WEBSITE EXPANDS FESTIVAL COVERAGE WITH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS, AWARDS CEREMONY AND FORTY-SEVEN SHORT FILMS
Salt Lake City, UT– Sundance Institute announced today 47 short films will stream online at www.sundance.org , the official website of the Sundance Film Festival. The shorts will stream during the Festival and through June 20, 2006. Visitors to the site will enjoy daily video highlights, exclusive filmmaker interviews and behind the scenes footage from the Festival in Park City, UT. For the first time, video highlights of the Closing Night Awards ceremony, which will launch the following morning, Sunday January 29, 2006, giving global audiences the first peek at the winners of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
The Sundance Film Festival website has expanded its coverage to deliver exclusive “Meet the Artists” filmmaker interviews from New York City and Los Angeles, 20 Live @ Sundance video highlights, interviews and behind the scenes footage straight from Park City each day at 1:00 PM MST. Additional features will include news coverage and feature stories in collaboration with the Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider, the Festival’s daily newspaper. On January 28, the Festival website will podcast one of its centerpiece panels, WRITING THE WEST: WIM WENDERS AND SAM SHEPARD, as they discuss their collaboration on the independent film classic PARIS, TEXAS and this year’s Festival film DON’T COME KNOCKING. All of the content is free, including the short films, thanks to official sponsorships and user donations. For the second year, Adobe Systems is rewarding users who register by sponsoring a contest to win a complete Adobe Systems Video Collection Professional Edition software suite every month through June 2006.
“The Sundance Film Festival is the only major festival to screen films online hours after Festival-goers see them and we are pleased to offer about 50 percent more shorts this year,” said John Cooper, Programming Director for the Sundance Film Festival. “This is part of our longstanding commitment to developing artists and audiences and we are excited to share these discoveries with global audiences.”
Other highlights include frequent news and weather updates; a growing list of “supercool website links” or Splinks, contributed by Sundance Film Festival programmers to showcase the cutting edge of online film and art; video highlights produced and available on Sprint TV’s mobile entertainment network; tips on travel and accommodations; box office information and ticket sales; and a complete film screening schedule and online store for official Sundance merchandise.
Since its creation, the Festival’s official website has attracted more than 5 million visitors, served hundreds of thousands of video streams each year, showcased the work of almost 200 digital artists and won a Webby Award in 2004. Additional audiences have watched Sundance shorts through syndication partnerships with top film Internet sites, including Yahoo! Movies and AtomFilms.
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The Sundance Film Festival is a core program of Sundance Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated year-round to the discovery and development of independent film and theatre artists and audiences. 2006 marks the 22nd year of the Festival and the Institute’s 25th anniversary. Anniversary-related activities will take place throughout 2006 and will be announced at the Festival.
Films selected for Sundance.org include:
THE ALUMINUM FOWL (Director: James S. Clauer); BEFORE DAWN (Director: Bálint Kenyeres); BEYOND IRAQ (Director: Tom Eldridge); BUGCRUSH (Director: Carter Smith); CLARA (Director: Van Sowerwine); COMMON PRACTICE (Director: Marcos Efron); DIVORCE LEMONADE (Director: Justin Hayward); FABLE (Director: Daniel Sousa); FIRST DATE (Director: Gary Huggins); FOURTEEN (Director: Nicole Barnette); FUMI AND THE BAD LUCK FOOT (Director: David Chai); GESTURE DOWN (I DON'T SING) (Director: Cedar Sherbert); GOPHER BROKE (Directors: Jeff Fowler, Tim Miller); HA HA HA AMERICA (Director: Jon Daniel Ligon); A HALF MAN (Director: Firas Momani); HIGH PLAINS WINTER (Director: Cindy Stillwell); HOLD UP (Director: Madeleine Olnek); IN THE BEGINNING OF THE END (Director: Gustavo Spolidoro); LIGHTEN UP (Director: John Viener); LOS ABCS: ¡QUE VIVAN LOS MUERTOS! (Director: John Jota Leanos); LOSING LUSK (Director: Vance Malone); MARJOUN AND THE FLYING HEADSCARF (Director: Susan Yousef); MAX AND JOSH (Director: Kathryn Ann Busby); MOMMA’S BOY (Director: John Bryant); MONSIEUR ETIENNE (Director: Yann Chayia); LA MUERTE ES PEQUEÑA (Director: Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa); ONE SUNG HERO (Director: Samantha Kurtzman-Counter); THE PITY CARD (Director: Bob Odenkirk); PREACHER WITH AN UNKNOWN GOD (Director: Rob VanAlkemade); RANGE (Director: Bill Basquin); RAPE FOR WHO I AM (Director: Lovinsa Kavuma); REDEMPTITUDE (Directors: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner); ROBIN’S BIG DATE (Director: James Duffy); LE ROUGE AU SOL (Director: Maxime Giroux); SMUDGE (Director: Gail Maurice); A SUPERMARKET LOVE SONG (Director: Daniel Outram); THROUGH THE ICE (Director: Jennie Livingston); TRANSACTION (Director: Jacques Thelemaque); THE TRIBE (Director: Tiffany Shlain); TRUE NORTH (Director: Isaac Julien); TRUE STORY (Director: Stephanie Via); UTEN TITTEL (Director: Anja Breien); VISCERA (Director: Leighton Pierce); WHAT I LOVE ABOUT DYING (Director: Silas Howard); YESTERDAY, I THINK (Director: Becalelis Brodskis); YOU TURNED BACK AND HELD MY HAND (Director: Gabriela Tollman); YOUR DARK HAIR IHSAN (Director: Tala Hadid).
For updates and more information about Sundance Online, visit http://www.sundance.org
What’s New for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival:
· World Cinema Competition: Documentary – This year, the category expands from 12 to 16 international documentary films. Films selected for the World Cinema Competition: Documentary are eligible for the World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary and the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary.
· Spectrum – This new out-of-competition category incorporates the categories previously known as American Spectrum and Special Screenings, and has expanded to include international dramatic and documentary films. These changes allow for each of the six out-of-competition categories to present international films.
· Closing Film – New this year a Park City Closing Film, the last premiere of the Festival on Friday, January, 27, 2006.
· Documentary Editing Award - New to the Sundance Film Festival this year is an award recognizing excellence in Documentary Film Editing. Films in the Independent Film Competition: Documentary are eligible for this award.
· Salt Lake City Gala - This year, the Sundance Film Festival Salt Lake City Gala is taking place on Friday, January 20, 2006 in the Jeanne Wagner Auditorium in the Rose Wagner Center. The Festival’s presence in Salt Lake City is now concentrated along Broadway (300 South) to create a Sundance experience in Salt Lake City similar to that in Park City.
Festival Sponsors
The 2006 Sundance Film Festival sponsors help sustain Sundance Institute's year-round programs to support independent artists, inspire risk-taking and encourage diversity in the arts. This year's Festival community includes: Presenting—Hewlett-Packard Company, Entertainment Weekly, Volkswagen of America, Inc., and Adobe Systems Incorporated; Leadership Sponsors—American Express, Delta Air Lines, DirecTV, Intel Corporation and Sprint; Sustaining Sponsors—Aquafina, Blockbuster Inc., CESAR Food For Small Dogs, L’Oreal Paris, Moviefone, The New York Times, Sony Electronics Inc., Starbucks Coffee Company, Stella Artois®, Turning Leaf Vineyards, and the Utah Film Commission.
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is the premier showcase for American and international independent film. Held each January in and around Park City, Utah, the Festival is a core program of Sundance Institute, a nonprofit cultural organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981.
Presenting 120 dramatic and documentary feature-length films in nine distinct categories, and 80 short films each year, the Sundance Film Festival has introduced American audiences to some of the most innovative films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Clerks, Smoke Signals, In the Bedroom, American Splendor, Napoleon Dynamite, Born into Brothels, and Me and You and Everyone We Know. Beyond the streets of Park City, the official Website of the Sundance Film Festival, www.sundance.org, shares the Festival experience with a global audience through the streaming of short films and filmmaker interviews, combined with current news and box office information.
Sundance Institute
Dedicated year-round to the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work, Sundance Institute celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2006. Since its inception, the Institute has grown into an internationally recognized resource for thousands of independent artists through its Sundance Film Festival and artistic development programs which provide a range of concentrated creative and financial support for directors, screenwriters, documentary filmmakers, composers, playwrights and theatre artists. The original values of independence, creative risk-taking, and discovery continue to define and guide the work of Sundance Institute, both with US artists and, increasingly, with artists from other regions of the world.
