Park City, UT – Sundance Institute announced today the 23 members of the six juries awarding prizes at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the host of the Awards Ceremony on January 28. The Festival takes place January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.
Actress and writer Parker Posey will serve as the host of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony, set to take place January 28 at 7:00 p.m. MT at the Basin Recreation Field House in Park City, Utah and live-streamed at www.sundance.org/festival. Named “Queen of the Indies” by TIME Magazine, Posey has appeared in more than a dozen films at the Sundance Film Festival, including Party Girl (1995), House of Yes (1997) and Broken English (2007). Posey also appears in Price Check in the out-of-competition Premieres section at this year’s Festival.
Awards for short films will also be announced at a separate ceremony on January 24 at Park City’s Jupiter Bowl.
Photos and extended biographies of the jurors and Awards Ceremony host, in addition to the complete Festival lineup and schedule, are available at www.sundance.org/festival.
U.S. DOCUMENTARY JURY
Fenton Bailey
Fenton Bailey made his Sundance Film Festival debut in 1998 with the documentary Party Monster. He later co-wrote and co-directed a narrative version of Party Monster, which debuted at Sundance in 2003. Fenton has gone on to produce and/or direct seven films launched at the festival, including Inside Deep Throat and, most recently, the Emmy®-nominated documentary Becoming Chaz. In 2010 he produced the Emmy®-winning documentary The Last Beekeeper, and in 2011 he produced and directed the Emmy®-nominated Wishful Drinking.
Heather Croall
Heather Croall is the Director for Sheffield Doc/Fest, the premiere documentary event in the UK and regarded as one of the best documentary events in the world. Heather was previously the director of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), where she developed the innovative matchmaking pitching initiative MeetMarket.
Charles Ferguson
Charles Ferguson directed and produced Inside Job, which won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature in 2011. His first documentary, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize. The film went on to be nominated for the Oscar in 2008. Charles is the author of four books, including High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars and Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World (co-authored with Charles Morris). He is currently working on a book about the global financial crisis, to be released by Random House in Spring 2012. Charles is the founder and president of Representational Pictures, Inc.
Tia Lessin
Tia Lessin is the co-director and co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Trouble the Water, winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, the Gotham Independent Film Award and the Full Frame Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize. She was a producer of Michael Moore’sFahrenheit 9/11, winner of the Palme d’Or, Academy Award-winning Bowling for Columbine, and a co-producer of Capitalism: A Love Story. Tia directed and produced Behind the Labels, for which she received the Sidney Hillman Award for Broadcast Journalism. She was the consulting producer of Martin Scorsese’s most recent documentary Living in the Material World: George Harrison and her work as producer of the series The Awful Truth earned her two Emmy nominations. Tia is a Sundance Institute Fellow and Lab Advisor, a Creative Capital grantee and the recipient of the L’Oréal Paris/Women in Film’s Women of Worth Vision Award. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Kim Roberts
Kim Roberts is an editor of feature documentaries. Her recent work includes Waiting for Superman, Food, Inc., Autism the Musical, and the upcoming Last Call at the Oasis. Kim won an Emmy® for Autism the Musical, her third nomination. She has received two Eddie Award nominations from the American Cinema Editors, and a WGA nomination. Her other films include: Oscar Nominees and Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winners Daughter from Danang and Long Night’s Journey into Day, Two Days in October, The Fall of Fujimori, Lost Boys of Sudan, Daddy & Papa, A Hard Straight and Splinters.
U.S. DRAMATIC JURY
Justin Lin
Justin Lin’s solo directorial debut, the critically acclaimed Better Luck Tomorrow, premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and garnered a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize. In April 2003, the film went on to make box office history as the highest-grossing (per-screen average) opening weekend film for MTV Films/Paramount Pictures. In 2009, he directed Universal’s Fast & Furious, which reunited the original cast of the franchise and sparked new life for series. Justin then directed the critically-acclaimed fifth installment of the franchise, Fast Five, which has become one of Universal’s most financially successful movies of all time.
Anthony Mackie
Anthony Mackie is a classically trained actor who studied at the Julliard School of Drama. His work spans the stage and screen. He was discovered after receiving rave reviews while playing Tupac Shakur in the off-Broadway Up Against the Wind. He earned IFP Spirit and Gotham Award nominations for his performance in Rodney Evan’s Brother to Brother, which won the Special Dramatic Jury Price at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, as well as best feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. He also played Sgt. JT Sanborn in Kathryn’s Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a film that not only earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination, but also earned Academy Awards® for the Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Writing.
Cliff Martinez
Cliff Martinez began as a drummer for several bands during the punk era including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Dickies. He later scored Steven Soderbergh’s first theatrical release, 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape, leading to a longstanding relationship which includesKafka, The Limey, Traffic, Solaris and Contagion. His credits also include Narc, The Lincoln Lawyer and Nicolas Refn’s Drive.
Lynn Shelton
Lynn Shelton was a stage actor until attending graduate school in photography at the School of Visual Arts, at which point she became an editor and experimental filmmaker. Her first narrative feature as a writer/director, We Go Way Back, won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance in 2006. Her second, My Effortless Beauty, premiered at SXSW and earned her the Acura Someone to Watch Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Humpday, her third feature, was awarded a Special Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival as well as the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Your Sister’s Sister premiered at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival and is playing in the out-of-competition Spotlight section at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Amy Vincent
Amy Vincent is an award-winning cinematographer. She has worked with Kasi Lemmons on Eve’s Bayou, Dr. Hugo,Caveman’s Valentine and with Craig Brewer on Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan, and the recently releasedFootloose. In addition, Amy’s work has garnered prestigious awards, including the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Cinematography Award for Hustle & Flow and the 2001 Women in Film Kodak Vision Award.
WORLD DOCUMENTARY JURY
Nick Fraser
Nick Fraser has served as the Editor of Storyville since it started in 1997. After graduating from Oxford he worked as a reporter, television producer and editor. His publications include a biography of Eva Peron, The Voice of Modern Hatred, and The Importance of Being Eton. Storyville films have won more than 200 awards, including four Oscars, a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and several Griersons, Emmys® and Peabodys.
Clara Kim
Clara Kim is Senior Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center. She was formerly Gallery Director & Curator at REDCAT in Los Angeles where she organized residencies, commissions, exhibitions and publications with international contemporary artists. She was co-curator of the international biennial Media City Seoul 2010 and organized a global forum on independent spaces called State of Independence in 2011. She has sat on juries for Creative Capital Foundation, Artadia Artist Fellowship, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award; is on the advisory board of East of Borneo; and is the recipient of fellowships from the Warhol Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council.
Jean-Marie Teno
Jean-Marie Teno has been producing and directing films on the colonial and post-colonial history of Africa for over 25 years. His films are noted for their personal and original approach to issues of race, cultural identity, African history and contemporary politics. Teno’s films have been honored at festivals worldwide: Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Yamagata, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Liepzig, San Francisco, and London. Teno has been a guest of the Flaherty Seminar, an artist in residence at the Pacific Film Archive of the University of California, Berkeley, a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and has lectured at numerous universities. He was a Visiting professor at Hampshire College in 2009.
WORLD DRAMATIC JURY
Julia Ormond
British actress Julia Ormond received the London Drama Critics’ Award for Best Newcomer in Christopher Hampton’sFaith, Hope and Charity. She starred in the epic Legends of the Fall, played the lead role with Harrison Ford in the film Sabrina, and starred in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In 2010 she won a supporting actress Emmy® Award for her role in the HBO Movie Temple Grandin. She is the Founder and President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET), which works with corporations, NGOs, government officials, and individuals to create the systemic change needed to eradicate slavery at source. Julia is a former United Nations Goodwill Ambassador against Trafficking and Slavery, and the founding co-chair of Film Aid International. She can currently be seen in the Weinstein Company’s My Week with Marilyn in which she plays actress Vivien Leigh.
Richard Pena
Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Swedish, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Taiwanese and Argentine cinema. He is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of WNET/Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.
Alexei Popogrebsky
Alexei Popogrebsky was born in 1972 in Moscow into a family of a screenwriter. He wrote and directed the award-winning films Roads to Koktebel (2003) (with Boris Khlebnikov), Simple Things (2007), and How I Ended This Summer (2010), set and shot on a polar station in the Russian Arctic and based entirely around two characters. The film won two Silver Bears in Berlin, Gold Hugo in Chicago and Best Film at BFI London Film Festival. Alexei is currently developing his first English-language project, a 3D fantasy drama.
ALFRED P. SLOAN JURY
Tracy Day
Tracy Day co-founded the World Science Festival in 2008 with world-renowned physicist and best-selling author Brian Greene. She serves as CEO and oversees the creative and programmatic offerings of the World Science Festival. She is a four-time National News Emmy® award-winning journalist and has produced live and documentary programming for the nation’s preeminent television news divisions for over two decades. At ABC News she was producer for This Week with David Brinkley, editorial and field producer for Nightline and story editor for the news magazine, Day One. Tracy has produced documentaries, specials and live town meeting broadcasts for PBS, The Discovery Channel, CNN, Lifetime and CNBC. In addition to Emmy ® Awards, she won a Hugo Award, a 2004 Clarion Award and the CINE Golden Eagle for investigative journalism. She has been an adjunct professor in the Leadership and the Arts program at the Sanford Institute for Public Policy.
Helen Fisher
Helen Fisher, PhD, is a biological Anthropologist at Rutgers University. She studies the evolution, brain systems (fMRI) and cross-cultural patterns of romantic love, mate choice, marriage, adultery, divorce, gender differences in the brain, personality, temperament, and business personalities. She has written five internationally best selling books, including WHY HIM? WHY HER?; WHY WE LOVE; and ANATOMY OF LOVE. She lectures worldwide. Among her speeches are those at the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, United Nations, Smithsonian, Salk Institute, Harvard Medical School and Aspen Institute. She publishes widely in academic and lay journals. For her work in the media, Helen received the American Anthropological Association’s Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Robert J. Full
Dr. Robert J. Full is a Chancellor’s and Goldman Professor of Integrative Biology and Director of the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley, where he has led a focused international effort to demonstrate the value of integrative biology and biological inspiration by the formation of interdisciplinary collaborations. Professor Full serves on the advisory boards of Harvard’s Bio-inspired Design Wyss Institute, Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities. Professor Full is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. Professor Full has authored over 200 contributions and has delivered over 300 national and international presentations. He has presented his research at TED, Industrial Light and Magic, Blizzard Entertainment, Tippett Studios, Google, Yahoo Tech Pulse, and ACM SIGGRAPH. Professor Full has been featured in television shows on PBS, BBC, Discovery Channel, the History Channel, Animal Planet and National Geographic.
Gwyn Lurie
Writer and producer Gwyn Lurie adapted the Oliver Sacks story The Last Hippie into the film The Music Never Stopped, which starred J.K. Simmons and Julia Ormond and premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival as the Salt Lake City Gala Film. Gwyn also produced the award-winning documentary Voices From the Attic about her mother’s years in hiding during the holocaust. Before venturing onto the creative side of the film business, she worked as an executive at both 20th Century Fox and Interscope. Gwyn has written for Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston among others. She is currently adapting the Swedish film Simple Simon for Fox 2000 and also serving a four year term as a member on the Montecito Union School Board, to which she was elected in 2010.
Alex Rivera
Alex Rivera is a filmmaker and media artist. His work tells Latino stories through a highly stylized cinematic language, and has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, The Berlin International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, The Guggenheim Museum, PBS, Telluride, and other international venues. His first feature film, Sleep Dealer, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and Alfred P. Sloan Prize. Rivera is a Sundance Institute Fellow, USA Artist Fellow, Creative Capital Grantee and a Rockefeller Fellow.
SHORT FILM JURY
Mike Judge
Mike Judge is the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head for MTV and King of the Hill for FOX TV. He expanded into writing and directing his own live-action films, Office Space, Idiocracy and Extract. He’s done voices for South Park and acted in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids movies. Mike recently resurrected Beavis and Butt-Head with 12 new shows for MTV.
Dee Rees
Dee Rees is an alumna of New York University’s graduate film program and a Sundance Institute Directing Lab Fellow. She’s written and directed several short films including the award-winning Pariah, which screened at over 40 festivals worldwide. Her feature documentary, Eventual Salvation, premiered on the Sundance Channel in 2009, and her debut narrative feature, Pariah, opened the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Dee received a Renew Media Arts Fellowship for her work, and recently completed an endowed residency at Yaddo. Currently, Dee is writing an original screenplay for Focus Features and is also in development on a new television series with HBO. Dee interned on Spike Lee’s films When The Levees Broke and Inside Man.
Shane Smith
Shane Smith has been a programmer, jury member and speaker at film festivals all over the world. He is currently the Director of Public Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox. He previously served as the Executive Producer, In-flight Entertainment at Spafax Canada Inc., where he oversaw all in-flight programming for Air Canada. He also was the Director of Programming for the digital TV channels Movieola: The Short Film Channel and Silver Screen Classics. He was a Short Film Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival from 2006-2010 and for six years was the Director of the Canadian Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Festival. He is a former Programmer for the Inside Out Festival, a member of the Organizing Committee of the International Short Film Conference and was formerly on the Board of Directors of the Centre for Aboriginal Media, presenters of the imagineNATIVE Film Festival.
The Sundance Film Festival
A program of the non-profit Sundance Institute, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most ground-breaking films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Maria Full of Grace, The Cove, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious, Trouble the Water, and Napoleon Dynamite, and through its New Frontier initiative, has showcased the cinematic works of media artists including Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – Entertainment Weekly, HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase Sapphire SM; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe Systems Incorporated, Bing™, Canon, DIRECTV, Focus Forward, a partnership between GE and CINELAN, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and Yahoo!; Sustaining Sponsors – Bertolli® Frozen Meal Soups, FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, Grey Goose® Vodka, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, L’Oréal Paris, Stella Artois®, Timberland, Time Warner Inc. and YouTubeTM. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations will defray costs associated with the 10-day Festival and the nonprofit Sundance Institute’s year-round programs for independent film and theatre artists. www.sundance.org/festival
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a global nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth,Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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For images go to http://press.sundance.org/press.
