Category: News

Twenty-five percent of Americans live with disabilities, yet when disability is portrayed on-screen, Hollywood often misses the mark. “I loathe ‘overcoming disability’ storylines,” visual artist and filmmaker Alison O’Daniel, who is also hard of hearing, told us at Sundance Institute’s recent Impact Intensive, underscoring the importance of empowering artists with disabilities to tell their own stories.
With the launch of our Outreach & Inclusion and Impact, Engagement and Advocacy programs at Sundance Institute, we’ve collaborated in the field to convene and support artists with disabilities whose creative practice and work explores access, justice, neurodiversity, sound, and vision.

It’s official—we’re only three weeks away from the start of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. And while you’ve probably glanced at the program, booked your lodging, started looking at your outerwear options, and cleared out your biggest suitcase in anticipation of your flight to Park City, we know from experience that there are plenty of things people tend to overlook in the lead-up. For that reason, we’ve enlisted our veteran staffers and volunteers to provide tips and tricks for making the most of your time on the mountain.

Our 2019 Knight Alumni grantees are not easy to fit into a box—this year’s awardees include a Detroit-based harpist, a multidisciplinary artist with a PhD in mythological studies, and a filmmaker who sponsors Indigenous delegations to come speak at the United Nations forum in New York. We knew their projects would span genres and topics, and that they would use their grants in innovative ways—and we weren’t disappointed.
Knight Alumni Grants, a new avenue of support from our partnership with the John S.

For a second year, the Press Inclusion Initiative, our effort to cultivate a more representative press corps at the Sundance Film Festival, returns by providing top tier access to freelance critics from underrepresented communities. With returning support from partners Critical Minded, Netflix, Open Society Foundations, and Rotten Tomatoes, the initiative again additionally made available a pool of 51 unrestricted cash stipends to support Festival attendance for critics, freelancers, and journalists from backgrounds underrepresented in the critical mainstream, with an emphasis on people of color, women, and people with disabilities. Selection criteria included the strength of each applicant’s submissions, prior work, and their coverage plans for the 2020 Festival.

LOS ANGELES — Fifteen screenwriters will convene to advance their independent projects at Sundance Institute’s January Screenwriters Lab, taking place at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah from January 17–22, 2020. At the Lab, the screenwriters will immerse themselves in a rigorous and holistic creative process, working to further develop their scripts with the mentorship of accomplished creative advisors.
The January Screenwriters Lab has been created and organized under the leadership of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter and Deputy Director Ilyse McKimmie.

Darren Walker to Receive the Inaugural Vanguard Award for Philanthropy

Evening Featuring the World Premiere of Crip Camp: Tickets on Sale Now Here
Park City, UT — Sundance Institute invites champions of independent storytelling to attend An Artist at the Table Presented by IMDbPro, Sundance Institute’s annual fundraising event hosted on the first night of the Sundance Film Festival, Thursday, January 23, 2020, in Park City, Utah. During the celebratory event, Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, will be honored with the Vanguard Award for Philanthropy. Proceeds from the evening will advance Sundance Institute’s mission and programs that discover, support and amplify risk-taking and exciting independent film, media and theatre artists.

The 2020 Golden Globe nominees were announced earlier this morning in Los Angeles, and we’re excited to congratulate projects with ties to Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival on being recognized. Lulu Wang’s family dramedy The Farewell, which premiered at the Festival earlier this year before being released by A24 in July, collected two nominations: one for Awkwafina’s breakout performance and one for Best Motion Picture—Foreign Language. Find the complete list of nominations for Sundance-supported films below, and tune in on Sunday, January 5, 2020, to watch the ceremony on NBC.

47 Projects from 27 Countries Receive Over $1.5 Million in Grants

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today named the global cohort of independent nonfiction film
projects that comprise its latest Documentary Fund Grantees, including specialized grants administered by The Kendeda
Fund and the Stories of Change Fund.

Unrestricted granting support, totaling $1.