Category: Program Spotlight

In November, organizations across the United States observe National Native American and Alaska Native Heritage Month. During this month and throughout the year, Sundance Institute acknowledges the ancestral keepers of the land in the communities where we work and supports the important artistic contributions that Native and Indigenous storytellers have made in film, theatre, film music, episodic storytelling, and emerging platforms.
As part of this month’s celebration of the ongoing and enormous creativity and vitality of Native and Indigenous artists, Sundance Institute and the Native Program pay tribute to five outstanding Native and Indigenous artists who have been invited to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Sundance Institute Merata Mita Fellowship for Indigenous Women Artists pays tribute to the immense artistic contributions and memory of Merata Mita (Ngati Pikiao/Ngai te Rangi). Merata served as an advisor and artistic director to the Sundance Institute’s Native Filmmakers Lab from 2000 to 2009, where she mentored and championed many of the top Indigenous talent in today’s film industry.In commemoration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program is pleased to issue a call for projects for the Merata Mita Fellowship for Indigenous Women Artists.

In May 2018 I was invited to join Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab in Utah as a Creative Observer. As an inclusion producer from the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed in Bristol, UK, it was a treat to be invited to observe a naturally intersectional and representative lab process in the U.S.

As a young filmmaker, figuring out what steps to take in the process of making your first feature film is like attempting to find a path through a curtain of smoke. There is no readymade answer or right way of going about it. But none of the routes are easy.

In the early years of his work as a television actor, Robert Redford was asked to audition to play a Native character on TV. Appalled by this request, he went on a personal quest to find Native actors that broadened his quest of trying to locate Native filmmakers.
Through his early environmental work and his acquisition of land in Utah to create a preserve of pristine lands, Redford had built deep, lasting relationships with many different American Indian tribes.

The line between documentary and narrative film continues to blur through boundary-pushing approaches to storytelling. Take for example the 2018 Sundance Film Festival selection Bisbee ’17, which revisits an Arizona town’s infamous 1917 mass deportation through conflicting accounts by current residents. In recent years, the Festival has awarded other such form-melding films as Kate Plays Christine, which follows an actress as she researches the story of real-life troubled television host Christine Chubbuck for a role in a soap opera, and the genre-bending Warsaw summer nightlife story All These Sleepless Nights, among many others.

As part of our commitment to developing and nurturing the next generation of creative voices, Sundance Institute, with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation annually selects four Knight Fellows to attend the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Erin Lau is a Native Hawaiian filmmaker and 2017 Sundance Institute Native Lab Fellow. She has written and directed multiple award-winning shorts that have screened at festivals around the world. Below she writes about her experience as a fellow and the importance of elevating Native voices.

See the five projects by Indigenous filmmakers that made their world premieres at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival here.Following President and founder Robert Redford’s original vision, Sundance Institute has remained committed to supporting Native American artists throughout the Institute’s history. This support has established a rich legacy of work and has supported more than 300 filmmakers through labs, grants, mentorships, public programs, and the platform of the Sundance Film Festival.

Stepping off of the plane at the Salt Lake City airport, I could feel the chill in the air. It was October and I knew the temperature was dropping.
For the first time in my traveling life I decided to pack lightly, so I forgot my warm scarf and my gloves, and I didn’t bring enough socks.

National Native American and Alaska Native Heritage Month has been observed every November since 1990. During this month and throughout the year, Sundance Institute through its Native American and Indigenous Program recognizes and supports the immense talent and ongoing accomplishments of Indigenous storytellers in the Americas and globally.
Sundance Institute has been committed to the Native and Indigenous presence in film since the Institute’s founding in 1981.

Growing up in rural Oklahoma and raised as an elders’ child by my grandparents, I always went eagerly to see any movie that seemed to have something to do with Native people. And as I left the theater, my Comanche grandfather always said, disappointedly, the same remark: “Maybe someday they will get it right.” As a little Indian girl, I wondered if and how Hollywood would ever get the message.