Category: Festival

There’s an Offscreen Event for That!

The Sundance Film Festival’s reputation may have been made on screen, but in recent years, as the Fest evolved into a hub of cultural conversation, there’s been a groundswell of live events, affectionately referred to as the Offscreen section. The best thing about Offscreen is its variety. Do you enjoy intimate fireside chats? Provocative conversations between some of the most prominent cultural icons of the moment? Engaging panels that convene unexpected combinations of well-known experts? Whatever piques your interest, there’s an Offscreen event for it.

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Meet the ACLU Lawyers Battling for Civil Rights in ‘The Fight’

Filmmakers Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Despres—whose previous documentary, Weiner, was a Grand Jury Prize winner—are back at the Sundance Film Festival with a new project, The Fight, which tells the story of the ACLU’s battle against the Trump administration on a number of civil rights cases.
At the Q&A, Steinberg shared that the decision to make the film began the night that lawyer Lee Gelernt won the first case against Trump’s Muslim ban.
“That night, I joined the protestors on the steps of the Brooklyn courthouse,” said Steinberg of the chaotic, joyous first scene in the film.

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‘Cuties’ Invites You to Be an 11-Year-Old Girl—Through All the Highs and Lows

“I wish during the next hour and a half that each one of you will become an 11-year-old little girl,” Maïmouna Doucouré told the audience assembled at the Egyptian Theatre on opening night of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, before the curtain rose on her debut feature, Cuties.
Mission accomplished. Equal parts disturbing and joyous—just like being an 11-year-old girl, if my fairly distant recollections can be trusted—the French writer/director’s coming-of-age tale follows Amy, the daughter of Senegalese immigrants living in a Paris housing project, as she deals with the highs and lows of reaching that “not a girl, not yet a woman” age range.

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‘Summertime’ Is a Love Letter to Los Angeles from 27 Young Poets

Two years after he debuted his first feature film, Blindspotting, at the Sundance Film Festival, Carlos López Estrada returned with Summertime, a poetic odyssey through Los Angeles with more than 30 characters—including taggers, cooks, and would-be-rappers—through one hot, life-changing summer day.
At the Q&A after the screening, Estrada described the film, which was a collaboration with 27 young poets, as a “miracle movie.”
After attending a Get Lit teen poetry program seven months ago, Estrada said, “We saw these people talking about things that were important to them in a way that was creative and beautiful.

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SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LIVE presents THE CLIMB

PARK CITY, UTAH — Sundance Institute today announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Sony Pictures Classics and Trafalgar Releasing: on January 26, the Utah premiere of The Climb, screening in the Spotlight category of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, will be simulcast across ten cinemas across the U.S., with the following Q&A simulcast live from The Ray Theatre in Park City, enabling independent film fans in markets nationwide to participate in the buzz of Festival from afar.

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Offscreen at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival: Panels, Music and Events

Onstage: Ai Weiwei, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ron Howard, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Viggo Mortensen, Max Richter, Isabella Rossellini, Julie Taymor, Tessa Thompson, Rufus Wainwright, Carrie Mae Weems,
Among Many Others

Day One Press Conference Goes All-Digital
Park City, UT — Sundance Institute will curate dozens of offscreen events, including behind-the-scenes panels on the art of filmmaking, musical performances and – around the theme of Imagined Futures – a public Bonfire and several extended post-screening conversations (known as IF Screenings), at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival taking place in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Sundance, Utah, January 23 through February 2, 2020.
“Our offscreen programming provides a powerful cultural temperature check – it is an expression of what is preoccupying artists, both in terms of their own creativity, and also how that intersects with the issues of the day,” said John Nein, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer. “This year in addition to a slate of incredible performances, there is a real focus on civic engagement, data justice, disability as a creative force, and the role of art as an indispensable tool in the fight for truth telling and justice making.

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How to Experience the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City

As always, during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, we’ll be hosting a wide range of screenings, projects, and events at our five venues in Salt Lake City, located about 30 miles outside of the Festival’s home base in Park City. Below, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about experiencing the Festival in SLC, complete with info on our venues, lounges, and box office. Note that individual tickets go on sale to the general public on January 21; in the meantime, you’ll want to look through our digital program guide’s schedule feature to see which films you can catch in Salt Lake City.

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2019 Sundance Film Festival Live Awards Updates

[Ed. note: Looking for updates from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony? Head here.]Updated 9:12 PM MTPalka introduces Rachel Grady, who along with co-director Heidi Ewing is an Academy Award nominee for the film Jesus Camp and has won numerous Emmy awards and a Peabody Award.

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‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’: “This Is About a Woman Falling in Love with Herself”

‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’By Jeremy Kinser
Writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo calls his inspirational feature film debut Brittany Runs a Marathon “a love letter to my best friend.” He says he based the script on his pal of the same name, after becoming inspired by her journey as a New Yorker in her late 20s to overcome bad habits and establish some balance in her life and believing that her story needed to be shown with dignity on the big screen. The comedy has emerged as one of the bona-fide crowd pleasers of Sundance 2019 and global rights were snapped up by Amazon for $14 million.

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It’s All Falling Apart for Wendi McLendon-Covey in ‘Imaginary Order’

Imaginary OrderBy Jeremy Kinser
Imaginary Order, a comedic character study from Debra Eisenstadt, focuses on a woman at a crossroads, beginning to feel useless as she finds herself in the middle of a series of unwanted events that threaten to unravel her family.
Veteran comic actress Wendi McLendon-Covey (known for more ribald work in Bridesmaids and TV’s The Goldbergs) gets the chance to create a funny, moving portrait of Cathy, a middle-aged housewife and mother who increasingly feels her comfortable existence is slipping away—and she scores. Cathy’s teenaged daughter is becoming increasingly remote, and she fears her husband is having an affair.

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