Category: News

Sundance Institute Announces Short Film Awards For 2016 Sundance Film Festival

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the jury prizes in short filmmaking at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. The Short Film Grand Jury Prize, awarded to one film in the program of 72 short films selected from 8,712 submissions, went to Thunder Road by director and screenwriter Jim Cummings. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Park City, Utah; full video of the ceremony is at youtube.

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Sundance Institute Announces $60,000 in Sloan Science in Cinema Awards

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today awards for the most promising new independent films about science and technology, including Embrace of the Serpent directed by Ciro Guerraas the recipient of the Sloan Science-in Film-Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Mark Levinson (The Gold Bug Variations) has been awarded the Sundance Institute / Sloan Fellowship, and Darcy Brislin and Dyana Winkler (Bell) will receive Sundance Institute / Sloan Commissioning Grants.These activities, as well as a panel at the Festival, are part of the Sundance Institute Science-in-Film Initiative, which is made possible by a grant from the Alfred P.

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Thomas Middleditch Embarks on a Misguided Boys’ Weekend in ‘Joshy’

The emotional vacancies apparently part and parcel to male companionship, whether a dated social construct or otherwise, are well documented in film and television (see another Sundance Competition film for just one portrayal). But Jeff Baena’s comfortable writing and direction in Joshy manage to fashion a smart and renewed comedic take on that age-old stereotype by subtly expounding the vagaries and variations that make it so.
Thomas Middleditch – well known for his vaunted role on HBO’s Silicon Valley – stars as the film’s titular lead, Josh, who is going forward with his bachelor party despite his fiancé’s suicide months earlier.

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‘Kate Plays Christine’ Blurs Lines in Revisiting Anchor’s On-Air Suicide

After watching a film in which the lines between documentary and fiction, behavior and performance, reportage and speculation, are deliberately blurred, it was fitting that the discussion after the world premiere of Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine at the Temple Theater last night felt like a spillover from, or even a fulfillment of, the movie. In all respects, it was questions begging other questions, with on and off-screen lives and motivations and methods remaining meaningfully elusive.

Kate Lyn Sheil and Robert Greene.

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Sundance Institute Announces New Merata Mita Fellowship For Indigenous Artists and 2016 Recipient

PARK CITY, Utah — The Merata Mita Fellowship, a new annual fellowship named in honor of the late Māori filmmaker Merata Mita (1942-2010), was announced today at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place through January 31 in Utah. The first recipient is Ciara Leina’ala Lacy (Kanaka Maoli) from O’ahu, Hawai’i. In addition to networking opportunities at the Sundance Film Festival, Lacy will receive a monetary grant, yearlong continuum of support, access to strategic and creative services offered by Sundance Institute’s artists programs and mentorship opportunities.

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