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.

Euzhan Palcy: Trailblazing black female filmmaker

After French West Indian filmmaker Euzhan Palcy’s debut film, Sugar Cane Alley, earned her France’s distinguished César Award for best first work in 1984, an impressed Robert Redford personally invited her to attend the 1985 Sundance Institute Filmmakers Lab. There she workshopped her adaptation of the novel A Dry White Season, about South Africa’s then still-prevalent apartheid. A few years later MGM would produce the movie, making Palcy the first black female director to helm a major Hollywood studio title. Her dedication to an unrelentingly accurate portrayal of apartheid in the film drew Marlon Brando out of his self-imposed, years-long retirement to accept a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, and made Palcy the first black director—male or female—to direct him to an Oscar-nominated performance.