Category: News

All film festivals are hubs of industry hustle, but it’s crucial to not let the biz compromise the spirit of your experience when you are an excited filmmaker gearing up to bring your first film to the Sundance Film Festival. At the 2010 Festival, Javier Fuentes-Leon’s Contracorriente (Undertow) took home the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award and subsequently exploded on the global festival scene. A seasoned Festivalgoer, Fuentes-Leon discusses tips for 2011 Festival filmmakers, the general camaraderie and magic in Park City, and the international journey of his film since last year.

Over the next few months we’ll be chronicling memorable moments in Festival history as we reveal the mystery behind the 2011 snowflake icon. This week we examine the “thumbs up” icon, the definitive sign of approval in the world of film.
Roger Ebert and Micheal Moore
Founder of the universal thumbs up/thumbs down film rating system, Roger Ebert spent the last four decades sifting through films and discerning potential Oscar-winners from certain box office busts.

PARK CITY, UTAH — Sundance Institute announced today that filmmakers Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (Open Water) will return to the Sundance Film Festival with their latest feature, Silent House, which will have its world premiere in the out-of-competition Park City at Midnight section.
The Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30, 2011, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at sundance.

When Lynn Hershman Leeson first recorded footage for her latest film, she wasn’t a filmmaker, didn’t own a camera, and had no overarching plan. She just knew that something important was happening, and that somebody needed to document it. Beginning in the late 1960s with raw recordings made on a borrowed camera and continuing throughout the next several decades, pioneering multimedia artist (and eventual filmmaker) Hershman Leeson interviewed fellow feminist artists who were changing the face and direction of art in America.

“Cultural diplomacy.“ Two words, each full of meaning. Taken together they encompass a universe of opportunity.

We left Tunis on December 14 after presenting six films (12 screenings) over an intense four-day period that also included press appearances, meetings, and a terrific film school visit.
Just a few days later a young Tunisian man dreaming of a better life and seeking to just make ends meet, was hassled by the police for selling fruit without a license.  Apparently seeing no future for himself, in an act of desperate defiance, he lit himself on fire.

Los Angeles, CA-Sundance Institute has selected twelve projects for the annual January Screenwriters Lab, to be held January 14-19, 2011 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. This year’s group includes filmmakers from regions throughout the world, including the United States, Mexico, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. A hallmark of this year’s Lab is its diversity, with filmmakers from a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, an almost even split of men and women, and a wide spectrum of genres that includes comedy, period, horror-tinged thriller, and classic indie drama.

PARK CITY, UT – Sundance Institute announced today that three additional feature films will world premiere in the out-of-competition Premieres and new Documentary Premieres sections of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival: The Future (Director and screenwriter: Miranda July); Flypaper (Director: Rob Minkoff), and Magic Trip (Directors: Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney). In addition, The Future will go on to screen at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in February.
The Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

The Native Program recently brought together five producers whose films have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and continued on to the global marketplace. The convening focused on a discussion about the producers’ experiences and we brainstormed as a group about how the Native Program could offer further support to films as they endeavor to be made and seen. The producers in attendance were Billy Luther (Miss Navajo; GRAB); Chad Burris (Four Sheets to the Wind; Barking Water); Peter and Benjamin Bratt (La Mission); and Cliff Curtis (Eagle Vs.

Los Angeles, CA – Sundance Institute today announced the twenty two Documentary Film Program grant recipients for Fall 2010. Selected feature-length documentary films, chosen from nearly 450 projects from 80 countries, will receive $550,000 in support. Two of the 22 projects listed below are to receive a grant from the Sundance | Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute, part of a $1.

Over the next few months we’ll be chronicling memorable moments in Festival history as we reveal the mystery behind the 2011 snowflake icon. This week’s icon, the VHS cassette, takes us back to the 1989 Festival.
Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape shocked the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and defied the notion that “indie film” meant artistic gains with little monetary rewards.

PARK CITY, UTAH – Sundance Institute today announced the films from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival scheduled to screen in theaters in nine different cities, including the newly added Seattle, Washington Egyptian Theatre, on the evening of Thursday, January 27, 2011. The screenings are part of Sundance Film Festival USA, designed to introduce the Festival experience to film-loving audiences nationwide. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival opens January 20 and runs through January 30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.