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SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES 2010 CINEREACH PROJECT AT SUNDANCE INSTITUTE GRANTEES

Posted Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 - Comments Off on SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES 2010 CINEREACH PROJECT AT SUNDANCE INSTITUTE GRANTEES
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For Immediate Release
Eleven Documentary and Narrative Feature Film Projects Selected for Development, Production
and Post-Production Support
LOS ANGELES, CA – Sundance Institute and Cinereach announced today the 2010 projects awarded grants for development, production, or post-production as part of a $1.5 million, three-year initiative, The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute. The initiative is designed to support documentary and narrative feature film projects with themes that evoke global cultural exchange and social impact, and projects representing emerging and innovative voices selected for their distinctive and personal storytelling. The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute is directly supporting eleven projects, each at a critical moment in their development.
In addition to grant awards, The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute includes core artist support activity at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, Directors Lab, Documentary Edit & Story Lab, Composers & Documentary Lab, the Creative Producing Feature and Documentary Labs, and the Sundance Film Festival.
“The unique partnership between Sundance Institute and Cinereach enables a deeper support of innovative independent film,” said Keri Putnam, Executive Director, Sundance Institute. “The initiative is an extension of the ongoing support provided by the Sundance Institute through our Labs and funding opportunities, dedicated to nurturing artists’ individual voices. We’re thrilled to be working with Cinereach to support these eleven documentary and narrative feature film projects at critical stages in their development.”
“I’m heartened by the breadth of support that has touched a dynamic group of projects in such a short time. Today’s filmmakers are charting their own destinies and it’s critical their custodians adapt alongside them,” said Philipp Engelhorn, Cinereach Founder and Executive Director. “We’re thrilled with our partnership with the Sundance Institute, and I believe the results are indicative of the power of collaboration in uncharted times.”
Projects recently selected as Sundance Institute Cinereach Grantees through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program include:


POST PRODUCTION GRANTING
Yelling to the Sky
Writer-director: Victoria Mahoney (Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab Fellow)
Producer: Diane Houslin (Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow)
In a distressed New York neighborhood, the younger of two mixed-race sisters navigates an identity between the known: a violent life of crime, and the unknown: a life of purpose and meaning.
Here
Director: Braden King (Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab Fellow)
Writers: Braden King and Dani Valent
Producers: Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen
Cartographer Will Shepard hits the road for his latest job: to create a new, more accurate satellite survey of Armenia. During his assignment, he forms a bond with an Armenian expatriate and art photographer.
PRODUCTION GRANTING
On the Ice
Writer-director: Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Sundance Institute Directors and
Screenwriters Lab Fellow)
Producers: Cara Marcous (Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow) and Lynette Howell
On the snow-covered arctic tundra, at the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska, two Iñuit teenagers try to get away with murder.
DEVELOPMENT GRANTING
Postcards from the Zoo
Co-writer-director: Edwin (Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab Fellow)
Co-writer: Daud Sumolang (Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab Fellow)
Producers: Meiske Taurisia, Lorna Tee
After being abandoned at a young age at the zoo, a young woman leaves her magical childhood behind to discover the world outside.
The Ruined Cast
Writer-director: Dash Shaw (Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Fellow)
Producers: Howard Gertler, John Cameron Mitchell
Told with hand-drawn animation, a disconnected family is thrown into chaos when the scientist father loses the test subject of his experiment with appearance-altering technology.
Projects recently selected as Sundance Institute Cinereach Grantees through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program include:
DEVELOPMENT GRANTING
The Arizona Project (Working Title)
Directors: Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini
Reporting from the frontlines of the new battle for America’s soul, filmmakers Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini follow the volatile, unfolding story of Arizona’s racially charged immigration law, Senate Bill 1070.
Untitled Margaret Brown Oil Spill Documentary
Director: Margaret Brown
Margaret Brown’s new documentary is an investigation into the personal stories behind the tragic 2010 BP Oil Spill. The film uncovers how government and corporate interests respond in the wake of an environmental crisis, and the way this affects a region and culture so rooted in nature.
Untitled Documentary by Lauren Greenfield
Director: Lauren Greenfield
This untitled cinema verite film by Lauren Greenfield is a portrait of an American family against the backdrop of the financial crisis.
Projects previously selected and announced as Sundance Institute Cinereach Grantees through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program in December 2009 included 25 to Life (Director: Mike Brown); The Fire This Time (Director: Blair Doroshwalther); and Gasland (Director: Josh Fox).
The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute supports a unique and flexible resource pool for documentary and feature filmmakers and their projects. The Project consists of a discretionary fund that can be used towards projects by filmmakers that are participating in Sundance Institute’s existing Feature Film Program and Documentary Film Program, and are in need of urgent support. As a result of this unique partnership, Sundance Institute is more equipped to bridge funding and creative support gaps at critical stages of its Fellows’ projects.
About Sundance Institute
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a not-for-profit organization that fosters the
development of original storytelling in film and theatre, and presents the annual Sundance Film Festival.
Internationally recognized for its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers,
film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Angels in America, Spring Awakening, Boys Don’t Cry and Trouble the Water. www.sundance.org.
About Cinereach
Cinereach is a not-for-profit film foundation and production company that champions vital stories, artfully told. Lead by young philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and filmmakers, Cinereach empowers fiction and nonfiction filmmakers from all over the world through three key initiatives: Grants & Awards (granting to fiction and nonfiction feature films), The Reach Film Fellowship (providing funds and creative support to short film projects) and Productions (developing and producing independent features). Cinereach has awarded grants to over 50 films at the intersection of engaging storytelling, visual artistry, and vital subject matter. www.cinereach.org.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon