Category: News

The first time I attended the Sundance Film Festival was in 1989, when I was the composer for sex, lies and videotape. Sundance was the ground floor from which the film went on to garner worldwide acclaim; and for all of us involved it was like driving a rocket ship. Even back then, Sundance was a feeding frenzy for independent film enthusiasts; and getting into popular screenings, parties and events took some serious determination.

Those who wanted to see Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s directorial debut, The Words, had to wait until closing night of the Sundance Film Festival for its world premiere. That seemed only fitting, however, as both directors openly admitted at Friday’s screening that the film took nearly 12 years to make and waiting anxiously a few extra days “felt like par for the course.”Led by a strong cast that included Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, Dennis Quaid, and Zoe Saldana, The Words tells the story of Rory Jansen (Cooper), a budding novelist who struggles with his sudden propulsion to literary stardom, brought about by a yellowed manuscript he finds in a beat-up satchel in a Parisian antique shop.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute this evening announced the Jury, Audience, NEXT <=> and other special awards of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony, hosted by Parker Posey in Park City, Utah. An archived video of the ceremony in its entirety is available at www.sundance.

Those who came to see the world premiere of Price Check on Wednesday night at the Eccles Theater were treated to something like a double feature. First came the film, an entertaining and poignant office saga about an over-educated 36-year-old supermarket executive (played by Eric Mabius) who gets swept up in the crazy charisma of his new boss (Parker Posey), and risks his marriage and well-being for the rush of attraction, affirmation, and sudden purpose. Then came an extended, hilariously bizarre Q&A that touched on horrible bosses, adultery, air castles and donkeys.

Marina Abramovic is ready for her close-up. Eight months after the completion of her historic retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art—the first large-scale exhibit for a solo performance artist in the museum’s history—the artist was present at Sundance for the world premiere of Matthew Akers’s powerful documentary portrait, The Artist is Present.Using the MoMA show as a launching pad for examining the Abramovic’s life and work, the film explores the nature of performance, art, time, and existence and dedicates much of its running time to the astoundingly epic live performance that accompanied the show.

In addition to the 181 of films being presented at this year’s Festival, there’s also an ambitious slate of panels, populated by an eclectic mix of artists, film industry professionals and an array of leading edge thinkers, politicians and academics. What they all have in common is a shared interest and investment in how film impacts and intersects with the culture at large. To that end, we’re conducting a series of conversations with some of the more notable participants whose expertise lies in disciplines, which on the surface might seem to have little to do with the filmmaking process.

Day Eight of #Sundance on Instagram takes you across the country for Sundance Film Festival U.S.A and back to Park City for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “hitRECord at the Movies”.

Last night, a small group of international cineastes gathered to celebrate the 2012 Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award. The intimate dinner helmed by Michelle Satter, director of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, and Alesia Weston, the program’s associate director of international initiatives, was the perfect reunion for Sundance and longtime friends from NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), who have been teaming up for over 15 years to support filmmakers in the global arena. Asami Tomoko, Kazuko Taguchi, and Morihisa Matsudaira were present on behalf of NHK—along with last year’s award-winners, director-writer Benh Zeitlin and co-writer Lucy Alibar, whose film Beasts of the Southern Wild premiered last week in the Festival’s Dramatic Competition—to toast this year’s winner, Jens Assur for Close Far Away.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the live blog for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony. We’re Eric Hynes and Claiborne Smith, and we’ll be your tag-team virtual hosts for tonight’s festivities. For the second year in a row, the Awards Ceremony takes place few miles north of Park City at the Basin Recreation Fieldhouse at Kimball Junction.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Commissioning Grant and Lab Fellowship, both presented through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.

On the surface, films couldn’t be more different than Mark Webber’s The End of Love and Antonio Campos’s Simon Killer. Whereas Webber’s film is a warm, handmade portrait of a young single father struggling to make ends meet (both emotionally and financially) as he raises his 3 year-old son (played by Webber’s own son, Isaac). Campos’s film, on the other hand, is a stylishly composed, bone-chilling look at a young man’s slow descent into criminality and violence.

Marshall Lewy premiered more than his film, California Solo, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. As he came out to welcome an enthusiastic crowd Wednesday night, he also revealed his one-month old daughter, Beatrice, who actually waved a tiny hand to the audience. It was a sign of good things to come.