NAME OF FESTIVAL: Sundance Film Festival
SINCE: 1978
WHERE: Park City, Utah, USA
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The annual Sundance Film Festival, held in and around Park City, Utah, each January is widely considered the premier platform for American and international independent film. The Festival has introduced audiences to some of the most original stories of the last three decades including Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Splendor, An Inconvenient Truth, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Cove.
Sundance Film Festival
Just before its world debut at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Pivot, the cable network from Participant Media and Univision News acquired the U.S. TV rights to ‘CESAR’S LAST FAST’ from Richard Ray Perez and Lorena Parlee. CESAR’S LAST FAST, the documentary about the famed labor organizer, will premiere simultaneously in English and Spanish on the two networks – Pivot and the Univision Network– respectively.
DINOSAUR 13, one of the opening night films of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been acquired by CNN Films and Lionsgate, and will be released theatrically, with a North American broadcast premiere on CNN/U.S. DINOSAUR 13 is a documentary by filmmaker Todd Miller, who followed the odyssey of paleontologist Peter Larson of South Dakota’s Black Hills Institute of Geological Research after his history-making find: a nearly intact 65 million year-old fossilized skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, they named “Sue.”
Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) has acquired this year’s 2014 Sundance Film Festival opening night feature film, WHIPLASH, starring J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller for worldwide distribution. Directed and written by Damien Chazelle (Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench), WHIPLASH is adapted from a short film that won Sundance’s jury award for fiction in 2013 (also written and directed by Chazelle).
The world premiere of U.S. Dramatic Competition film WHIPLASH directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Miles Teller, and J.K. Simmons kicked off the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night. Whiplash, based on Chazelle’s 2013 Sundance Film Festival award-winning short film, open to rave reviews with Variety declaring “Miles Teller drums his heart out — and then some — in writer-director Damien Chazelle’s stellar career-starter, “Whiplash,” which demolishes the cliches of the musical-prodigy genre.”
Check out this amazing clip from the new film APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR set to premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR, written, directed by and starring Iranian American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan, Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite. She fails miserably in her attempt at all identities, and being without a cliché to hold onto can be a lonely experience. After being dumped by her girlfriend Maxine, Shirin faces an unimaginable task: trading the idyllic lesbian haven of Park Slope for a shared artist’s loft in Bushwick. Unable to let go of the memories of their excruciating highs and lows, the endearingly superficial narcissist finds herself plotting to win back her ex.
BOYHOOD by Richard Linklater, has been added to the program lineup for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and will premiere on Sunday, January 19, 2014, at the Eccles Theatre. The 2014 Festival takes place January 16 to 26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. With the addition of Boyhood, the 2014 Festival will present 121 feature-length films.
Lauryn Hill, performing in New York’s Central Park
Singer Lauryn Hill, is the narrator of a new documentary called CONCERNING VIOLENCE, “a bold, fresh, and compelling visual narrative about the African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s,” that is set to premiere at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival taking place Janaury 16 to 24, 2014. Concerning Violence is directed by Göran Hugo Olsson, whose earlier film The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 played in the World Cinema Documentary Competition in the 2011 festival.
Sundance Film Festival announced the members of the six juries awarding prizes at the upcoming festival set for January 16 to 26, 2014, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Short Film Awards will be announced at a ceremony on January 21 at Park City’s Jupiter Bowl. Feature film awards will be announced at a separate ceremony on January 25 in Park City.
Check out the trailer for the Japanese comedy R100 directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto and set for the upcoming 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In R100, which premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Nao Ohmori (star of Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer) plays Takafumi Katayama, a mild-mannered father who escapes the pressures of daily life by joining a mysterious S&M club, where the so-called Queens visit clients in real-life settings. While at first the rough treatment and humiliation he receives from leather-clad women in cafés and restaurants is enjoyable, Takafumi soon realizes that he’s opened a door that cannot be closed.
The documentary LAMBERT & STAMP directed by James D. Cooper has been added to the lineup for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival taking place January 16 to 26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah, U.S.A., and the third Sundance London film and music festival taking place April 25 to 27 at The O2 in London. The screening in Utah in the Festival’s Documentary Premieres section will be the film’s world premiere, and the screening at Sundance London will be its UK premiere. LAMBERT & STAMP is the first film to be announced as part of the 2014 Sundance London program, and the full program for that festival will be announced in March.
The first trailer is released for Mona Fastvold’s feature debut THE SLEEPWALKER starring Gitte Witt, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, and Stephanie Ellis, scheduled to World Premiere in In Compeitition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. THE SLEEPWALKER chronicles the unraveling of the lives of four disparate characters as it transcends genre conventions and narrative contrivance to reveal something much more disturbing.
WISH I WAS HERE directed by Zach Braff
WISH I WAS HERE directed by Zach Braff, CLERKS directed by Kevin Smith, and HOOP DREAMS directed by Steve James have been added to the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Wish I Was Here will screen in the Premieres section, Clerks and Hoop Dreams will screen in the From the Collection program. Both Clerks and Hoop Dreams premiered at the 1994 Festival, which will be the subject of “Class of ’94,” a Power of Story panel at the Egyptian Theatre on Friday, January 24. The 2014 Festival will be January 16 to 26, 2014, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.