Category: News

This Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re spotlighting some of the creators within the Sundance family whose work you can watch at home—from a darkly funny web series and audience favorite feel-good comedies to feature documentaries about less-explored aspects of the American experience.

Megha Kadakia
Producer, The Tiger Hunter

Megha Kadakia caught our attention with her work on films such as Miss India America and The Tiger Hunter before becoming an inaugural Momentum Fellow in 2018, which helped to solidify her well-earned spot as an independent producer to watch. The latter project stars Community funnyman Danny Pudi as Sami, a young Indian man in the 1970s who goes to America with high hopes of becoming an engineer only to get stuck in a low-end job—until he and his friends (including Alex, played by Jon Heder) concoct a scheme to convince his childhood crush that he’s made his dreams come true.

June Lab Convenes Filmmakers Developing Singular Feature Films

Los Angeles, CA — Filmmakers from the U.S., Lebanon, Palestine, and the United Kingdom have been selected for the 2019 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah.

Fellows will Gather at Native Filmmakers Lab on May 12-17, 2019 in Santa Fe, New MexicoLos Angeles, CA — Two Indigenous filmmakers, Kyle Bell (Creek-Thlopthlocco Tribal Town) and Peshawn Bread (Comanche) have been chosen to participate in the 2019 Sundance Institute Native Filmmakers Lab, continuing the Institute’s commitment to supporting Native American and Indigenous storytellers since its founding. This year’s recently selected Indigenous Program Full Circle Fellows also will attend the Native Filmmakers Lab.
The Lab will take place May 12-17 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

New York, NY— Today, Sundance Institute’s Theatre Program announces the nineteen artists who represent the creative teams that will convene to develop new work at the annual Lab at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah July 8-28.
Eight genre-spanning pieces, encompassing plays, musicals, and interdisciplinary work for the stage, are among the works being developed by fifteen Fellows and four Artists-in-Residence. This year’s cohort was selected by Theatre Program Artistic Director Philip Himberg, with support of a six-member Advisory Committee and in partnership with Producing Director Christopher Hibma.

“One half for me, one for you,” repeats Hatidze to her bees in Honeyland, winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Festival. In taking only half of their honey, she explains, she sustains her hives and ensures their future wellbeing.
Honeyland is in good company of Festival documentary films dedicated to demonstrating the need for human restraint to ensure species’ protection and illuminating the struggle for survival amidst climate change, poaching, and other looming threats.

There’s no one path to becoming an episodic-content creator—and this year’s lab artists proved it. As part of the Sundance Institute | YouTube New Voices Lab, 15 artists spent April 8 through April 11 in Solvang, California, working with Sundance Institute mentors to workshop and hone their episodic craft and projects. And it quickly became apparent—from a reality-TV producer to stand-up comedians to a former professional ballerina, each creator had a different story to tell.

Ryah Aqel is a filmmaker and cultural producer based in metro Detroit. She is a 2019 Knight Foundation fellow with Sundance Institute.I never understood my mother’s music.

Tracy Nguyen-Chung is a filmmaker and member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.The Sundance Film Festival can be overwhelming for filmmakers trying to make the most of the opportunity to interact with the industry. But at the 2019 Festival, women and nonbinary people of color had an ally in Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

Linda Pfafflin is the director of ticketing at Sundance Institute and is retiring this month. She attended the Sundance Film Festival for the first time as a patron in 1998 before becoming a volunteer and then an employee.
After 21 years, it’s still all about serendipity.

Los Angeles — Sundance Institute announced today that Jason Blum, Ebs Burnough, Lynette Wallworth and Lisa-Michele Church will join the Institute’s Board of Trustees. The new Trustees bring deep experience and broad expertise spanning communications, emerging media, and film production to the Institute’s governance, and will work closely with President & Founder Robert Redford, Board Chair Pat Mitchell and Executive DirectorKeri Putnam

“Jason, Ebs, Lynette and Lisa-Michele each have their own incredible wealth of knowledge of the current cultural landscape, and visionary perspectives on how to shape the work we do. We are so grateful to welcome their unique perspectives to the table,” said Pat Mitchell.

As we come to the end of Women’s History Month, I’m heartened to celebrate the recognition and discourse around the gaps in representation of women in media. This is no longer a problem that lives in the shadows. I think back to the history of early cinema and the women pioneers who were erased from the record (check them out here and here), and I wish we were celebrating more concrete progress.

Alana Hauser is the manager of Sundance Institute’s Catalyst and Women at Sundance programs.
In a recent New York Times interview, film composer Tamar-kali identified herself as “an outlier within the outliers.” As an Afro-indigenous punk rocker and composer for Sundance Film Festival features Mudbound and Come Sunday, Tamar-kali is one of few women, and even fewer women of color, in the male-dominated field of film music.