Category: News

Actor-writer-director, Josh Radnor, whose wistful ode to love, neurosis, and early-onset midlife crisis, Liberal Arts screened (to standing ovations) in the Premieres section of the Sundance Film Festival, opens in theaters across the country on Friday, September 14. The film stars Radnor as an aimless (possibly depressed, definitely developmentally arrested) 30-something who returns to his alma mater to give a speech and falls for a vivacious, seriously age-inappropriate undergrad (Elizabeth Olsen). Calling from the O2 shortly after the film’s bow, Radnor offered the following glimpse inside his Sundance Film Festival: London experience.

I didn’t know what to expect when I was asked to represent filmmaker Rachel Perkins for the FILM FORWARD Oklahoma program. But my time here in Chickasaw Country was amazing. I was taken by the generosity of the Native American peoples and for this I am truly grateful.

Los Angeles, CA —Sundance Institute today announced the appointment of Paul Federbush to International Director, Feature Film Program (FFP). Federbush will oversee the international activities of the Institute’s Feature Film Program and is replacing Alesia Weston who left in May to join the Jerusalem Film Centre as Executive Director. Federbush will begin September 24, reporting to Michelle Satter, Founding Director, Feature Film Program.

When I was about ten years old I remember doing a project at school about Native Americans. I remember drawing a picture of the different tribes and being particularly proud of the illustration. Since then, I’ve always wanted to know more about Native American people.

It’s officially fall, and while the leaves don’t exactly change here in Los Angeles, it does mean the Feature Film Program is hard at work. We’re busy evaluating new submissions for our January Screenwriters Lab, reading new drafts of screenplays already supported in our Labs, and helping our filmmakers fine-tune their edits before submitting to our own Sundance Film Festival. All of which makes it even more exciting and rewarding to see so many of our FFP-supported films making it out into the world, hopefully to a theater near you.

Elgin James is the writer and director of ‘Little Birds,’ a 2009 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Lab project and an Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Below, James details his personal transformation since participating at the Labs and chronicles the journey to completing his film, which opens in New York on August 29/ I’ve been out of prison for a few months now, and the first question people ask is “How scary was it?” Going to the Sundance Labs was scarier. Prison operated on a language I understood and had once been fluent in.

The sheer volume of projects that pass through the programs of Sundance Institute can leave even the most tested indie film buff or Sundance staffer botching artist names and film titles. As we touched on in our last alumni updates blog, the Sundance family tree is as convoluted as it is vast—like a cruel game of ‘six degrees of separation.’ What am I getting at? That while, in principle, both Sylvester Stallone (Death Race 2000) and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild) are Sundance alumni, we’re slightly more disposed to touting the latter’s most recent work as opposed to the former’s (Expendables 2 ).

The Motor City and Indiewood are in no immediate danger of being awarded Sister City status. On paper, independent filmmakers and Detroiters are two populations whose fates seemingly couldn’t be less aligned and intertwined; and even the savviest student of American culture would be hard-pressed to name traits shared by the two.Or so it would seem.

Park City, Utah — Sundance Institute, in collaboration with the Puerto Rico Film Society, announced today that the FILM FORWARD: ADVANCING CULTURAL DIALOGUE initiative will host free film screenings, workshops and artist roundtables in Puerto Rico for the second consecutive year. These programs will take place September 19 through 22 in San Juan and Caguas.
FILM FORWARD, a touring program that offers film screenings, workshops and discussions designed to foster dialogue and cross-cultural understanding, is an initiative of Sundance Institute and The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Los Angeles, CA — The nonprofit Sundance Institute today announced that it has been awarded a $1,000,000 three-year grant from the Annenberg Foundation to provide general operating support for the Institute’s year-round creative and tactical programs for independent film and theatre artists. The contribution will further the Institute’s mission to discover and develop independent artists and audiences through labs, grants, the #ArtistServices initiative and public programs, including the Sundance Film Festival – the Institute’s largest annual community program.
The Annenberg Foundation’s previous support of Sundance Institute includes the Annenberg Film Fellows Program (2004-2011), which helped cultivate film projects by 102 artists including Sterlin Harjo (Four Sheets to the Wind, Barking Water), Dee Rees (Pariah), Sean Durkin and Josh Mond (Martha Marcy May Marlene), and Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

“My people will sleep for 100 years, but when they awaken it will be the artists who give them back their spirit.” — Louis Riel, Metis leader hanged by the Canadian Government in 1885For the Anishinabe people of the Great Lakes, the words, stories, and prophecies transmitted through time from the ancestors continue to guide many of our communities, families, and individuals. The 7th Prophecy, or 7th Fire, speaks of a time when the “New People” (young people) will awaken and proudly stand with conviction to courageously lead our Nations into the future.

For a blog named short order, it was only a matter of time before I served up some short films about food. I hope you came hungry, because now is that time.  
We’ll start the meal off with Dr Breakfast, a great animated film we screened at the 2012 Festival.