Category: News

Read Part 1 and Part 3 also.
The Baqa’a camp, home to 104,000 people Palestinian refugees, is about 40 minutes outside of Amman. Administered by the United Nations, it was created in 1948 and is one of 13 camps for the close to two million Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan.

While Roger Ross Williams was in Zimbabwe filming the 2010 documentary short Music by Prudence, which would make him the first African American to win an Academy Award for directing and producing a film, he was already wondering about his follow-up project.“I noticed how intensely religious and conservative Africa is,” he recalls. “There’s an evangelical religious hold on sub-Saharan Africa, and that was in the back of my mind when I was thinking of what to do next.

British documentarian Eva Weber has made short poetic docs something of a specialty. With a wide range of topics, her astute, ethereal gaze brings prominence and grace to otherwise invisible objects. Her work evokes comparisons to bite-sized symphonies and visual tapestries.

Last January, as audience members inquired about arguably the most artistically liberated film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, director Francesca Gregorini explained, “It’s pretty dark up here. I figure I’d try to get it out, make it a little lighter, give some of my darkness to you.” A few short months later, with the UK premiere of Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes at Sundance London only days away, that sentiment holds true for Gregorini.

Read Part 1 and Part 3 also.It is Wednesday, April 17, 2013, and my first time on this trip talking to students who are not filmmakers or college age. Over the last few days I’ve had an opportunity to have in depth discussions with film students at the Royal Film Commission and at the ASE Institute (Audio Sound Engineering Studio) and with college students at the American University of Madaba.

In this eco-conscious age of hybrid vehicles, carbon-cutting cleaning products, and urban composting, Earth Day appears to have ascended the holiday hierarchy—to heights that perhaps even the crunchiest of its 1970’s creators couldn’t have envisioned. This Monday, April 22, marks the 43rd Earth Day, and Sundance Institute’s #ArtistServices program is currently offering some special documentaries for home viewing that confront vastly different (but equally alarming) stories addressing urgent threats to the environment. To observe Earth Day this year, we’re offering hand-picked selection of sustainability-themed Sundance favorites for you to enjoy.

The disparities that demarcate life in Mexico and the landlocked Arab country of Jordan are, ostensibly, vast and boundless. The two are quite literally half a world from one another, inhabited by starkly dissimilar populations and only thinly united by their rich histories and cultures. Even still, it’s those contrasts that make screening a film like Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna), written by Film Forward participant Ligiah Villalobos, such a rewarding experience for both the artist and audiences.

Read Part 2 and Part 3 also.
We arrived in Amman four days ago. I’ve never been to Jordan before but I was three hours away by car when we were shooting in Damascus, Syria.

The O2, 18 April 2013 — Best, a five-minute film from Surrey filmmaker William Oldroyd, was announced today as the winner of the Short Film Competition for the second Sundance London film and music festival, 25-28 April at The O2. The film will screen as part of the official Short Film Programme at the festival, and Oldroyd will receive a three-night stay at The Langham, London as well as additional prizes.
The Short Film Competition was organized by a small team of Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication students, in collaboration with Sundance London organizers, including Sundance Institute, which annually hosts the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, U.

In The Screening Room this week a past festival winner and a miniature horse that will win your heart.
First we have GASLINE, which won Best Short for the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Set in the New York suburbs of 1979 amidst the gas crisis, this poignant and exuberant drama follows a gas station owner throughout the course of a very, very bad day, shot with panache and a keen sense of observation.

It is a little after 11:00 p.m. on Monday, April 15, 2013.

We are proud to share one of the more celebrated shorts of recent times – More, directed by Mark Osborne. This lovingly animated stop-motion tale of an inventor’s search for bliss and meaning in a dehumanizing universe of mass consumption won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Going beyond a great animation style, the short has an incredible level of humanism and the ability to take you into the story.