Category: News

LOS ANGELES, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the films and music acts that will headline the Sundance NEXT FEST summer festival August 7-10 in Los Angeles. NEXT FEST, headquartered at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, celebrates the intersection of film and music and the renegade spirit of independent artists. Tickets ($15-25) go on sale to Sundance Institute members today and all others tomorrow at sundance.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced the selection of 20 Fellows representing eight documentary film projects to participate in the 2014 Documentary Edit and Story Labs, June 20-28 and July 4-12 at Sundance Resort in Sundance, Utah. These are part of 10 residential Labs hosted by Sundance Institute this summer, collectively representing 15 weeks of residency support and mentorship for the most promising new independent film and theatre projects from the United States and around the world.
Built upon the immersive Lab model launched in 1981 by Sundance Institute President & Founder Robert Redford, each session of the Documentary Edit and Story Labs brings together director and editor teams with world-renowned documentary filmmakers and Sundance Institute staff to support creative risk-taking around issues of story, dramatic structure and character development.

Documentary filmmaker Andrew Rossi is drawn to worlds that at first seem impenetrable. In his previous film, the riveting Page One: Inside the New York Times (which premiered at Sundance in 2011), Rossi obtained a “fly-on the-wall” look at the newspaper industry in a state of transition and turmoil. Now, with his latest documentary Ivory Tower, Rossi departs The Grey Lady’s sanctified headquarters for the hallowed halls of Harvard to find an explanation for the staggering cost faced by Americans in pursuit of higher education.

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound today announced the independent directors and composers selected for one of two Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound. This will be the second year the Music and Sound Design Labs take place at the Skywalker Ranch in northern California. This is one of 10 residential Labs hosted by Sundance Institute this summer, collectively representing 15 weeks of residency support and mentorship for the most promising new independent film and theatre projects and artists from the United States and around the world.

A lot of filmmakers have passion projects. They’ll have scripts that remain on the docket for years, waiting for right time and the right financing to realize an ambitious or personal vision. But there’s never been a gestation quite like the one for Ping Pong Summer.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced six of the seven films that will be featured at the 2014 Sundance Institute Summer Series of free outdoor film screenings and invited the Utah community to vote online through August 15 for the seventh film, which will screen August 27.
Now in its 17th year, the free series kicks off July 8 at Salt Lake City’s Red Butte Garden and July 25 at City Park in Park City. All films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival or have been supported through an Institute program.

The Banja Luka Youth House screening was a special one for me.  Firstly, a young woman, Natasa Maric, talked about the “loss” and  “broken promise” from the dam corporation that relocate Ahlo and his family.  Natasa and her teacher Alma told me that the older people of communities near Banja Luka had also been displaced by dams – also the victims of broken promises.

Each year, as part of our long-running partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sundance Institute searches for promising and compelling scripts that have science and/or technology themes woven into their stories. As a result, each year I get to read some of the most unique stories illuminating all different aspects of science – both historical and contemporary – that are mind boggling, inspiring, and down right fascinating.

A week ago, after 17 hours of travel, we landed as the sun was setting over Sarajevo, where vast mountains were silhouetted against a yellow sky. Not knowing what to expect, I would quickly realize that Bosnia & Herzegovina is a land of contradiction: beautiful Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman architecture riddled with bullet holes, sweeping green landscapes littered with hidden landmines, stunning cathedrals around the corner from impressive mosques, optimistic youth in disagreement with war-weathered adults. I was excited that Film Forward had given me the chance to screen 20 Feet From Stardom in such a unique and complicated place, but I was entirely unsure what the response to a film about backup singers would be.

The chance to screen and discuss The World Before Her with an audience in China was truly a unique and thrilling experience. Not to mention getting to visit a country so much on the world stage, yet still such an enigmatic place.
After having now gone and come back, China remains somewhat of a mystery to me — with such contradictory pulls as tradition and modernity, communism and capitalism seemingly to function side by side.

Money may not be the root of all evil, but it’s certainly a root cause of one: holding back women filmmakers. Financing was the most frequently cited barrier for female directors and producers of independent films, according to a 2012 study commissioned by Sundance Institute and Women in Film (WIF) Los Angeles.
That was only the beginning, though, as the two organizations geared up to find practical solutions to the problems the study revealed.

Though I’ve never been to one, I imagine a “dream lab” would be a pretty cool place to visit.I was recently asked to take part in Film Forward in Taiwan and China. Film Forward is a program of Sundance Institute and The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and three federal agencies.