Park City, UT – Sundance Institute announced today that Daughters of the Dust (1991) and Reality Bites (1994) have been selected for the From the Collection screenings at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Both titles are part of The Sundance Collection at UCLA (The Collection), a film preservation program designed to archive work that has been supported by a Sundance Institute program. The Festival takes place January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Ticket information is available at www.sundance.org/tickets.
“The From the Collection screenings call attention to the importance of film preservation and allowing future generations to experience these independent films,” said John Nein, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. “In addition, they are a tribute to the films that broke new ground and inspired a new generation of filmmaking. Daughters of the Dust and Reality Bites show the great diversity of independent film from the early 1990s, and each is a distinct portrait of a time and place in our film culture.”
Daughters of the Dust / U.S.A., 1991 (Director and screenwriter: Julie Dash) – Set in the early 1900s, the Pazants family prepares to migrate from their Sea Island home to the mainland, leaving their land and legacy behind. Daughters of the Dust was the first dramatic feature film to explore the traditions of the Gullah, the descendants of African slaves who once worked the plantations and later inhabited the many islands dotting the South Carolina and Georgia coastlines. It is a story about the struggle between tradition and progress.Cast: Adisa Anderson, Alva Rogers, Barbara O, Cheryl L. Bruce, Cora Lee Day, Kaycee Moore, Tommy Hicks, Trula Hoosier. Daughters of the Dust screened at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival, where it earned the Excellence in Cinematography Award.
A preservation print of Daughters of the Dust will screen on Monday, January 23 at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City. Director and screenwriter Julie Dash is expected to introduce the film and participate in the Q&A.
Reality Bites / U.S.A., 1994 (Director: Ben Stiller, Screenwriter: Helen Childress) – Recent college graduate Lelaina Pierce is making a video about her circle of friends. Along the way, she must choose whether to give her heart to Michael, a charming, but materialistic, video executive, or her grungy, but too cool, friend, Troy. When Michael declares his love for Lelaina, the pressure is on Troy to decide whether to drop his mask of indifference and risk rejection, or play it safe and risk losing the love of his life. The feature-film directorial debut for Ben Stiller, Reality Bites was the film about young adults of the nineties that we were all waiting for. Cast: Ben Stiller, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, Winona Ryder. Reality Bites screened at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival.
A newly struck preservation print of Reality Bites, created by Universal Pictures to commemorate their upcoming centenary year, will screen on Sunday, January 22 at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City.
Established in 1997, The Sundance Collection at UCLA (The Collection) is specifically devoted to the preservation of independent documentaries, narratives, and shorts. It is part of a larger Sundance Institute initiative designed to maintain an exhaustive record of the artists and work supported through the Institute’s Labs and the Festival since 1981.
The Collection has grown to nearly 1000 titles, generously donated by individual filmmakers and nine founding donors: Fine Line Features, Gramercy Pictures, Miramax, New Line Cinema, October Films, Sony Pictures Classics, Strand Releasing, Zeitgeist Films and Trimark Pictures. To supplement its growing library of films, The Collection also features a rare assemblage of data on the history of independent cinema. Filmmakers can visit http://www.sundance.org/archives/collection/ to learn more about donating their work.
The Sundance Film Festival
A program of the non-profit Sundance Institute, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most ground-breaking films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Maria Full of Grace, The Cove, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious, Trouble the Water, and Napoleon Dynamite, and through its New Frontier initiative, has showcased the cinematic works of media artists including Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – Entertainment Weekly, HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase Sapphire SM; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe Systems Incorporated, Bing™, Canon, DIRECTV, Focus Forward, a partnership between GE and CINELAN, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and Yahoo!; Sustaining Sponsors – Bertolli® Frozen Meal Soups, FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, Grey Goose® Vodka, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, L’Oréal Paris, Stella Artois®, Timberland, Time Warner Inc. and YouTubeTM. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations will defray costs associated with the 10-day Festival and the nonprofit Sundance Institute’s year-round programs for independent film and theatre artists. www.sundance.org/festival
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a global nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth,Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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