The Utah Film Commission has announced an extended deadline for “Spot On,” a filmmaking campaign to showcase the Beehive State.

Utah filmmakers now have until Nov. 14 to produce and direct a :30 commercial spot that markets the State of Utah as a destination for film production. Contestants may submit individual spots or campaign style commercials. A panel of judges consisting of motion picture and advertising professionals, will choose the winning commercials. Winners will receive $1,500 per winning commercial spot, official Utah Film Commission gear, credentials to the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and passes to various events during the film festival. Winning spots will air on Park City Television during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. This is one Utah filmmaker’s chance to have his or her work viewed by filmmakers and industry decision makers from Los Angeles, New York and around the world.

This contest is open to Utah residents. Review the Rules & Guidelines, then fill out an entry form to enter the contest.

Created by spurned filmmakers Gary Brice and Teddy Stinson with executive production by Bill and Anais Yeager, ”Scam Fest” aims to reveal corruption in how the Sundance chooses its lineup from roughly 10,000 submissions.

The Yeagers use Sundance Institute director John Cooper’s Twitter account and disinterested e-mails regarding their rejected submission, ”Jesus of Malibu,” in an attempt to prove that the Sundance Institute is a sham, alleging that Cooper traveled to film festivals rather than watching independent submissions and that the Institute did not consider each film submitted. Neither the Yeagers nor Brice and Stinson have inside knowledge of the Institute’s selection process.

The Yeagers argue that their promotional efforts should have warranted them greater attention within the Festival.

“Imagine being a Sundance Film Festival programmer,” they write, “and someone told you about a couple of filmmakers that they met at Sundance, standing in the snow from Florida handing out a DVD film proposal to passerby’s and attendees entering and exiting the festival, trying to raise 35,000.00 for their Independent film. Imagine a husband and wife talking to people and asking them to support their cause, to make a film that could ‘change the world.’” - Grammar in context.

The Yeagers must not have met the filmmaker-turned-cabby who rigged his ride with a flat-screen to show off his movie or the producer who rented hotel space and funneled ticket-less filmgoers into his screening. Sundance veterans know that Park City is filled with self promotion during the Festival.

Ironically, Scam Fest’s creators, who have no official partnership with the Institute, have misused the Sundance Institute name and site copy in the promotion of their documentary, including headings on their faux Sundance 2012 Web site that include “Submit Your Film” and “Support Us.” These sections lead to copied and pasted text from the Sundance Institute’s own site.

Scam Fest is not available to view online, although a 2 minute 30 second trailer on YouTube has received an underwhelming 66 views.

Sundance 2012 has officially begun!

…for Park City locals, that is.

Park Citizens can now visit www.sundance.org/tickets to receive a randomly assigned time slot to purchase locals’ Festival passes and ticket packages at special prices. Online registration is available through October 12, with packages available to residents of select Utah zip codes. Packages for Utah property owners are also available. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival will be January 19-29, 2012. The nonprofit Sundance Institute will announce the 2012 film lineup in early December. Ambitious souls can sign up for gear and tickets by volunteering their time.

If this looks like home to you, it's time to sign up for your Sundance locals' package.

As a candidate for funding through Members Project from American Express and TakePart, Sundance Institute must win the Arts & Culture category after three months of online voting. Sundance supporters can vote once a week on the TakePart website before the winner is announced in November.

As a nonprofit organization, Sundance Institute uses vital funding opportunities to provide creative support to independent film and theatre artists from around the world. Through the Institute’s many Labs, artist programs, and the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance provides independent artists with a platform to share their stories with international audiences. Sundance Institute has been behind such recognized projects as Precious, Waiting for Superman, Reservoir Dogs, and Spring Awakening. Check out their Online Archives to see the independent artists Sundance Institute supported since 1981.

Sundance Institute has revamped its site for the 2011 Film Festival, trading in the neon pink of 2010 for a light blue snowflake, a tribute to the early years of Robert Redford’s festival, according to the site. Updated film submission information, volunteer applications and new event announcements are now avaiable for next year’s festival, taking place January 20-30, 2011.

New and Returning Events

Sundance U.S.A., a nation-wide tribute to independent film, will continue for the second year on January 27 with screenings from the 2011 festival in eight cities, stretching from San Francisco, California to Brookline, Massachusetts.

New Frontier, a program highlighting multi-genre work that “pushes the boundaries of storytelling and the moving image,” will take place at a new location, moving from the Kimball Art Center to the outdoor Miner’s Park on Main Street. Twelve new artists will be announced in the next month.

Artist at the Table, a new event to celebrate independent artists while raising funds for the nonprofit Sundance Institute, will take place on opening night at the newly constructed Montage luxury hotel in Deer Valley. At $1,500 a ticket, the event features a cocktail reception with filmmakers, reserved seating at the opening night screening, live entertainment and transportation from the Eccles Theater to the Montage. Tickets are available online.

Native Forum

The Sundance Film Festival will also host the annual Native Forum, a hub for the International Indigenous film community, including a program of panel discussions, filmmaker discussions, and networking events that provide opportunities for Indigenous filmmakers to share their expertise and knowledge with each other and the larger independent film community.

To volunteer or purchase tickets, visit the Sundance Institute online.

Just when you thought you’d seen it all regarding America’s processed food horrors, filmmaker Human Rights Fellow Ana Joanes presents FRESH, a documentary about the rapid transformation of our food industry into an industrial model and what some people are doing about it.

Sponsored by the Park City Film Series, the Swaner Environmental Film Series and this year’s Leadership Park City’s Class, FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food sources and our planet. After the film, enjoy a brief presentation on high altitude vegetable gardening.

See FRESH next Tuesday, July 13 at the Park City Library. The free screening begins at 7 p.m.

“Part screening, part discussion, we’ll showcase work supported by Sundance Institute, and give you an opportunity to meet the filmmakers and discuss the film,” the Institute promises in a recent press release. Films will screen in different locations throughout Park City and Salt Lake.

SUNDANCE FILM SERIES SCHEDULE: FREE. EVERY MONTH.

From the Collection: Unzipped

Directed by Douglas Keeve

Thursday, June 3

Tower Theatre, 7:00 p.m.

80 min.

Winner of the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, Unzipped is part performance, part cinema verite, and all delight as we follow world-famous fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi as he creates his 1994 New York fall fashion show. The world of high fashion has rarely been depicted in such intimate detail, complete with all the excitement and anxiety that accompany any major artistic event. Featuring many of the world’s top models, including Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington, Unzipped is a treat that fulfills the promise of its title to entertain, provoke, and unveil.

From the Collection:  Son of Rambow

Written and Directed by Garth Jennings

Thursday, July 1 @ 9:00 PM

Outdoors at City Park, Park City

95 min.

Set during a long English summer in the early 1980’s, Son of Rambow is a touching comedy about the tough business of growing up.  Will, a fatherless boy from a strict family that won’t let him watch television, finds himself caught up in the extraordinary world of Lee Carter, the school terror and maker of bizarre home movies.  Lee exposes Will to a pirated copy of the Rambo film, First Blood, which blows his mind wide open.

From the collection: Once

Written and Directed by John Carney

Wednesday, July 21 @ 9:00 PM

Outdoors at Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre, Salt Lake City

88 min.

It’s not often that a film like Once comes along.  Overwhelming Festival audiences in Park City and garnering an Audience Award, the film ultimately nabbed an Academy Award for Best Song (”Falling Slowly”).  Once stars Glen Hansard of The Frames and Czech singer/songwriter Marketa Irglova, as two broken hearted musicians; their musical bond at the heart of the film and of their love.

From the collection: Mary and Max

Directed by Adam Elliot

Friday, August 6 @ 9:00 PM

Outdoors at City Park, Park City

Opening Night of the 41st Park City Kimball Arts Festival

92 min.

Mary & Max, a claymation feature by the Academy Award-winning team behind Harvie Krumpet, is a simple friendship story about two very different pen-pals.  Mary and Max’s friendship take us on a journey that explores autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, agoraphobia, and obesity, to name a few topics, each penned with love and compassion.

From the collection: The Motorcycle Diaries

Directed by Walter Salles

Wednesday, August 25 @ 9:00 PM

Outdoors at Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre, Salt Lake City

128 min.

The Motorcycle Diaries is a beautifully wrought account of the awakening of one of the 20th century’s most romanticized revolutionaries.  The film recounts the odyssey undertaken by a young “Che” Guevara and his friend Granado in 1952, when Guevara was a 23-year-old medical student.  A summer road movie like no other, The Motorcycle Diaries transports you to a unique moment of time and place where myth is born.

Screening Date:    Monday, April 19, 2010

Location:     The Salt Lake City Library - 210 E. 400 S.

6:30 Photo Lecture by Lauren Greenfield
7:00 Screening of THIN (runtime 102 minutes)
8:42 Post film Q & A and book signing with Lauren Greenfield and one of the subjects of the film.

Eating disorders affect five million people in the U.S., and more than 10% of those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa will die from the disease. Seeking to put a human face on these sobering statistics, acclaimed photographer Lauren Greenfield went inside a Florida treatment center to tell the stories of four women who are literally dying to be thin.

Lauren Greenfield Author of the critically acclaimed Fast Forward, Girl Culture, and THIN, Lauren Greenfield was named by American Photo as one of the 25 most influential photographers working today. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are in many museum collections, including the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Greenfield was one of eight photographers in the inaugural exhibit of The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles (2009). This summer, Greenfield’s work will be featured in a major historical exhibition on the Photo Essay at the Getty Museum. THIN and Girl Culture are both traveling museum exhibitions curated by Trudy Wilner Stack that together have been seen by over half a million people in over 30 venues around the world.

THIN was also Greenfield’s directorial debut as a filmmaker. A feature-length documentary, it broadcast on HBO and earned her an Emmy nomination for Best Direction. THIN premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the London International Film Festival. The project was featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, and CNN, and was excerpted in People.

Sitawa Namwalie of Kenya will present her project, "Cut of My Tongue" at the Sundance Institute East Africa Lab.

Sundance Institute has unveiled the four projects chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in East Africa, taking place July 9 to 29 on the island of Manda off the coast of Kenya. This is the first time Manda will host a Sundance lab, although the Institute has held projects in East Africa since 2008.

Philip Himberg, Producing Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, the Lab will provide these projects with guidance in their creative development toward final production. Modeled on the annual Sundance Institute Theatre Labs, Sundance Institute East Africa is an exchange and development program, and participants will receive training and mentorship from American and African Creative Advisors.

Selected projects:

Cut Off My Tongue (Kenya), a collection of dramatized texts by playwright Sitawa Namwalie and choreographer Lillian Amimo Olembo that incorporate poetry, spoken word, narrative, music, dance and movement. Cut Off My Tongue deals with interrelated stories about life in Kenya grouped around tribe and ethnicity, African womanhood, love and desire, political critique, tradition and genealogy.

The Book of Life (Rwanda), piece formed by a collection of widows’ letters from the 1994 Tutsi Genocide to their loved ones. The project transcends space and time as illustrates the living desire to reconnect with the dead so as to go past the pain. To find healing, to find joy, to find love and to celebrate life.

Africa Kills Her Sun (Tanzania), an adaptation of a letter by Ken Saro-Wiwa by Mrisho Mpoto with director Gilbert Lukalia. Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) was hanged by the Nigerian dictatorship in 1995 for his activism on behalf of his Nigerian Ogoni people. The original text is a condemned man’s last letter to his loved one. Mpoto will adapt this text and use his poetic style in Kiswahili to combine it with slam poetry and storytelling to talk about corruption and abuse of power in contemporary Africa.

Silent Voices (Uganda) by playwright Lucy Judith Adong and choreographer Grace Flavia Ibanda with director Jacob Otieno. Silent Voices mirrors the views and emotions of the real victims of the Northern Uganda war. The project explores how victims have been ignored in the constant calls to “forgive” and “reconcile” at the expense of justice. Through the protagonist, (Mother - a symbolic representation of life and death) Silent Voices examines what good citizens can be driven into by unhealthy policies.

The 2010 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in East Africa is made possible through the generosity of Wayne MacGregor who has provided his personal residence, Akili, as rehearsal and performance space for the artists.

C

Mohammad Yunus in New York

The AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival announced that “To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America“, directed and produced by Gayle Ferraro, will have its East Coast Premiere as a special presentation on Monday, April 12 at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland. “To Catch a Dollar,” which made its world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, chronicles Grameen America, a not-for-profit microfinance organization founded by Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus, during its first year of operations in Queens, New York.  It focuses on several entrepreneurial women borrowers as they pursue their paths from poverty to success, whether opening a bakery, starting a hair salon, or selling ice cream.

Professor Yunus is known worldwide for his successful application of the concept of microcredit, the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.  He and Grameen Bank jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and he was presented with a Presidential Medal of Honor in 2009.  With Grameen America, Yunus has replicated the microcredit model in the US.  Since opening in January 2008, Grameen America has disbursed more than $4.3 million in loans to more than 2,000 borrowers and maintains a repayment rate of 99%.  Additional branches are opening across the country, and Washington, DC is one of the ten cities slotted for a new branch.

Read Park City resident Chelsea Shapard’s review of a presentation by Yanus during Sundance.