Emotional Fireworks and Texas Nods at the Sundance Awards

Natalia Ciolko — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:00:10 +0000

On the last night of the Sundance Film Festival, a special awards ceremony to honor the winners of special prizes and audience awards is held in Park City, just as filmmakers and judges alike are ready to crawl back under the rocks from whence they came for another year. It's the last opportunity to put on the Ritz, do some hardball networking and consummate that fling you've been gunning for all week.

These awards, unlike the ceremonies we watch on TV, are less about competition than camaraderie. As emcee Joseph Gordon-Levitt put it, "This is art. Not basketball." Even so, it never hurts to brand your emerging feature with more than just the Sundance official selection logo when negotiating with would-be buyers.

In the night's very first announcement, the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize went to the Austin-shot movie Computer Chess, from local filmmaker Andrew Bujalski. Producer Houston King, pictured above at right, accepted the award. The prize, which honors the union of science and film, means that $20,000 in funds will be made available to the team for their next endeavor. The jury selected the film based on its "off-beat and formalistically adventurous exploration of questions of artificial intelligence and human connections."

Sundance 2013: An Industry-Free Filmmaker Gathering

Natalia Ciolko — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:30:59 +0000

[Editor's note: Please welcome Natalia Ciolko, who's writing about Sundance Film Festival coverage for Slackerwood while she's in Park City. If you've been looking for Chale's coverage, unfortunately he's been sick and never made it to Park City.]

What inspires people to spend their vacation days and a mess of money to trek out to Utah in the middle of January? It's not really about the films -- many of those will be out in a matter of months -- but the opportunity to meet the artists behind them.

In honor of that mission, the Sundance Film Festival hosted a reception Wednesday afternoon just for members of the press and filmmakers. No agents, no industry. Sundance Institute director Keri Putnam (@kputnam) and Director of Programming Trevor Groth (@trevorgroth) were also en scene, mingling with the talent and international journalists.

As welcome as the exclusive access was the fabulous buffet, a sight for sore eyes after a week of subsistence living on Clif Bars and white wine. Being an official Sundance event, there was plenty of the latter, too -- I certainly wouldn't wish this festival on a recovering alcoholic.

Natalia Ciolko's blog

Emotional Fireworks and Texas Nods at the Sundance Awards

Sundance 2013: An Industry-Free Filmmaker Gathering