Category: News

Each year, as part of our long-running partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sundance Institute searches for promising and compelling scripts that have science and/or technology themes woven into their stories. As a result, each year I get to read some of the most unique stories illuminating all different aspects of science – both historical and contemporary – that are mind boggling, inspiring, and down right fascinating.

A week ago, after 17 hours of travel, we landed as the sun was setting over Sarajevo, where vast mountains were silhouetted against a yellow sky. Not knowing what to expect, I would quickly realize that Bosnia & Herzegovina is a land of contradiction: beautiful Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman architecture riddled with bullet holes, sweeping green landscapes littered with hidden landmines, stunning cathedrals around the corner from impressive mosques, optimistic youth in disagreement with war-weathered adults. I was excited that Film Forward had given me the chance to screen 20 Feet From Stardom in such a unique and complicated place, but I was entirely unsure what the response to a film about backup singers would be.

The chance to screen and discuss The World Before Her with an audience in China was truly a unique and thrilling experience. Not to mention getting to visit a country so much on the world stage, yet still such an enigmatic place.
After having now gone and come back, China remains somewhat of a mystery to me — with such contradictory pulls as tradition and modernity, communism and capitalism seemingly to function side by side.

Money may not be the root of all evil, but it’s certainly a root cause of one: holding back women filmmakers. Financing was the most frequently cited barrier for female directors and producers of independent films, according to a 2012 study commissioned by Sundance Institute and Women in Film (WIF) Los Angeles.
That was only the beginning, though, as the two organizations geared up to find practical solutions to the problems the study revealed.

Though I’ve never been to one, I imagine a “dream lab” would be a pretty cool place to visit.I was recently asked to take part in Film Forward in Taiwan and China. Film Forward is a program of Sundance Institute and The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and three federal agencies.

Walking into the cold, dark, empty school building in Busovaca, a small village about an hour outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, with a ‘no guns allowed’ sign on the front door, I was not sure what to expect. I have attended few international screenings of 20 Feet From Stardom and even fewer screenings exclusively for young people, so I didn’t know what the response might be or if the students would even relate to the film.
This school is where I began my Film Forward trip to Bosnia & Herzegovina .

LOS ANGELES, CA — Sundance Institute will present the Sundance NEXT FEST summer festival August 7-10 in Los Angeles, headquartered at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel and offering feature and short film screenings, some paired with live music performances and all celebrating the renegade spirit of independent artists. The event is an extension of the popular NEXT <=> section at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which showcases stylistically adventurous and bold films, and builds on the Institute’s NEXT WEEKEND event, hosted in 2013. The Sundance Film Festival programming staff will select films and music acts for NEXT FEST.

As soon as I stepped into the car that had come to collect me at the airport in Taiwan, Wanda handed me a bubble tea, smiled brightly and told me that plans had changed. I had ten minutes to wash away 12 hours of travel before we had to leave for our orientation session at the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT). This fact was of course utterly disorienting but Wanda was charming, no nonsense, completely unapologetic and tougher than Jackie Carlson.

The first screening in a new country is always so full of the unknown for me. Ours was at the American Corner in Zenica (sponsored by the U.S.

Park City, Utah — Sundance Institute today announced that the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, which took place in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah in January, generated an overall economic impact of  $86.4 million for the State of Utah, according to the independent annual economic and demographic study conducted by the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the David Eccles School of Business (BEBR).
The Economic Report, posted in full on the Sundance Institute website, also found that the 2014 Festival: supported over 1,434 jobs; generated over $65.

Park City, Utah — Sundance Institute marks the 20th anniversary of its Native American and Indigenous Program with a series of events around the country for Native artists and the public. The Institute also announced today the four artists selected for the 2014 NativeLab Fellowship, which is the centerpiece of the Institute’s year-round work with the Native community and is one of 10 residential labs the Institute will host for artists this summer, collectively representing the most promising new independent film and theatre projects.
True to founder Robert Redford’s original vision, the Institute maintains a strong commitment to supporting Native and indigenous filmmakers.

Los Angeles, CA — Glenn Close will be honored at the Sundance Institute Celebration benefit on June 4, 2014 in New York for her distinguished career in entertainment and continuing advocacy of, and participation in, independent films. The Sundance Institute Vanguard Leadership Award will be presented to her by her longtime friend Jeremy Irons, with whom she has worked in film and on stage, in projects including The Real Thing, Reversal of Fortune and House of the Spirits. Also at the event filmmaker Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) will receive the Sundance Institute Vanguard Award, presented by The Lincoln Motor Company.