Director Gina Prince-Bythewood reviews the script for her beloved film “Love and Basketball,” which she workshopped at the 1998 Directors Lab before it premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Sandria Miller
By Archives team
As we were combing through photos of Isabella Rossellini to highlight her in honor of her 2025 Academy Award nomination, we came across this great portrait from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival of the Until the Violence Stops film team (below). Its message and energy prompted us to dig deeper into the archives to find more images and quotations from women artists who have participated at the Sundance Institute Labs and Sundance Film Festival over the years in honor of Women’s History Month.
By no means is this selection comprehensive, but we wanted to highlight some of the remarkable women channeling their creativity to share their unique stories and to elevate the voices of others.
Once you’ve checked out our list, learn more about the artists’ films and their involvement with the Institute at history.sundance.org.
“This film is recognition that facts and truth are not the same thing. In recognizing this difference, I acknowledge that I can only represent the truth as I have witnessed it. To this effort I bring my biggest strengths, my experiences both beautiful and painful, my culture and its legacy of perseverance, and my hopes for a better world.” — Sabaah Folayan, Whose Streets? Co-director
“It was not an emotional decision; it was a practical one. I had always kept written diaries but when I first became bedridden, I lost the ability to read and write. My whole life, I wrote to understand what I thought and what I felt. And I was going through the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and suddenly I had no way to express that or possibly understand it. All I had were these overwhelming emotions.” — Jennifer Brea, Unrest director [describing the first time filming herself]
“The mission of the journalist has never changed. It is to hold power to account.” — Maria Ressa, subject of Ramona Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts (2020 Sundance Film Festival)
“I have faith in each of us telling our stories in whatever way we can because that is the way we discover we’re not alone.” — Gloria Steinem, subject of The Glorias (2020 Sundance Film Festival)
“I didn’t sit down and say ‘I want to do something groundbreaking.’ I just wanted to include myself, and when I say ‘myself’ I mean ‘us.’ I am unapologetically Black, and I made the film for us and anyone else who enjoys the story.” — Radha Blank, director “The 40-Year-Old Version” (2020 Sundance Film Festival)
“I make films because I see something that I believe must be shared with the world — even if it is just a glimpse or a taste of it. The dedicated revolutionaries that are still fighting in Egypt may seem like they’re a world away, but when you hear them and see them, you see that they are closer than you ever imagined.” — Jehane Noujaim, The Square director
