Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced that Coral: Rekindling Venus, a full-dome film and augmented reality presentation featured in the 2013 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival, will screen at 14 full-dome planetariums throughout the United States during the Festival, January 17-27. Created and directed by Australian media artist Lynette Wallworth, Coral: Rekindling Venus is an immersive film experience that takes viewers underwater through the mysterious realm of fluorescent coral reefs in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
In addition to multiple daily screenings in a specially designed dome at the New Frontier exhibition in Park City, Utah, the 45-minute film will also screen January 19th, 22nd and 26th at Salt Lake City’s Clark Planetarium. Between January 19-26 a 22-minute version of the work will screen in the following cities: Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Arlington, TX; Baltimore, MD; Bradenton, FL; Chicago, IL; Hilo, HI; Honolulu, HI; Houston, TX; Killeen, TX; New York, NY;; Portsmouth, OH; and Washington, DC. Select planetariums will feature a live Skype post-screening Q&A with director Lynette Wallworth.
Wallworth’s visually stunning Coral: Rekindling Venus is designed to immerse viewers in the complex world of rare marine life with the hope of creating an emotional connection between a global audience and the planet’s endangered coral reefs. This epic project features original deep-sea photography from Emmy Award-winning cinematographer David Hannan, and music by Antony and the Johnsons, renowned Australian Indigenous artist Gurumul and German composer Max Richter. An augmented-reality companion artwork, Rekindling Venus: In Plain Sight will also be featured, allowing audiences to explore deep sea coral reefs around the world through their smartphones.
Wallworth said, “My intent with Coral: Rekindling Venus is to leave the audience with a sense of wonder for the complexity and beauty of coral reefs and a stronger understanding of our connection to it. In that vein, this tour is built on community, reaching audiences where they live, and with their friends and neighbors as fellow participants.”
The Festival’s New Frontier section showcases films, media installations, multimedia performances, trans-media experiences and panel discussions that explore the convergence of film, art, new media technology and storytelling. Coral is the first full-dome work to be featured in New Frontier, and the planetarium and full-dome tour is also a first for the Festival.
Shari Frilot, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and Curator of the New Frontier exhibition, said, “The scope and ambition of Lynette Wallworth’s Coral: Rekindling Venus is an example of just how powerful the convergence of art world imagination, cinematic storytelling and new media technology, can be, which is the focus of our New Frontier initiative. With Coral, audiences across the country will be able to engage in and contribute to a dialogue around the endangered coral reefs as well as the value of expanding cinema culture beyond the traditional movie theater.”
Coral producer John Maynard of Felix Media adds, “Lynette’s work, beyond its beauty and visionary scope has created a benchmark in full-dome work and is quickly enlivening the market with the potential of new content. Inclusion in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival New Frontier exhibition will help Coral find wider audiences and help to spread support for our endangered coral reefs”.
Tickets for the Park City and Salt Lake City screenings will be available through the Festival Box Office: http://www.sundance.org/tickets Tickets for screenings outside of Utah will be available through each planetarium.
Albuquerque, NM: New Mexico Museum of Natural History http://www.lodestar.unm.edu
Anchorage, AK: Planetarium & Visualization Theatre, University of Alaska, Anchorage http://www.uaf.edu/museum/education/planetarium
Arlington, TX: Arlington Planetarium, University of Texas http://www.uta.edu/planetarium/
Baltimore, MD: Maryland Science Center – Davis Planetarium http://www.mdsci.org/planetarium/index.html
Bradenton, FL: Bishop Planetarium, South Florida Museum http://www.southfloridamuseum.org/ThePlanetarium
Chicago IL: Adler Planetarium http://www.adlerplanterium.org/
Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum http://www.bishopmuseum.org/exhibits/planetarium/planetarium.html
Houston, TX: Burke Baker Planetarium http://www.hmns.org/
Hilo, HI: Imiloa Astronomy Centre http://www.imiloahawaii.org
Killeen, TX: Mayborn Planetarium and Space Theatre, Central Texas College http://www.starsatnight.org/
New York, NY: Hayden Planetarium www.haydenplanetarium.org
Portsmouth, OH: Clark Planetarium, Shawnee State University http://planetarium.shawnee.edu
Salt Lake City, UT: Sheila M. Clark Planetarium, Hansen Dome Theater for information: http://clarkplanetarium.org; for tickets: http://www.sundance.org/tickets
Washington, DC: Albert Einstein Planetarium Smithsonian Institute http://airandspace.si.edu/visit/theaters/planetarium/
Over the past five months Coral: Rekindling Venus has screened in 24 cities across six continents and been featured in five major festivals including the London Cultural Olympiad and the World Science Festival in New York. For more information please visit www.coralrekindlingvenus.com.
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 2013 Sundance Film Festival® sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase Sapphire PreferredSM; Leadership Sponsors – DIRECTV, Entertainment Weekly, FOCUS FORWARD, a partnership between GE and CINELAN, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – Adobe, Canada Goose, Canon U.S.A., Inc., CÎROC Ultra Premium Vodka, FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Intel Corporation, L’Oréal Paris, Recycled Paper Greetings, Stella Artois® and Time Warner Inc. 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
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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