Sundance New Frontier Flash Lab

New World Symphony

February 13-16, 2014

Sundance Institute and Knight Foundation are heading to Philadelphia and Miami this fall to present a series of workshops for emerging screenwriters, directors, and multidisciplinary artists. The first workshop in the series is the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive in Philadelphia on October 26, co-hosted with the Scribe Video Center. If you are a writer living in Philadelphia working on a feature-length narrative screenplay, apply here by October 4 for a chance at becoming one of a possible twelve participants selected. This workshop will be led by veteran screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury (Nashville, Thieves Like Us).

Additional events in Philadelphia and Miami to take place in the coming year include a New Frontier Flash Lab for artists working at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology; and ShortsLabs for filmmakers on the making of short films. In an extension of the series, four artists will be selected from these programs to attend the 2014 Sundance Film Festival where they will experience curated screenings and panels and participate in facilitated professional development and educational opportunities.

Dennis Scholl, Vice President for Arts at Knight Foundation, describes below how the aligned endeavors of Sundance Institute and Knight Foundation made this program possible and why the thriving arts communities in Philadelphia and Miami are apt homes for these artist workshops.

Why is this collaboration with Sundance Institute an initiative that Knight Foundation felt compelled to become involved with?

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a group of independent filmmakers in the communities we work in tell compelling stories about their cities. These stories are told in a voice that is unique to their cities, yet their narratives resound across America. We were looking for a way to expose their work to a larger audience, and to give lots of people who are interested in filmmaking, the training they need to make their first short or strengthen their films. This is the kind of high-quality experience that Sundance Institute offers.

Of course, not everyone can make it out to the Festival in Park City! With this program, we’re hoping to replicate some of the Sundance experience in Philadelphia and in Miami.

Knight’s mission is to create more informed and engaged communities. We see the arts as a way to bring people together, and to create those common experiences that make people more passionate about where they live. We’ve started to invest in filmmaking because we believe in its ability to shape a city’s narrative – the way that people see themselves, their neighbors and their communities.

What makes Philadelphia and Miami suitable host cities for these inaugural workshops?

Two words: raw talent. I’m talking about filmmakers like the crew behind the Borscht Film Festival in Miami, which puts on a made-in-Miami film festival each year. Their shorts have been screened in over 100 film festivals around the world, including Sundance itself. The Borscht Film Festival is nine years old, but only because the organizers launched it when they were in high school together at New World School of the Arts. Miami also has a rapidly growing independent cinema community. Where Miami had one independent cinema just a few years ago, it now has six – and they all have healthy audiences that support local filmmakers. Miami’s diverse community of filmgoers also supports 13 different film festivals, from LGBT to Brazilian to numerous shorts-fests.