Category: News

Park City, UT — Innovative documentary films addressing some of the most important issues facing the world today received a boost with a $5 million grant to the Sundance Institute. Christopher Stone, president of the Open Society Foundations, announced the dollar-for-dollar matching grant at the Sundance Film Festival.
“My foundations have long supported arts and culture–especially film–as a means to build and strengthen open societies around the world,” said George Soros,
Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations.

Not only is The Overnighters, Jesse Moss’s U.S. Documentary Competition entry at this year’s Festival, a powerful and complexly moving work of cinema verité filmmaking, it’s also a profoundly honest one.

Sundance.org is dispatching its writers to daily screenings and events to capture the 10 days of festivities during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Check back each morning for roundups from the previous day’s events.

Last night as part of a vibrant opening night at the Festival, artists and patrons gathered at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Deer Valley, Utah, for An Artist at the Table to underscore the vital support of Sundance Institute and its filmmakers. The annual event represents a salient reminder that the non-profit Sundance Institute is empowered by its supporters, who make possible the Institute’s yearlong support for filmmakers and their stories. More than 30 Institute-supported artists attended the gathering, which also included the world premiere screening of Whiplash and a post-screening dinner hosted by Mark Ruffalo, with celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis running the kitchen.

Sundance.org is dispatching its writers to daily screenings and events to capture the 10 days of festivities during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Check back each morning for roundups from the previous day’s events.

Sundance Institute is thrilled to congratulate 7 Sundance-supported films and alumni on their Oscar nominations this morning, led by four films in the Best Documentary Feature category including Directing Award winner Cutie and the Boxer and World Cinema Audience Award winner The Square. Check out all of the Sundance-supported nominees below. 
Best documentary feature
Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher
Dirty Wars, Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill
The Square, Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer
20 Feet from Stardom, Nominees to be determined
Adapted screenplay
Before Midnight, Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
Best animated feature film of the year
Ernest & Celestine, Benjamin Renner and Didier Brunner
Best animated short film
Feral, Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden.

Part of the Sundance Film Festival’s vitality is the culture of conversation we cultivate around the films in the program, with filmmakers, documentary subjects, actors, and artists. It’s through those interactions that the films really come off the screen and audiences can engage with the people who make it. 
The program is broken up into different strands, and while some information appears in print, for the most up-to-date picture of what’s happening, check out the online guide.

It goes without saying: Even in an age governed by VOD and digital platforms, there is an inimitable quality to viewing film in its traditional setting. That is (if you forgot), the theater. So goes the Sundance Film Festival experience, which is equally challenging to recreate.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today highlighted the roster of music performances to take place at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, including talent from Low Down – featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, composer Ohad Talmor and and a reading by Elle Fanning – who will perform at the ‘A Celebration of Music in Film’ event on January 19, 8:00 p.m. MT, at Sundance House Presented by HP at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 11 independent films now available through a variety of platforms and storefronts, via the Institute’s Artist Services program, which provides artists supported by the Institute with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing for their work. For details visit sundance.org/nowplaying.

Throughout the day of Free Fail (Monday, January 20), the Sundance Film Festival is hosting an eclectic selection of hands-on workshops designed to experience failure firsthand. Held at different venues around Park City, the workshops are a chance to learn from the masters as you try your hand at something new. Here is the current selection of Fail Safe workshops (yes, they’re FREE, but with limited availability), with more to be announced soon.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced that the 2014 Sundance Film Festival will host special preview screenings of Boyhood by Richard Linklater, premiering Sunday, January 19, 9:45 p.m. at the Eccles Theatre.