Science-in-Film
Celebrating more than a decade at Sundance Institute, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science-in-Film initiative supports emerging filmmakers whose work explores scientific themes and characters and their place in our culture. Through grants, Lab Fellowships, panel discussions, and the annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Initiative illustrates the vital and unique role of scientists and their work in our society and highlights the human dimension of the scientific and technological enterprise.
Interested in applying? Visit the Feature Film Program to learn more.
Sundance Institute and the Sloan Foundation
Sundance Institute is proud to celebrate more than a decade of partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and their commitment to Sundance Institute’s Science-in-Film Initiative. The Sloan Foundation is devoted to the support of education and research in science, technology, and economic performance through a variety of grants and fellowships. The principle belief of the Foundation is that understanding the world and all of its functionalities is key to the betterment of society as a whole.
The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, is a non-profit philanthropy that makes grants for original research and education in science, technology, and economic performance. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.
Sloan’s Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with some of the top film schools in the country – including AFI, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, UCLA and USC – and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production, along with an annual best-of-the best Student Grand Jury Prize administered by the Tribeca Film Institute. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, the San Francisco Film Society, the Black List, and Film Independent’s Producing Lab and Fast Track program and has helped develop such film projects as Shawn Snyder’s To Dust, Ginny Mohler and Lydia Pilcher’s Radium Girls, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Matthew Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infinity, and Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter. The Foundation has also supported theatrical documentaries such as the recently released Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever, and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans.
The Foundation has an active theater program and commissions about twenty science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the National Theatre, as well as supporting select productions across the country and abroad. Recent grants have supported Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes, Nick Payne’s Constellations, Lucas Hnath’s Isaac’s Eye, and Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51. The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017 and the recipient of the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize at the San Francisco Film Society.
For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, visit sloan.org
