Category: News

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced that the newly restored Hoop Dreams (1994) will screen in the From the Collection program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, 20 years after the film made its world premiere at the 1994 Festival. The recently completed restoration represents the collaborative effort of Sundance Institute, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Academy Film Archive and Kartemquin Films. Filmmakers Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx and subject Arthur Agee are expected to participate in an extended Q&A immediately following the January 20 screening.

Tostan, the Senegal-based organization known for its innovative Community Empowerment Program (CEP) launched a participant-led media training initiative. Together with Venice, California-based Venice Arts, the organizations trained members in the communities Tostan serves in the art of digital storytelling.  The result is three short films told from a perspective we hope to hear from more often.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the program of short films selected to screen at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The 2014 Short Film program is comprised of 66 short films selected from a record 8,161 submissions (59 more than for the 2013 Festival).
Trevor Groth, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “The Short Film program for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival features an astonishing array of new stories, viewpoints and filmmaking talent, positioning it at the core of our work to discover and share independent perspectives on our culture and world.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the films selected to screen in the out-of-competition Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.
John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “The Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival feature new work from many established independent filmmakers who began their careers at our Festival years ago, which allows us to reflect on the impact, legacy and growth of the independent film movement over the past 30 years.”
Trevor Groth, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “In many of the films selected for our 2014 Sundance Film Festival, we see fascinating characters and subjects throughout.

PARK CITY, UT – Sundance Institute announced today a new section for younger audiences called “Sundance Kids” for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Programmed in partnership with the Utah Film Center’s Tumbleweeds program, the inaugural “Sundance Kids” section features the World Premiere of the English-language version of the acclaimed Ernest and Celestine (Directors: Benjamin Renner, Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar) and the U.S.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the films and installations to be featured in the 2014 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival, including the U.S. premiere of The Source (evolving) by renowned artist Doug Aitken and a 3D projection-mapping project by Klip Collective.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the films selected to screen in the 2014 Sundance Film Festival out-of-competition sections Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and new ‘Sundance Kids’ section of films for younger audiences. The Festival takes place January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.
Trevor Groth, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “The films in the sections announced today round out our 2014 Sundance Film Festival program and further reflect the depth and diversity of modern independent filmmaking that will satisfy everyone from festival fledglings to fanatics.

January will usher in the 30th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival, and chatting with Festival Director John Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth, one can sense that things aren’t so different than they were at Robert Redford’s inaugural Festival in Park City, Utah. As independent film has evolved from its renegade-spirited roots to an “accepted form of creative expression,” the tenets of the Sundance Film Festival remain unaffected.
In deconstructing  the program for the 2014 Festival, Cooper and Groth’s sentiment is especially reflective.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the films selected for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions and the out-of-competition NEXT <=> section of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Somewhere along the line, the original tenets of Thanksgiving—you know, the “thanks” and “giving” parts—became lost in the cooking shuffle. A holiday predicated on blessing the year’s harvest became an exercise in gluttony, whether that be regarding food or even shopping. To align with the contemporary mores of autumn’s holiday, check out these 5 Sundance-supported films that train their lenses on one of America’s favorite pastimes: eating.

Film Independent announced the nominations for its 29th Annual Independent Spirit Awards this morning with actresses Octavia Spencer and Paula Patton presenting the honors. A total of 24 films supported by Sundance Institute or the Sundance Film Festival received recognition, led by three noms for Grand Jury Prize winner Fruitvale Station and a pair for Upstream Color, helmed by Shane Carruth, who garnered a Best Director nomination.
Winners will be announced at the Spirit Awards on Saturday, March 1, 2014.

Over the past eight years, Sundance Institute’s New Frontier program has been building a community of brilliant creative minds from a broad range of artistic, scientific, and technology backgrounds, who are “geeked” about playing together in the story innovation sandbox. 
Last month, the New Frontier Story Lab brought a fraction of that community to the ancient mountains of Utah to share what they’ve learned from their experiments and to help develop the visionary projects of our 2013 Fellows. 
Before the Lab, my Sundance colleagues and I felt like we were constructing some kind of convergence experiment, asking ourselves questions like 
“What if the Academy Award-nominated writer who conceived the ingenious twist to Cape Fear that iconic talents Scorsese, Nolte and DeNiro used to rivet audiences; was in the room with a former Disney Imagineer, whose transmedia campaigns brought millions of fanboy/fangirl fantasies to life? And, we added the digital artist who (from a lighthouse in Iceland) studied the inner workings of Bjork’s mind to created fluid iPad interfaces that allowed millions of her adherents to explore and interact with her imagination?” 
What would happen?

“What if the Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who used rare footage to depict the power of rhetoric, from its darkest manifestations (i.