Category: Artist Spotlight

Danielle Varga is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She most recently co-produced Kirsten Johnson’s feature “Cameraperson” and was a 2016 Documentary Film Creative Producing Lab Fellow.
I remember quite clearly, a little over a year-and-a-half ago, being seated at the Yarrow Theater in Park City, Utah, minutes before Cameraperson’s world premiere.

A lot can happen in a year. For the filmmakers chosen as the second-ever cohort of the Art of Nonfiction Fellowship—the founding pillar of the Sundance Documentary Film Program’s Art of Nonfiction Initiative—it was a year that started with being admitted to the fellowship; continued with retreats in Marfa, Texas, and Sundance Resort; saw various films reach completion, stir to life, and steadily develop; and ended with the five of them sitting around a table on a late summer day in New York.
The Art of Nonfiction Fellowship is a pointedly atypical initiative in that it isn’t project-based—there’s no demand or expectation in terms of a particular project.

Hussain Currimbhoy joined Sundance Institute in 2014 as a Festival programmer specializing in documentary feature films and New Frontier. He was previously the Director of Programming for the Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK.
I always had a crush on the art, artists, and stories I encountered from South East Asia — especially during my years in Perth, Australia, where news about films and filmmakers from the region often entered my world.

Rose Troche is an alumni of the Sundance Film Festival and has served as a creative advisor at the Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab. Her virtual reality project IF NOT LOVE premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Could a simple act of love change the course of violence? IF NOT LOVE is an exploration of this question.

There are few attacks on the human psyche more disempowering than being told that your experience is invalid.
That’s where filmmaker Jennifer Brea found herself time and time again amid a desperate search for medical truths as she gradually fell more incapacitated by the symptoms of a mysterious illness. An active Harvard PhD student at the time, Brea was eventually rendered bedridden and motionless, an official diagnosis proving frustratingly elusive.

Each year The Feature Film Program (FFP) supports more than 50 new projects across various stages of development, production, and post-production. This month, we’re highlighting the ways in which the FFP supports the crucial creative collaboration between directors and editors through the Sally Menke Memorial Editing Fellowship and the Editing Intensive, which took place earlier this summer in conjunction with our annual Directors Lab.Honoring the memory of beloved Sundance Institute mentor and esteemed editor Sally Menke (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds), the annual Sally Menke Memorial Editing Fellowship supports an emerging narrative editor in advancing their craft and building their career.

It’s kind of fun to envision a band like Sleigh Bells scoring a film: Alexis Krauss’ teasing, silky vocals strewn across Derek Miller’s shattering guitar riffs and a barrage of beats. The duo’s penchant for pitting seductive melodies against hardcore arrangements often conjures its own powerful, albeit chaotic, imagery. With last year’s music video for “I Can Only Stare,” off their LP Jessica Rabbit, we got a feel for what that film and music pairing might look like.

A singular film about a singular woman, Dina took snowy Park City by storm earlier this year, winning the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary competition and introducing the world to the one and only Dina Buno.

As incoherent as it may sound, on September 8, 2016, I was fortunate enough to be sick at home. I was missing out on an important rehearsal for a live streaming (an assignment for college) because the doctor had given me a three-day order to stay at home, as I was on the border of getting pneumonia. I was feeling very badly.

At the end of the summer, my life was completely flipped upside down. I quit my job, broke up with my boyfriend, and moved back home in what seemed like a step backwards for a recent college graduate. Needless to say, I was feeling weird and creatively stuck.

Jessie Littlebird is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is a 2017 Sundance Institute Full Circle Fellow, a program aimed at supporting the next generation of Native American storytellers. This blog was originally published on Pyragraph.I had the opportunity to attend the 2017 Sundance Film Festival this year after being chosen as a Full Circle Fellow through Sundance’s Native and Indigenous Program.

Coming into Sundance Institute’s Playwrights Residency in Germany, I thought my play would require some adjustments – crossing off some ideas, adding a few details. But I thought mostly that it was almost done and that this residency would help me refine it. I thought one piece was missing to complete the puzzle; turned out, a lot of pieces were placed upside down and needed relocation.