Category: News

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced it will host Sundance NEXT FEST August 7-9, 2015, for the second year at The Theatre at Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The weekend-long summer festival celebrates the renegade spirit of independent artists by pairing five new independent films with either a special music act that shares a complementary artistic sensibility or conversations between the filmmakers and those who inspired them.
This will mark the festival’s third year in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and New York University (NYU) Steinhardt’s Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions today announced they will host Sundance Institute Film Music Program at NYU: Steinhardt, a day-long workshop for composers, filmmakers, students and other industry professionals interested in music in film and television on Saturday, May 9 at the Fredrick Lowe Theatre (35 West 4th Street, between Greene Street and Washington Square East). This marks the first collaboration of its kind between the Institute and NYU Steinhardt and the Institute’s first-ever film music workshop in New York. For more information and to purchase tickets ($20 each), visit http://2015filmmusiclabnyu.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and Drishyam today announced the artists and creative advisors selected for the inaugural Drishyam | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab in Goa, India April 12-16. The Lab supports emerging filmmakers in India, as part of the Institute’s sustained commitment to international artists, which in the last 25 years has included programs in Brazil, Mexico, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, Israel and Central Europe.
The Lab is a five-day writer’s workshop that gives independent screenwriters the opportunity to work intensively on their feature film scripts in an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute, host of the renowned Sundance Film Festival, announced today that it will host a free filmmaker workshop and film screenings and discussions in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Northfield, Minnesota April 28 through May 1, with support from the John S. and James L.

To this day, David and Nathan Zellner talk about epic odysseys and unexplored lands in a wistful tenor. It’s as if they lament losing their curiosity to GPS devices and Google Maps. “There’s no real mystery left with the world anymore,” says Nathan Zellner.

Sundance Institute mourns the loss of Richard Glatzer, whose feature film Quinceañera, written and directed with his long-time creative partner and husband, Wash Westmoreland, won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. His comedy, Grief, also premiered in competition at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival.
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmorelandat the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

Renowned documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, a visionary in the realm of cinema verite who directed no less than five Sundance Film Festival selections, died Thursday evening. He was 88.
Albert Maysles and his brother David Maysles are best known for spearheading the American cinema verite movement with films such as Salesman, Grey Gardens, and Gimme Shelter.

Leonard Nimoy, a longtime friend and supporter of Sundance Institute who is best known for his iconic role as the always pragmatic “Spock” in Star Trek, died Friday morning. He was 83.

Leonard Nimoy and his wife Susan Bay Nimoy are ardent supporters of the Institute’s Women’s Initiative, a joint effort with Women in Film/ LA and a group of allied organizations in the field of women and media aimed at fostering gender equality in American independent cinema by supporting women filmmakers.

It’s a wrap on the most esteemed film awards weekend of the year, and today we’re congratulating the Sundance-supported projects and artists that took home hardware from the Spirit Awards and the Oscars. Led by Damien Chazelle’s 2014 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner Whiplash, eight films supported by the Institute and the Festival were recognized over the weekend. Additionally, last night’s “Best Director” winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) is set to be honored this with the Vanguard Award this June at the Sundance Institute Los Angeles Benefit for the originality and independent spirit of his films.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities will host a free public screening of We Are The Giant followed by a guided discussion with Director Greg Barker on March 8, 7:00 p.m. at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY.

David Carr, the vibrant and mercurial New York Times media columnist and a central subject of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times, died Thursday at age 58.

Carr’s compelling life story of overcoming drug addiction to eventually join The New York Times in 2002 is documented in his 2008 memoir The Night of the Gun. In director Andrew Rossi’s Page One, Carr became the de facto central figure of the film as it tracked the metamorphosis of print journalism from inside the newsroom.

On February 2nd, our beloved Creative Advisor Stewart Stern passed at 92 after a battle with brain cancer. According to his family, he was “surrounded by the next generation of filmmakers and screenwriters he had mentored and inspired, as well as friends and family who came from all parts of the country for a two-week vigil before his death.”
Stewart passed into the unknown world but his profound contribution to the Sundance Institute Labs and the art and craft of screenwriting will indeed live on forever.