Digital Archive

1993 Sundance Film Festival: Independent Vision

Sundance Institute affirmed its commitment to Native American filmmakers by launching a Festival program to showcase Native and Indigenous films from around the world. Panels covered topics on interactivity and cinema and the fate of short film. Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean Shaven, Rose Troche’s Go Fish, and Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral were among many films that saw box-office success and critical acclaim. Award winners included Steve James’s Hoop Dreams and David O. Russell’s Spanking the Monkey.

Fun fact: Wes Anderson’s 13-minute short Bottle Rocket screened during the 1993 Festival, and his feature-length version of the film was supported by the Institute’s Screenwriters Lab in the same year.

On Set for The Wizard of Loneliness

Directors Mel Howard and Philip Porcella and screenwriter Nancy Larson workshopped their screenplay adaptation of the Wizard of Loneliness at the 1985 Directors Lab along with actors Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern, and Lukas Haas. Set within a small Vermont town during the closing years of World War II, this story focuses on three characters—a 12-year-old orphan, Wendall, his aunt Sybil, and the tragic figure of her past lover, Duffy—and the raw complexities of their changing relationships.