Phoebe Joecks remembers the first day she volunteered for the Sundance Film Festival. Joecks is by profession a “freelance operations maven,” as she calls it. So when she volunteered at the 2008 Festival and was assigned to the Library Theatre, she already had a working background in festival logistics.
Though it’s never been easy to make independent films—not by a long shot—the current economic climate has only made it harder to finance, produce, and distribute the kinds of films that Sundance was created to showcase. This reality makes community-building events like Sunday’s annual Producers Luncheon all the more vital. As attendees chatted over omelettes and mimosas at The Shop—a beautiful old warehouse that normally serves as a yoga studio—Sundance Institute leaders handed out grants, introduced Fellows, and praised the work of producers—the unsung heroes of independent film.
BMI, the music company that manages licensing fees for musicians, gathered no fewer than 17 Festival directors and film composers on stage at the BMI Roundtable Discussion: Music and Film, the Creative Process at the Sundance House on Wednesday. Aligning everyone’s schedules so they could participate and disclose some aspects of the director-composer relationship is difficult enough. But getting the many panelists to find the common ground necessary to converse among themselves, is an indication of the love of film the Festival engenders and the collegiality BMI encourages among its musicians.
Mahindra is a $14.4 billion multinational company from India that employs over one million people worldwide. Because of a partnership with Sundance Institute, it is now the happy agent of change for deserving filmmakers across the globe who want to see their artistic visions realized.
Coming-of-age stories in film are as ubiquitous as the human condition itself. But rarely does such a story come together as well as it does in GOATS, an intricate mash of individual life journeys, all swirling around and through a 15-year pot-smoking, cross-country running, straight-A student named Ellis (Graham Phillips).First-time filmmaker Christopher Neil fashioned his film from Mark Jude Poirier’s infectious novel (and screenplay).
Earlier this week, a newly restored print of writer/director Julie Dash’s vibrant homage to her Gullah ancestors, Daughters of the Dust, screened at the Egyptian Theatre as part of the “From the Collection” program. The Collection is a partnership between Sundance Institute and the UCLA Film and Television Archive to provide an archive devoted to both preserving and offering access to indie films that might have otherwise disappeared.
Visually stunning and impressionistic in style, it’s no wonder Daughters of the Dust won the 1991 Festival’s Excellence in Cinematography Award.
On Monday morning, a small crowd of filmmakers, philanthropists, and media leaders gathered at the Park City home of Jacki Zehner to hear Sundance Institute executive director Keri Putnam and Women in Film Los Angeles President Cathy Shulman announce a collaborative effort to support women working in narrative and documentary independent film. The brunch was co-hosted by Zehner, Putnam, Schulman, and Sundance Institute Trustee Pat Mitchell.Lauren Greenfield (Queen of Versailles), Katie Aselton (Black Rock), and Sheila Johnson were among the 120 guests treated to brunch served with Wonder Woman-themed party ware and complimentary handbags provided by Coach.
Erstwhile Indie Queen, sardonic girl next door and trailblazer for a generation of quirked-out Emmas, Kats and Zooeys — Parker Posey’s reputation precedes her. She first came to Sundance in 1995 with Party Girl, the film that introduced the world to her unique blend of crush-worthy beauty and self-effacing comedic chops. And she last swept through Park City when she served as a juror for the US Dramatic Competition in 2010.
Sleepwalk with Me is much funnier than the outline of its plot indicates: A man has lived with his girlfriend for eight years, but doesn’t really love her. Succumbing to family pressures, the couple gets engaged. His anxieties manifest themselves in a disorder that is eventually diagnosed as rapid eye movement behavior disorder, which causes its sufferers to actually act out the dream they are experiencing.
Day Six of #Sundance on Instagram focuses on Festival landscapes and the interesting characters who inhabit them.
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Exactly one year ago, a group of activist friends armed with cameras walked out their front door to the epicenter of the Egyptian uprising. With the struggle to survive competing with the struggle to document the events, directors Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim capture a fierce moment of history in their film ½ Revolution, part of the Festival’s World Documentary Competition. Karim El Hakim, whose past film credits include Egypt We Are Watching You, understands the power of street protests in action.
Recognizing what is dubbed the Festival’s most innovative and experimental program, the Sundance Film Festival Awards for Best Short Films were just announced in a location that most definitely subverts expectations: the Jupiter Bowl, an irreverent, fluorescently-lit, DJ pulsing mega-bowling-plex. The awards were hosted by actress Michaela Watkins who described coming back to Sundance with her second film as returning to summer camp “when your boobs come in.”
Out of the nearly 7,000 short films submitted to the Festival, 64 films were accepted into the Short Film program presented by Yahoo! The 7 favorites below were selected for awards by three jurors: Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill creatorMike Judge; the director of the award-winning short film and subsequent feature film Pariah, Dee Rees; and Shane Smith, director of public programs at TIFF Bell Lightbox.