/filmforward.

The experience of sharing Dancing in Jaffa with the San Diego and Tijuana communities was very profound for me, both in terms of people’s reaction to the film, and the stimulating dialogue that later ensued. 
Even though Southern California and Mexico are far away from Jaffa, these audiences were able to identify with the children depicted in the film — Noor, Alaa and Lois — in a deep way. This enabled me to see firsthand how the issues portrayed in the film are relevant in other parts of the world.

New projects selected for support include a wide range of filmmaking styles and approaches including experimental, character driven narrative nonfiction, and investigative documentaries. Stories range from very personal  moments (Art and Craft, Never Better) to cultural  appreciation (Like Ants for Sugar) and examples of social inquiry (The Campus Project, Down By Law). Together these artists engage with distinctive stories in creative ways.

Is being a hero meaningless? Do we need superheroes or normal people who are doing good things every day? Who are they? Our neighbors, friends, people we know? That’s the question I asked people from the audience at Circles screenings over my four days in San Diego and Tijuana, during which we discussed our need to be good humans. I spoke with different people–young people from the public high school Lazaro Cardenas in Tijuana, people of all ages in Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, and people who came to watch Circles at the San Diego Public Library.