Category: News

Today the Sundance family joins our friends in the film community and film lovers everywhere in mourning the loss of Roger Ebert. His passion for great cinema was second to none, and his role as champion for artistic risk-taking and original storytelling was a driving cultural force that created enthusiastic audiences for the best independent films of our time. In describing Roger, Robert Redford said, “Among the many things I admired about Roger Ebert is how he has long supported freedom of artistic expression.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced today that FILM FORWARD: Advancing Cultural Dialogue will travel with eight films to host  free screenings, panel discussions and artist roundtables in Jordan, April 13 – 18.   Filmmakers Laura Nix and Ligiah Villalobos will participate in the program. For a full schedule of events visit www.

Tickets on Sale Friday online
The O2, 4 April 2013 — Sundance Institute and The O2 can reveal that British Sea Power will perform on Sunday 28 April, the closing night of the second Sundance London film and music festival.

Shorts Break returns this week with Lilli Carre’s animated tone poem How She Slept At Night, about a man who tries to remember his wife, but can only come up with a few scattered details as his memory begins to decay. A Chicago-based artist and illustrator, Carre works within a number of forms and mediums, including experimental animation, comics and print. What’s particularly striking about this project is how much emotional resonance she is able to pack in to such a simple idea and short runtime.

Upstream Color Makes its Digital Premiere May 7 documentaries about the experiences of motherhood for Mother’s Day. In addition to appearing on the Institute’s Now Playing page, themed collections will be highlighted on GoWatchIt.
Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives, Code of the West and One Mile Away are the first films making their digital premieres as part of a new collaboration between Artist Services and partner organizations The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society.

Jeff Orlowski is an American filmmaker and the director and cinematographer of Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award Documentary winning film ‘Chasing Ice.’ He joined Film Forward in Colombia to screen and discuss his latest film.The security brief from the State Department was thoroughly frightening: Narco and FARC groups are responsible for many of the local bombings.

Spring break is, for most, but a faded reverie marked by fond (even if not lucid) memories of beach parties and similar presages of summer. While the sheer bliss of spring break is not likely to be recaptured anytime soon, these five films will help you summon the nostalgia of those carefree days.
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Spring Breakdown
Before there was Spring Breakers, Ryan Shiraki’s Spring Breakdown offered a similarly absurdist take on the infamous week of college revelry.

“Tennessee Williams, ironically enough, is a very important person to me. He’s an artist I’m constantly returning to, who I’ve spent years being obsessed over. I’ve read everything he’s ever written.

This week, we’ve reached into the Sundance vaults to pull out two weird and wild tales that will challenge and delight. From the sordid brain of Joe Sedelmaier comes Openminds, an attempt to recount the life and times of Raymond E. Bowles, one of our nation’s great visionaries who you have probably never heard of, made famous for his artificial trees that seem just like the real things.

Featured Composers Include Rolfe Kent (Up In The Air), Clint Mansell (Black Swan), Thomas Newman (American Beauty) and Aaron Zigman (The Notebook)
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced that its Film Music program will host ComposersLab: LA, a one-day workshop for film music composers, on Saturday, May 18 at the Downtown Independent Theatre in Los Angeles (251 S. Main St.).

Since 2007, Sundance Institute has been thrilled by the vibrant work coming out of the New Frontier exhibition and performance space at the Sundance Film Festival. Senior Programmer Shari Frilot and the New Frontier artists have been on the forefront of a sea change in the way media and technology are enabling story creation. In 2011, Sundance Institute deepened its investment in this space by launching the New Frontier Story Lab.

After four extraordinary days in Colombia, I may just be starting to get a feel for this disarmingly complex place. Friendly, welcoming, laid back in most respects, these people wrestle with powerful issues, many surfacing during our screenings in unexpected ways. With the Film Forward team, I’ve traveled with The Loving Story first to Bogota, then to Bucaramanga, then to Medellin—urban to rural and back to relatively urban again.