Category: From the Labs

How Wide Is the Eye of the Needle? Exploring the Intersection of Art and Impact

In October, the Stories of Change Lab convened a select group of independent storytellers and social entrepreneurs supported by the Skoll Foundation. The goal of the lab is to nurture collaboration among artists and changemakers in ways that protect the artists’ autonomy and can meet the social impact goals of the social entrepreneurs. Is this a narrow needle to thread? To examine this question, we asked the project team working on Water Inequality in Kenya, a short film at the lab, to share their thoughts on the intersection of art and impact in 50 words or less.

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Crystal Kayiza: “Imagining a World Where Your Voice and Storytelling Belong”

One of the challenges of being a young emerging filmmaker, especially one committed to nonfiction storytelling, is imagining a world where your voice and storytelling belong.
In my everyday life, I’ve been blessed to work in a community of artists and mentors that affirms and encourages my work and growth. But the emerging film landscape, the new media world that will arrive faster than many anticipate, is something that I found to be largely inaccessible.

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Everything Editors Need to Know About Sundance Institute’s Summer Labs

This month we’re spotlighting The Feature Film Program’s post-production support through the Sally Menke Memorial Editing Fellowship and the Editing Residency, which took place this past June in conjunction with our annual Directors Lab.
The Sally Menke Memorial Editing Fellowship honors the memory of beloved Sundance Institute mentor Sally Menke (editor on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds) and supports an emerging narrative editor in advancing their craft and building their career. The 2018 Fellow is Kate Hackett, whose work includes Amy Adrion’s acclaimed Half the Picture, a feature documentary about women directors in Hollywood, as well as myriad fiction short films.

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A Note to Screenwriters on Finding Their Story: “Comfort will kill you”

Filmmaker Meedo Taha participated in Sundance Institute’s annual Screenwriters Intensive with his project “Other People.” The Intensive provides emerging screenwriters the opportunity to hone their craft in a two-day workshop focused on the development of a fiction feature screenplay. Below he shares his insights and creative breakthroughs from that experience.

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Filmmaker Beth de Araújo on “Making a Movie with Every Single Industry Faux Pas”

Beth de Araújo is a Los Angeles–based writer/director who was recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She was selected for the 2018 Asian American Fellowship, and attended both the Screenwriters Intensive and the Screenwriters Lab with her feature screenplay Josephine, which will mark her feature directorial debut.Trying to analyze what I wanted my first feature to be was a daunting task.

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​Producer to Producer: “How One Van Ride Changed My Life”

Amanda Spain is a documentary filmmaker and 2016 Documentary Film Creative Producing Lab Fellow who is currently producing “Bathtubs Over Broadway” (formerly known as “The Industrial Musicals Movie”).
I’ve always believed there are very few life-changing moments. Instead, I have thought our journey is made up of a series of small moments that take us down twists and turns that become our story.

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How Collaboration—Not Isolation—Leads to Creative Breakthroughs

Filmmaker Grace Lee (“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”) participated as a creative advisor at the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program | CNEX Workshop and Documentary Summit in Beijing earlier this year. Below she shares learnings gleaned from working collaboratively with filmmaking teams on their rough cuts.
I arrived in Beijing after a 13-hour flight from New York, jetlagged but thrilled to be a creative advisor at the Sundance / CNEX Documentary Story and Edit Lab.

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