Category: News

Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 12 projects selected for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place at the Sundance Resort in Utah from June 2-26, 2009.  Under the leadership of Michelle Satter, Director of the Sundance Feature Film Program, and the artistic direction of Gyula Gazdag, the projects selected for this year’s program include emerging filmmakers from the United States, China, India, Morocco, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. The core of the Feature Film Program, these Labs provide an opportunity for filmmakers to develop distinctive new work under the guidance of accomplished Creative Advisors in an environment that encourages innovation, collaboration, and risk-taking.

LOS ANGELES—Wally Weisman, chair of the board of the Sundance Institute, today announced the resignation of Ken Brecher, executive director of the Institute, effective April 30, 2009. Weisman stated that Brecher had led the Institute for nearly 14 years through a period of significant growth, productivity, and global impact. Brecher will assume the role of strategic advisor for the Institute for the next two years.

Due to overwhelming demand, a second screening has been added at 8:45 p.m. Seattle Art Museum in conjunction with Sundance Institute will celebrate Native America filmmaking with free screenings on April 15, 2009 of Sikumi (On the Ice), a short film directed by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Iñupiaq), followed by Miss Navajo, a full-length film directed by Billy Luther (Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna).

OXFORD, ENGLAND – Sundance Institute and Skoll Foundation today announced the final five grant recipients of the STORIES OF CHANGE: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN FOCUS THROUGH DOCUMENTARY initiative, a three-year partnership designed to enable the creation of new, feature-length independent documentary films that frame, examine and amplify social entrepreneurship as an innovative approach to meeting the central challenges of our time. The announcement, which includes a film about Nobel Prize Winner  Muhammad Yunus among the grantees, was made at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, the premier annual conference that brings together the world’s foremost practitioners and leaders in the field.
In 2008, STORIES OF CHANGE launched a request for proposals and received more than 300 film projects filmmakers around the world interested in telling the stories of social entrepreneurs.

The Seattle Art Museum — in conjunction with Sundance Institute — will celebrate Native American filmmaking with free screenings on April 15, 2009, of Sikumi (On the Ice), a short film directed by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Iñupiaq), followed by Miss Navajo, a full-length film directed by Billy Luther (Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna). Highlights of the evening will include a Q&A with filmmaker Billy Luther moderated by Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache), Associate Director, Native American and Indigenous Program for the Sundance Institute.Sundance Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program hosts screenings, panels, events, and workshops throughout the year designed to foster community and the exchange of ideas among Native American and Indigenous filmmakers.

On Saturday, April 4, Sundance Institute Film Series will present a Short Films Showcase, free screenings of nine short films showcasing the creative, boundary-pushing work of both filmmaking’s rising talent and of established directors — all who have a connection to Sundance Film Festival. Designed to be a free-flowing event, the screenings begin with Shorts Program I at 5 pm, followed at 6:30 pm by Short Films – Big Impact: a filmmaker panel and Q&A moderated by Sundance Film Festival programmers Trevor Groth and Todd Luoto, followed by Shorts Program II at 8 pm. All programs are free to the public and will be held in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center’s Jeanné Wagner Theatre, 138 West, 300 South in Salt Lake City.

Los Angeles – Sundance Institute announced today the grantees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science-in-Film Initiative awards, including recipients of the Sloan Commissioning Grant and the Sloan Fellowship. Sundance Institute’s Sloan Science-in-Film Initiative supports and celebrates films that explore issues of science and technology.

Los Angeles, CA — March 11, 2009—Sundance Institute today announced the appointment of John Cooper as Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Effective immediately, Mr. Cooper will serve as the Festival’s artistic director leading the Festival’s programming and strategic growth, also overseeing activities such as content production, online initiatives and key national and international partnerships.

LOS ANGELES, CA – Sundance Institute today confirmed that effective February 28, 2009, Geoffrey Gilmore is resigning his position as Director, Sundance Film Festival.
Gilmore joined Sundance Institute in 1990. As Director of the Sundance Film Festival he has worked as part of a team of programmers who select films for the annual event, the preeminent showcase for independent film.

When two lifelong buddies decide to take their friendship into unchartered sexual territory, homo awkwardness gives way to a philosophical gabfest in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday. As the shlubbier half of the pair, Festival regular Mark Duplass helped devise the film’s treatment, improvised much of his own dialogue and gamely swapped spit with his male co-star, Joshua Leonard. In a series of conversations with us, Duplass discussed Humpday as well as his role as one of the “founders” of the mumblecore aesthetic.

Sophie Barthes’ haunting comedy Cold Souls takes a literal cognitive journey into filmmaking. Paul Giamatti stars as himself, an actor in the midst of a Chekhovian breakdown; he suffers from an indefinable throb, a pressure, a pain. He turns to the new technology of a glossy white soul-extraction machine to escape his spiritual crisis.

Los Angeles, CA – Sundance Institute and the Ucross Foundation of Wyoming announced today the projects chosen to participate in the 2009 SUNDANCE INSTITUTE PLAYWRIGHTS RETREAT AT UCROSS held February 2-22, 2009. This residency program offers five playwrights and two composers three weeks in which to begin or refine new work at an idyllic working ranch in northeastern Wyoming.  Sundance and Ucross celebrate the tenth year of their residency collaboration in 2009.