Category: News

Recognizing what is dubbed the Festival’s most innovative and experimental program, the Sundance Film Festival Awards for Best Short Films were just announced in a location that most definitely subverts expectations: the Jupiter Bowl, an irreverent, fluorescently-lit, DJ pulsing mega-bowling-plex. The awards were hosted by actress Michaela Watkins who described coming back to Sundance with her second film as returning to summer camp “when your boobs come in.”
Out of the nearly 7,000 short films submitted to the Festival, 64 films were accepted into the Short Film program presented by Yahoo! The 7 favorites below were selected for awards by three jurors: Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill creatorMike Judge; the director of the award-winning short film and subsequent feature film Pariah, Dee Rees; and Shane Smith, director of public programs at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

We’re at the midway point of the Festival and the quality—and quantity—of #Sundance photos on Instagram is not letting up. Day Five gives us a look at packed theatres, a view through 3D glasses, and an invisible Sean Penn?

Don’t forget to use #sundance when posting to Instagram so your photo has a chance of making our daily roundup. And also follow us on Instagram at username sundanceinstitute.

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute this evening announced the jury prizes and honorable mentions in short filmmaking at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Park City, Utah. These award recipients will also be honored at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony, hosted by Parker Posey on Saturday, January 28 at 7:00 p.

PARK CITY, UT – Sundance Institute and Mahindra today announced the winners of the 2012 Sundance Institute | Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award, in recognition and support of emerging independent filmmakers from around the world. The winning directors and projects are:Etienne Kallos, Vrystaat (Free State) from South Africa; Ariel Kleiman, Partisan from Australia; Dominga Sotomayor, Late To Die Young from Chile; and Shonali Bose, Margarita. With A Straw from India.

Celebrated filmmaker Stephen Frears was positively giddy about introducing the world premiere of his latest film, Lay the Favorite, on Saturday night at the Eccles Theater. Festively outfitted in a long red scarf and wordlessly roaming behind the podium, he seemed as excited for film’s world premiere as the audience. After all, he said, “I just finished it last Friday.

Moderator and New York Times media columnist David Carr kicked off Monday’s Cinema Cafe panel at the Filmmaker Lodge with an allusion to the “giant elephant in the room,” the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills whose passage was recently waylaid as a result of an internet uprising voicing concern and anger over the bill’s perceived threats to free speech.The Cinema Cafe series of panels is designed to foster free-ranging conversation among artists and industry leaders about issues that affect independent filmmakers. Presided over by a trio of knowledgeable and high-powered panelists former Senator Christopher Dodd, the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, John Fithian, the president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, and independent producer Christine Vachon—today’s Cinema Cafe landed right on top of the news, with an illuminating debate of the issues surrounding copyright protection and the creative community.

Lizzy Caplan is a woman on the verge of stardom. Just don’t tell Lizzy Caplan. With two high-profile, markedly different films in this year’s Festival—dramedic romance Save the Date and the jet-black comedy Bachelorette—Caplan is showing the kind of range and adaptive likeability that is bound to push her career forward.

One of the bitter laments emanating from contemporary female audience members—and actresses, for that matter—concerns the scarcity of great, meaty female characters who are complex, morally ambiguous, even controversial. Several films at the Sundance Film Festival this year counter that complaint, defying the typical stereotypes and delivering instead feisty, bitchy, raunchy, complicated, conflicted, and even heroic women in stories whose struggles and achievements take center stage.Overhauling Stereotype #1: The Drowning WifeIn Smashed, playing in the U.

The most amazing thing about watching Reality Bites 18 years after it was released is rediscovering what an open heart the movie has, when all anyone talked about in 1994 was the movie’s cynical young adults. But cynical characters don’t necessarily make for a pessimistic movie.
“When I look at it, there’s a certain lack of cynicism in the movie,” said Ben Stiller, who made his directorial debut with Reality Bites.

Congratulations to the seven Sundance Institute- and Sundance Film Festival-supported films and filmmakers nominated for the Academy Awards.
Documentary (Feature)
Hell and Back Again, directed by Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, directed by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman
Documentary (Short Subject)
The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, directed by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, directed by Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen
Foreign Language Film
Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau (Canada)
Short Film (Animated)
A Morning Stroll, directed by Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Margin Call, written by J.C.

On screen and off, Spike Lee always makes it interesting. Returning to Sundance with the entertaining and explosive Red Hook Summer, which in turn is a return to Lee’s micro-indie and Brooklyn roots, the director was on hand along with his cast and crew for the film’s World Premiere the Eccles Theater on Sunday night. The film takes place over the course of a hot summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where 13 year-old, Atlanta-raised Flik (newcomer Jules Brown) spends an eventful school break with his old school preacher grandfather, Enoch (The Wire’s astonishing Clarke Peters).

Documentaries tell us both who we are and what we could be. By spotlighting challenging issues, documentaries can also be instigators of social change. The subjects of these films are often pioneering social entrepreneurs—enterprising idealists who dedicate themselves to affecting positive social change.