We’re launching our coverage of the Sundance Film Festival’s journey across the pond at Sundance London with a series of on-the-ground interviews with filmmakers and musicians participating in the celebration of film and music.
English actor and Sundance alum Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost, Oz, G.I.

There are few pinch-yourself moments in a filmmaker’s career as potent (and head-spinningly daunting) as being anointed by the future King of England to capture his legacy on film. But when filmmakers Julie Bergman Sender and Stuart Sender managed to keep their wits about them when His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales asked them to collaborate with him on a feature documentary capturing his pioneering work to protect and presere the environment. Three years and several royal tea services later, the Senders have come to Sundance London bearing the fruit of that collaboration in the form of Harmony: A New Way of Looking at the World, which follows Prince Charles around the globe as he collaborates with ground-breaking artists, architects, and business leaders to heal the world.

Time travel, cults, and a beguiling Brit Marling. What more can you ask of a film?Zal Batmanglij’s debut feature, Sound of My Voice, premiered in the NEXT category at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival — aka Brit Marling’s coming-out party — and opens in the theaters on Friday, April 27. We’d call it a psychological thriller, but Batmanglij’s (yes, we envy his name, too) mind-bender transcends the usual limitations of genre.

London, 24 April 2012— Sundance Institute and The O2 announced today that HRH The Prince of Wales will introduce the Worldwide Theatrical Premiere screening of the film HARMONY: A New Way of Looking at Our World at the first-ever Sundance London film and music festival on 28 April at The O2. HRH will be joined by Sundance Institute President & Founder Robert Redford.
HARMONY, by filmmakers Stuart Sender and Julie Bergman Sender, tells the story of how for more than three decades HRH The Prince of Wales has worked side by side with a surprising and dynamic array of environmental activists, government and business leaders, artists, architects and visionaries to address the global environmental and economic crisis and find solutions towards a more sustainable, spiritual and harmonious relationship with the planet.

The Film Collaborative works with Wendy Bernfeld who is both its Advisory Board Member and its EU Digital Distribution partner.
In the past, many new media and VOD platforms – whether based on pay-per-transaction (TVOD), subscription (SVOD), free to user/ad supported (ADVOD) or download to own (DTO) — came and went, to the disillusionment of those brave souls trying to explore and develop the new sector and audiences.
Some filmmakers, sales agents, distributors who dared to license were wonderfully pleased with surprisingly good results for particular films (and not always the same ones that were mainstream successes in traditional media), but on balance, let’s face it, most were underwhelmed with the lackluster performance or transience of the various sites, and eventually became jaded about the whole sector.

Friday night might be Shabbat on the Upper West Side, but in Addis Ababa, it’s “Azmari Bets” – meaning “House of Singers”. The tradition is to move from home to home to listen to authentic Ethiopian music – traditional and contemporary. Our Ethiopian hosts treated us to a magnificent dinner and then onward to the Azmari Bets.

FILM FORWARD was a chance for me to continue the cultural dialogue I have been having with India through cinema all of my life.
My parents were from Gujarat, they emigrated to the UK in 1966, and I was born and bought up in London. My family never returned to India while I was growing up.

London, 23 April 2012 — Sundance Institute and WorldView today announced that they will jointly present awards to four films that focus on social justice issues in the developing world: Street Girls by Katie Mark; FARMING by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje; My Brother the Devil by Sally El Hosaini; and Valley of Saints by Musa Syeed. Each award is accompanied by a £5,000 or £10,000 grant, and the Documentary Development Award for Street Girls is enhanced with professional access to film mentorship from Jerry Rothwell, whose documentaries have been supported by WorldView and Sundance Institute. The awards will be presented at a private event during the first-ever Sundance London film and music festival, 26-29 April at The O2.

Liesl Tommy (Workshop leader): “I know you guys don’t kiss on stage in Ethiopia, is that right?”
            Silence.
Workshop Participant: “That is right.”
            Silence
 Second Workshop Participant: “But we are willing to try!”
 
This exchange blows me away.

London, 20 April 2012 — Extranjero, a five-minute film from Daniel Lumb and Crinan Campbell, was announced today as the winner of the Short Film Competition at the first-ever Sundance London film and music festival, 26-29 April at The O2. The film will screen as part of the official Short Film programme at the festival and is available for immediate viewing at http://competition.sundance-london.

I was in Freddy’s group.
Liesl Tommy, creative advisor for the workshops, had given us the assignment to create a staged piece based on poems or lyrics we had selected. We divided into two groups.

In this eco-conscious age of hybrid vehicles, carbon-cutting cleaning products, and urban composting, Earth Day appears to have ascended the holiday hierarchy—to heights that perhaps even the crunchiest of its 1970s creators couldn’t have envisioned. This Sunday, April 22, marks the 42nd Earth Day, and Sundance Institute’s #ArtistServices program is currently offering a pair of documentaries for home viewing that confront vastly different (but equally alarming) stories addressing urgent threats to the environment. To commemorate Earth Day this year, we’re offering a solution to Kermit the Frog’s famous lament that “it isn’t easy being green” with our hand-picked selection of sustainability-themed Sundance Film Festival favorites below.

There are those who argue that Los Angeles, with its sprawling polyglot patchwork of ethnic enclaves, is the city of the future — a global microcosm where it’s possible to travel a few miles and have a full-immersion foreign cultural experience. Such was the case last week at the 10th Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, where Indian expats and international film lovers gathered to savor the cinema of the subcontinent. This year, the IFFLA introduced its first-ever Industry Leadership Awards, with Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satter, Director of Feature Film Program, and Alesia Weston, Associate Director of Feature Film Program, International, among the honorees.

Imperial, CA — Sundance Institute announced today that FILM FORWARD: Advancing Cultural Dialogue, a program that promotes cultural dialogue through independent documentary and narrative film, will travel to Imperial Valley and Mexicali from April 30 through May 4.  The Imperial County Film Commission and Mexicali Rose Media/Arts Center will present the FILM FORWARD program, which includes 10 films, filmmaker appearances and workshops, at multiple cities in the Imperial Valley including Calexico, Brawley, El Centro and Ocotilloin the U.S.

“Ubuntu.” An African concept meaning: Humanness. “I am because we are and because we are, therefore I am.