John Cooper

Ladies and gentlemen, we are 30! Let’s not fail to celebrate.

I set an agenda at the Film Festival offices to find a way to recognize our 30th Festival in the most fun and unique way possible. Here is what we came up with…

On Monday, January 20, with FREE FAIL, we will dedicate a day of panels, workshops, and special events to exploring an always feared, often denied, but most vital aspect of the creative process: FAILURE. Here’s how you can join us in our un-anniversary celebration.

Look for a lively spin on the theme of failure at the Cinema Café, Filmmaker Lodge, and New Frontier panel line-up.

Read film industry luminaries’ accounts of their brushes with failure at Sundance.org starting January 2.

Show up at the centerpiece panel “Exploratory Detours” at the Egyptian Theater moderated by author, scholar, and curator Sarah Lewis, whose upcoming book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery explores this theme across a myriad of disciplines from science to athletics to music and art.

Participate in our full day of Fail Safe Workshops. An eclectic selection of hands-on workshops designed to let you experience failure firsthand. This is going to get crazy! We’ll share our line up in early January.

Feel my pain in a cathartic moment when we celebrate a film we failed to show the first time around – Wes Anderson’s debut feature Bottle Rocket (which incidentally launched the careers of Anderson, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson. I know, I know don’t remind me.)

And last but not least, let’s not fail to have fun at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.