By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Sundance Institute Announces National Screenings for 2013 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Project, Coral: Rekindling Venus

Posted Monday, January 7th, 2013 - 1 Comment »
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For Immediate Release
January 7, 2013

Albuquerque, NM | Anchorage, AK | Arlington, TX | Baltimore, MD | Bradenton, FL | Chicago, IL | Hilo, HI | Honolulu, HI | Houston, TX | Killeen, TX | New York, NY | Park City, UT | Portsmouth, OH | Salt Lake City, UT | Washington, DC

Park City, UT — Sundance Institute today announced that Coral: Rekindling Venus, a full-dome film and augmented reality presentation featured in the 2013 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival, will screen at 14 full-dome planetariums throughout the United States during the Festival, January 17-27. Created and directed by Australian media artist Lynette Wallworth, Coral: Rekindling Venus is an immersive film experience that takes viewers underwater through the mysterious realm of fluorescent coral reefs in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

In addition to multiple daily screenings in a specially designed dome at the New Frontier exhibition in Park City, Utah, the 45-minute film will also screen January 19th, 22nd and 26th at Salt Lake City’s Clark Planetarium. Between January 19-26 a 22-minute version of the work will screen in the following cities: Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Arlington, TX; Baltimore, MD; Bradenton, FL; Chicago, IL; Hilo, HI; Honolulu, HI; Houston, TX; Killeen, TX; New York, NY;; Portsmouth, OH; and Washington, DC. Select planetariums will feature a live Skype post-screening Q&A with director Lynette Wallworth.

Wallworth’s visually stunning Coral: Rekindling Venus is designed to immerse viewers in the complex world of rare marine life with the hope of creating an emotional connection between a global audience and the planet’s endangered coral reefs. This epic project features original deep-sea photography from Emmy Award-winning cinematographer David Hannan, and music by Antony and the Johnsons, renowned Australian Indigenous artist Gurumul and German composer Max Richter. An augmented-reality companion artwork, Rekindling Venus: In Plain Sight will also be featured, allowing audiences to explore deep sea coral reefs around the world through their smartphones.

Wallworth said, “My intent with Coral: Rekindling Venus is to leave the audience with a sense of wonder for the complexity and beauty of coral reefs and a stronger understanding of our connection to it. In that vein, this tour is built on community, reaching audiences where they live, and with their friends and neighbors as fellow participants.”

The Festival’s New Frontier section showcases films, media installations, multimedia performances, trans-media experiences and panel discussions that explore the convergence of film, art, new media technology and storytelling. Coral is the first full-dome work to be featured in New Frontier, and the planetarium and full-dome tour is also a first for the Festival.

Shari Frilot, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and Curator of the New Frontier exhibition, said, “The scope and ambition of Lynette Wallworth’s Coral: Rekindling Venus is an example of just how powerful the convergence of art world imagination, cinematic storytelling and new media technology, can be, which is the focus of our New Frontier initiative. With Coral, audiences across the country will be able to engage in and contribute to a dialogue around the endangered coral reefs as well as the value of expanding cinema culture beyond the traditional movie theater.”

Coral producer John Maynard of Felix Media adds, “Lynette’s work, beyond its beauty and visionary scope has created a benchmark in full-dome work and is quickly enlivening the market with the potential of new content. Inclusion in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival New Frontier exhibition will help Coral find wider audiences and help to spread support for our endangered coral reefs”.

Tickets for the Park City and Salt Lake City screenings will be available through the Festival Box Office: http://www.sundance.org/tickets Tickets for screenings outside of Utahwill be available through each planetarium.

Albuquerque, NM: New Mexico Museum of Natural History http://www.lodestar.unm.edu

Anchorage, AK: Planetarium & Visualization Theatre, University of Alaska, Anchorage http://www.uaf.edu/museum/education/planetarium

Arlington, TX:  Arlington Planetarium, University of Texas http://www.uta.edu/planetarium/

Baltimore, MD: Maryland Science Center – Davis Planetarium http://www.mdsci.org/planetarium/index.html

Bradenton, FL: Bishop Planetarium, South Florida Museum http://www.southfloridamuseum.org/ThePlanetarium

Chicago IL: Adler Planetarium http://www.adlerplaanterium.org/

Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum http://www.bishopmuseum.org/exhibits/planetarium/planetarium.html

Houston, TX: Burke Baker Planetarium http://www.hmns.org/

Hilo, HI: Imiloa Astronomy Centre http://www.imiloahawaii.org

Killeen, TX: Mayborn Planetarium and Space Theatre, Central Texas College http://www.starsatnight.org/

New York, NY: Hayden Planetarium www.haydenplanetarium.org

Portsmouth, OH: Clark Planetarium, Shawnee State University http://planetarium.shawnee.edu

Salt Lake City, UT: Sheila M. Clark Planetarium, Hansen Dome Theater for information: http://clarkplanetarium.org;  for tickets: http://www.sundance.org/tickets

Washington, DC: Albert Einstein Planetarium Smithsonian Institute http://airandspace.si.edu/visit/theaters/planetarium/

Over the past five months Coral: Rekindling Venus has screened in 24 cities across six continents and been featured in five major festivals including the London Cultural Olympiad and the World Science Festival in New York. For more information please visit www.coralrekindlingvenus.com.

 

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, includingsex, 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 2013 Sundance Film Festival® sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase Sapphire PreferredSM; Leadership Sponsors – DIRECTV, Entertainment Weekly, FOCUS FORWARD, a partnership between GE and CINELAN, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – Adobe, Canada Goose, Canon U.S.A., Inc., CÎROC Ultra Premium Vodka, FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Intel Corporation, L’Oréal Paris, Recycled Paper Greetings, Stella Artois® and Time Warner Inc. 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

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America.

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Sundance Institute Announces National Screenings for 2013 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Project, Coral: Rekindling Venus”

  1. Scott OBrien says:
    January 7, 2013 at 8:04 pm

    This is a brilliant feast for the eyes and the mind. Be sure to experience it!

Quote Unquotesee all »

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