Archive for category Sundance Film Festival

Here’s the overview of Sundance scuttlebutt:

Still from The Raid

Good:

• The Raid: Gareth Evans‘s Indonesian melee film that is a bloody blast to watch
• The Invisible War: Kirby Dick‘s even-handed take on rape in the U.S. Armed Forces
• Your Sister’s Sister: Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass and Rosemarie DeWitt in an audience favorite
• Celeste and Jesse Forever: positive reaction to Rashida Jones flick (which she co-wrote as well)
• West of Memphis (haven’t heard a bad word about this Amy Berg documentary, the fourth about the West Memphis 3 from the Paradise Lost docs.)

Mixed:

• Oslo, August 31st: a paced character study but director Joachim Trier has an accomplished approach
• Where Do We Go Now?: The winner of the Audience Award at Toronto is a jumbled bag of music and politics from star/director Nadine Labaki, but please keep making pictures
• Lay the Favorite: I’ve got a major crush on Rebecca Hall, exuberant in her character, but a weird coda leaves a bad taste in my mouth (and I heart director Stephen Frears)
• The Words: Wanting to like this well-intended film, with an impassioned performance by Bradley Cooper, can’t change my reaction to a meandering, even creepy, framing device with Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde

Pass:

• Filly Brown: Little too after-school special for me (and many tittering others) but a great performance by the lead Gina Rodriguez

by Keith Simanton

The most exciting rumor I’ve heard is of the re-invigorated Jesse Owens biopic. Owens was a spectacular all-around athlete whose presence at Hitler’s Olympic games in Berlin in 1936 infuriated the Fuehrer. Blacks were thought by the Nazis to be an inferior race but Owens bested Hitler’s Aryan “supermen,” winning four gold medals in a single Olympiad, a feat not equaled until Carl Lewis did it in Los Angeles in 1984. Wags place a favorite actor of ours, Anthony Mackie, playing Owens though this project has been off-again, on-again for a few years now. The concept alone fairly reeks of Oscars.

Kirby Dick has another compelling documentary here called The Invisible War. It chronicles the horrifying statistics of the incidence of rape in the U.S. military, of both men and women, and the complete lack of resource, of recompense, and of justice for those who are the victims of the crime. While Dick can be accused of not being the most subtle filmmaker, here he is at his best, with a subject that would enrage any person who watches it. Dick also provides a coda showing how people can get involved in righting some of the crazed military procedures that endanger men and women in and outside of the Armed Forces at http://invisiblewarmovie.com/.

Gareth Evans‘s The Raid was a much-talked about film when it was in Toronto’s Midnight Madness series last fall. Ultra-violent and ultra-gory, it showcases a police unit who raid a crime baron’s tenement building and then, when the boss turns the tables on them, must fight to get out alive. It well deserves its fan-boy accolades with action choreography that often surprises and avoids the usual trap of going on interminably. Iko Uwais, who plays the main cop, is pretty amazing.

Lastly, we at IMDb wish Bingham Ray, a lion of indie cinema and one of the founders of October Films, a speedy recovery after suffering a stroke at Sundance. He is reportedly in a Provo hospital and recuperating.

Director Lynn Shelton had an awful time getting out of snowed-in Seattle but it was worth it. Your Sister’s Sister, a smart, funny film with three great performances by Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass (a Sundance fixture and favorite) and Rosemarie DeWitt received a standing ovation at its Library screening (the Library is an old Park City school/library where some of my favorite screenings have taken place). Shelton had to call in for her Q&A but it was better, many said, than other in-person post-film interviews that had already taken place. Your Sister’s Sister was an audience favorite in Toronto and now repeats it in Sundance. Marketing this film correctly, however, will be critical to bring in a wider audience. Shelton made it into Park City in time to attend her own party which also housed Anthony Mackie, Bryan Cranston and Ron Livingston (he’s married to DeWitt, in case you didn’t know).

Enthusiastic nods are coming back from questions about the worth of Hello I Must Be Going, the film from director Todd Louiso (he did the dour, but memorable Love, Liza with Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hello stars Melanie Lynskey.

Also of note: An Amarcord-like film from Nadine Labaki, Where Do We Go Now? proves that this Lebanese director (who made the well-received Caramel) can move from comedy to tragedy, from seduction to rage, with ease and grace and that Caramel was no fluke.

by Keith Simanton

After igniting the fire under potential Oscar nominees (Margin Call, Buck), serving as the debutante ball for Elizabeth Olsen, and exhibiting two of the worst-performing movies of the year relative to their marquee values (I Melt with You and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold), Sundance returns with a roster that tempts me to look for trends and themes as the independent film community gathers for its winter formal.

The main thing I see before really seeing anything? From bridesmaids to political matriarchs, female-powered films are in focus, with a number of women directors present this year. Here’s a sampling:

Bachelorette: Kirsten Dunst and two girlfriends accept the request to be bridesmaids for a woman they used to haze back in high school. I’m happy to see someone remembered that Kirsten D. is a great comedienne when she has the right material, and I’m looking forward to her revisiting her mean-girl past alongside Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan. Writer-director Leslye Headland (from the why-did-you-cancel-this-FX show “Terriers”) here is backed by Will Ferrell and a team of savvy producers, so this project is primed for a potential big sale if it’s actual-real funny.

Ethel: Last year, HBO Documentary Films bravely unveiled Reagan; this year, the network exhibits a portrait of Ethel Kennedy that’s directed by her daughter, Rory. Unlike the Reagan documentary, look for this particular Kennedy to remain in the news after the festival.

Two assumedly broke girls start a phone-sex business in For a Good Time, Call…. Ari Graynor is one of the operators, and the actress has Olsen Potential this year with this comedy and a supporting role in Celeste and Jesse Forever, which I’m referring to as Rashida Jones‘s Albert Nobbs since she wrote and stars in her passion project.

About Face: Jerry Hall, Carmen Dell’Orefice, and other world-class supermodels discuss their careers and the aging process. And you can bet they won’t forget to smile with their eyes. I could watch a fashion documentary with each new day, and it’s about time someone revisited the legends.

Speaking (again) of Elizabeth Olsen, she brings a new pair of films to Sundance 2012: she co-stars in Liberal Arts, Josh Radnor‘s return to the festival, and Red Lights alongside Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. I’m looking forward to both, but more for their respective directors. Radnor, who made gentle waves with Happythankyoumoreplease, earned my interest as he refused to hand over a final print to its initial distributor and found a bit of success elsewhere; Red Lights is the new project from Buried‘s Rodrigo Cortés, and while perhaps the best thing about Buried was its poster, I like gimmicky thrillers, especially as a festival palette cleanser given all the films that remind me of how horrible the world can be.

Kid-Thing: My eye is on this one due to reports of young star Sidney Aguirre‘s naturalistic performance as a tomboy who encounters a woman in a dire circumstance. It screens in the festival’s NEXT program, always a mixed bag.

Nadezhda Markina stars as the titular Elena, a family drama and Cannes winner from Andrei Zvyagintsev, director of one of my all-time favorites, The Return. Zvyagintsev has earned lazy and annoying comparisons to Andrei Tarkovsky, though he possesses a voice all his own, and reportedly his new project slowly nods toward the noir genre of old.

The number of female directors at this year’s festival could earn its own post, but hopefully some of these films will emerge for their individual merit instead. At the top of the heap, in name only, is Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold‘s follow up to Fish Tank. Julie Delpy‘s 2 Days in New York catches up with her character (from 2 Days in Paris) after she has ditched Adam Goldberg and finds her living in Manhattan with two children and boyfriend Chris Rock. Jennifer Baichwal, whose Manufactured Landscapes was excellent, has adapted writer Margaret Atwood‘s analysis of indebtedness in Payback. That’s What She Said has a gritty NYC look and what could be a(nother) bonkers performance from Anne Heche. Katie Aselton helms and co-stars in Black Rock, a thriller screening in the Park City at Night program that literally has the Duplass seal of approval. Gypsy Davy and Putin’s Kiss are potential winners, too.

And the two films screening as this year’s Sundance Collection? Daughters of the Dust. And Reality Bites. Wino Forever!

You usually have to wait for Cannes to deliver the year’s requisite dollops of festival drama and shocking developments but Sundance has already, albeit reluctantly, stepped into that role for 2012.

It’s already generated a lawsuit, for one. Plaintiff David Siegel, a Florida real estate developer and one of subjects of The Queen of Versailles, took issue with the festival’s press release describing the documentary as a “rags to riches to rags” tale and is suing Sundance, executive producer Frank Evers and producer/director Lauren Greenfield for defamation. Siegel dislikes the last “to rags” inclusion in the synopsis as well as the statement that the 90,000 square foot home went into foreclosure.

Sundance has removed the “to rags” bit and the foreclosure mention but Siegel is claiming that the offending  press release phrases are now so prevalent, due to the Internet, that the damage is done.

More controversy swirls around the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei and the documentary film about him, Never Sorry by Alison Klayman. Ai Weiwei designed China’s famous Olympic stadium, dubbed “The Bird’s Nest,” but he’s equally known as an artist, activist, protestor and provocateur, the last two particularly by his own government. In May the Smithsonian will be featuring him in an exhibit entitled “Ai Weiwei: According to What?”  The artist claims he was arrested in April of last year and held for three months, until his supporters raised over $1.3m in bail money to have him released. Weiwei was also slapped with $2.1m in taxes in November and, under the statutes of his bail, is unable to leave the country until June of this year.

by Keith Simanton

Egyptian Theater, Park City, Utah

The Sundance Film Festival 2012 announced both their host for this year’s awards ceremony – the fantastic Ms. Parker Posey – and the jury members who will judge each of the festival’s categories.

Read the full press release received from Sundance this morning below:

Parker Posey to Host 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony

JURY MEMBERS ANNOUNCED

Shari Berman, Scott Burns, Charles Ferguson, Nick Fraser, Mike Judge, Justin Lin,
Anthony Mackie, Cliff Martinez, Julia Ormond, Dee Rees and Lynn Shelton Among Jurors

Park City, UT – Sundance Institute announced today the 22 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.

Shari Berman

Shari Springer Berman is an Oscar- and Emmy®-nominated filmmaker. With partner Robert Pulcini, she wrote and directed American Splendor (Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Sundance Film Festival; FIPRESCI Award, Cannes Film Festival; Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild Awards and Best Adapted Screenplay Nomination, Academy Awards®). Cinema Verite, Berman and Pulcini’s most recent film,

received nine Emmy® nominations including Best Movie, Outstanding Directing and a win for Best Editing. Their first film, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s, won Best Documentary Feature at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival.

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.

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 includes Kafka, 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 released Footloose. 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’s Faith, 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

Scott Burns

Scott Burns recently wrote the screenplay for the Warner Bros. film, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The film, starring Bradley Cooper and currently in development, is set to begin production in early 2012 and marks Burns’ fourth collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, who will direct. He also wrote Contagion and co- wrote the Academy Award®-winning Bourne Ultimatum, starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass. As a producer, he received the Humanitas Prize and the Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America for his Academy Award®-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He wrote and directed HBO Films’ critically acclaimed PU-239, which was produced by Soderbergh and George Clooney. Scott also wrote The Library, a stage play based on the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School with Kennedy/Marshall producing. He began his career in advertising and was part of the creative team responsible for the original “Got Milk?” campaign.

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.

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 SapphireSM; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe Systems Incorporated, BingTM, 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.

Kudos to the creative team at Sundance this year. They crafted a poster that is a compilation of representative images from past Sundance films and Sundance tropes. We recognized numerous films from past festivals but would like to hear your comments as well.

Congratulations to the Winners at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Like Crazy

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – How to Die in Oregon

Directing Award: Dramatic – Martha Marcy May Marlene

Directing Award: U.S. Documentary – Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Another Happy Day

Special Jury Prize: U.S. Dramatic – Felicity Jones for Like Crazy

Sundance’s Special Jury Prize #2: U.S. Dramatic – Another Earth

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S Dramatic – Pariah

Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic – Circumstance

Special Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary – Being Elmo

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary – The Redemption of General Butt Naked

Excellence in Editing Award: U.S Documentary – If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Audience Award: U.S. Documentary – Buck

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary – Hell and Back Again

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary – Hell and Back Again

World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – Project Nim

World Cinema Excellence in Editing Award: Documentary – The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary – Position Among the Stars

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Happy, Happy

World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Tyrannosaur

World Cinema Screenwriting Award: Dramatic – Restoration

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic – All Your Dead Ones

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman for Tyrannosaur

World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary – Senna

World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic – Kinyarwanda

Best of Next Audience Award: to.get.her

Alfred P. Sloan Award – Another Earth