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Sundance Announces Projects for 2001 Screenwriters Lab

The Sundance Institute has selected twelve feature film projects for the annual Screenwriters Lab, which will take place January 12th through 17th at the Sundance Resort in Utah. The Lab will offer participating writers the opportunity to develop their work-in-progress feature screenplays in a community of accomplished screenwriters.

"We are encouraged by the scope and freshness of the artistic visions that make up this year’s Lab,” said Michelle Satter, Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. “Their stories offer a window into the thematic and aesthetic directions reinvigorating American independent cinema.”

Participating writers will have the opportunity to work under the guidance of an extraordinary group of screenwriters led by Artistic Director Robert Caswell. Other creative advisors include John August, Reggie Bythewood, Carol Doyle, Tony Drazan, Naomi Foner, Nelson George, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Larry Konner, Malia Scotch Marmo, Douglas McGrath, Tom Rickman, Howard Rodman, Susan Shilliday, Zachary Sklar and David Veloz.

The January Screenwriters Lab is part of the Feature Film Program, a year-round series of workshops and events offered by the Sundance Institute. The Screenwriters Lab is a five-day writer’s workshop during which emerging artists have the opportunity to work intensively on their feature film scripts with the support of established screenwriters. Participating writers have problem-solving story sessions with creative advisors, engaging in individual dialogues that combine life lessons in craft with practical suggestions to be explored in future drafts. The June Filmmakers/Screenwriters Lab is a month-long workshop which allows directors an opportunity for discovery and project development in a collaborative environment removed from the pressures of production. The filmmakers work with creative advisors, professional actors and video crews in rehearsing, shooting and editing their projects. A second Screenwriters Lab is held during the last part of this process, enabling filmmakers to strengthen their material as they work one-on-one with creative advisors. Throughout the year, Sundance staff members offer ongoing creative and business assistance to Lab alumni. In many cases, the Institute has helped filmmakers find a producer, financing and other significant resources, helping to bring these projects into production. The program also features a screenplay reading series of works in progress in Los Angeles and New York.

Sundance Labs have helped to launch many significant independent voices, most recently including Kimberly Peirce with Boys Don’t Cry, Gina Prince Bythewood with Love And Basketball, Rodrigo Garcia with Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her, Darren Aronofsky with Requiem For A Dream, Tony Bui with Three Seasons, Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie with Smoke Signals, Paul Thomas Anderson with Hard Eight, and Tamara Jenkins with Slums Of Beverly Hills. The upcoming Sundance Film Festival will feature premieres of ten Sundance alumni projects, including Series 7 by Daniel Minahan, The Business Of Strangers by Patrick Stettner, Hedwig And The Angry Inch by John Cameron Mitchell, Lift by DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter, The American Astronaut by Cory McAbee, The Doe Boy by Randy Redroad, Haiku Tunnel by Josh and Jacob Kornbluth, After Image by Robert Manganelli, 3 AM by Lee Davis, and The Bleep Brothers by Yoshiyasu Fujita.

The participants and projects selected for the 2001 January Screenwriters Lab are:

David Gordon Green (writer/director), ALL THE REAL GIRLS: Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, David Gordon Green now lives in North Carolina where he has written and directed several short films, including Physical Pinball and A Biography of Barrels, and documentaries. His first feature film, George Washington, was released theatrically in 2000 and played at over 30 international film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival where it received The Discovery Award. All the Real Girls: In a small Southern town where time stands still, an experienced young man is surprised to find himself falling for a naïve younger girl who also happens to be his best friend’s younger sister.

Peter Himmelstein (writer), BEAUTIFUL, BABY: Having started out as an architect and graphic designer, Peter Himmelstein has just begun to develop his career as a screenwriter. He has designed titles for several films including The Brothers McMullen, She's the One, No Looking Back, Slums of Beverly Hills and the titles and poster for the documentary feature A Perfect Candidate. In Beautiful, Baby, a baseball pitcher with great, untapped talent is tempted by something greater than the game: life itself.

Rod Pocowatchit (writer), DANCING ON THE MOON: Born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, Rod Pocowatchit went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in graphic design from Kansas State University. Since college, he has worked at The Wichita Eagle newspaper as a designer and occasional writer, covering entertainment and music. Coming from the Pawnee, Shawnee and Comanche tribes, Rod was raised immersed in Native American culture, dancing at powwows since he was a child. It was his love of his heritage and movies that led him to write his first screenplay, Dancing on the Moon. This past July he developed the screenplay at the Sundance Institute’s Native Screenwriting Workshop. In Dancing on the Moon, three Native American friends get stranded on the journey to a powwow. In the face of danger, they learn to believe in the one thing that can help them overcome sorrow, remorse and revenge: themselves.

Lisa Collins (writer/director), THE GRASS IS GREENER: Lisa Collins earned her Masters in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University Film School after graduating from Yale University in American Studies/Photography, for which she was a Fulbright finalist. To finance her filmmaking, Lisa worked for over six years as a partner and producer of Cafe Con Leche, New York City's most successful Latin-inspired club-night. She wrote, directed and executive produced two short films: Miss Ruby's House, a mockumentary in which she plays five roles, and Tree Shade, a supernatural black comedy which screened at several film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival, and the Seattle Film Festival. Tree Shade garnered several awards, including the Directors Guild of America’s East Coast Student Filmmaker Award for Best African American Student Filmmaker and the Gold Medal for Best Alternative Film at the Student Academy Awards in 1999. Currently, Lisa is Managing Editor of the film department at Baseline.hollywood.com, where she oversees a database that tracks the growth, development and the after-life of over 150,000 films. The Grass Is Greener: A reclusive aging actress puts a spell on her three daughters, forcing them to live mandatory double-lives – until, that is, a mystery unfolds that breaks the spell and sends the sisters into full fledged identity crises.

Kent Williams (writer/director), KOKORO: Kent Williams is best known as a draftsman and painter, illustrator and comics creator. In 1980 he moved to New York to study at the Pratt Institute where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting. His graphic novel and comics work includes Tell Me, Dark and Blood: A Tale. Publications of his work include Kent Williams: Drawings & Monotypes and Koan: Paintings by Jon J Muth and Kent Williams. His work has been printed in numerous national and international publications including Playboy, Omni, and The Learning Channel magazine. Williams is the recipient of a number of awards for his work, both in comics and illustration, including The Yellow Kid, Lucca, Italy's prestigious comics award, three medals from the Society of Illustrators, New York, and The Joseph Henniger Award for Best of Show, from Illustration West 32. Williams lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has spent the last year in San Francisco as a Visiting Instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Kokoro: In the streets along the canals of Venice, a man battles his inner demon, undertaking a quest in the understanding of unconditional love and a journey into fatherhood.

Moisés Kaufman (writer/director), THE LARAMIE PROJECT: Moisés Kaufman is the founder and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project, a New York City based theater company. For Tectonic he wrote and directed Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. The play has been produced in over 40 cities in the U.S. and in dozens of cities abroad, and has won numerous awards, including the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play and the Outer Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. Other directing credits include Women in Beckett, the collection of Samuel Beckett’s short plays for women, In the Winter of Cities, his adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ one-acts, The Nest by Franz Xaver Kroetz, named by the Village Voice as one of the top 10 theatrical works of 1994-95, and Marlowe’s Eye by Naomi Iizuka, among others. The Laramie Project is an adaptation of Kaufman’s recent play of the same name, which he has directed in Denver, New York and Laramie. The Laramie Project chronicles the story of the town of Laramie in the year after Matthew Shepard was murdered, as uncovered by a theater company that went there at the time.

Derick and Steven Martini (co-writers/co-directors), LYMELIFE: Derick and Steven Martini made their feature film debut as the writers, producers and stars of Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire. Derick started his career on the stage as a playwright and an actor. Steven co-starred in the feature film Major Payne, and has also appeared on the television series Prince Street, Law and Order, and Touched By An Angel. He is currently starring in L.A.X., a feature currently in production. Set on Long Island during rapidly changing times in 1981, Lymelife chronicles the moral deterioration of a family as they navigate the pitfalls of a failing marriage.

Tatia Rosenthal (co-writer/director) and Etgar Keret (co-writer) $9.99: Tatia Rosenthal directed, animated and designed the puppet-animated short film Crazy Glue, adapted from a story by Etgar Keret. The film was produced in an Advanced Animation class at Tisch School of The Arts. Crazy Glue won numerous awards, in both animation and narrative categories, including a Wasserman prize and an MTV Student Animation Award. Rosenthal currently works for Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues as a senior animator, using computers to animate in a cut out stop-motion style. With $9.99, Rosenthal received the Richard Vague $100,000 Production Fund Award. Writer Etgar Keret is one of the leading voices in Israeli literature and cinema. In the last ten years he has published three books of short stories and novellas, two comics books, two feature screenplays and numerous teleplays. His stories have been published in fifteen different languages and have gained both critical acclaim and success with the public. His book Missing Kissinger was named one of the fifty most important books written in Hebrew by Yediot-Acharonot, the most influential Israeli newspaper. His latest work, Kneller’s Happy Campers, will be published in America in December of 2000 by Saint-Martin’s Press. $9.99 is a puppet animation feature project which gives less than ten bucks’ worth of insight into the human condition.

Jono Oliver (writer/director), THE OTHER ONES: A Directors Guild of America assistant director for the past eight years, Jono Oliver has had a career in film production that has included more than thirty projects. In 1999, he made his directorial debut with the highly acclaimed short film The Window, which he also wrote and produced. An official selection of over twenty-five film festivals, including the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, The Window has won a number of awards and honors and has also been broadcast on foreign and domestic television. He has since directed and produced the documentary short film Full Bucket Days, and has written, directed and produced the short film Street Games. Oliver grew up in Brooklyn, New York before attending Stanford University where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. In The Other Ones, a working class man injured in a highly publicized shooting searches for acknowledgment after the media focuses on a more affluent victim and he realizes that to many, he simply doesn’t exist.

Laurie Collyer (writer/director), SHALL NOT WANT: Laurie Collyer’s first feature film, Nuyorican Dream, is a documentary about the struggles and aspirations of three generations of a New York Puerto Rican family. The film premiered in competition at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Collyer recently completed the graduate film program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her short films Friendly World and Physical Pain received numerous university awards including the Steven J. Ross Fellowship, the Warner Brothers Post Production Award, the Carl Lerner Award for Social Issue Filmmaking, and a Craft Award for screenwriting. Physical Pain screened at the Cleremont Ferrand Short Film Festival and the Women in the Director’s Chair Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series Through the Lens. Currently, Collyer is developing two screenplays for which she received the honor of attending the Edna St. Vincent Millay colony and the Edward Albee Foundation to complete her work. Shall Not Want follows a recently released female convict in her struggle to overcome her drug addiction and regain custody of her daughter.

Hilary Brougher (writer/director), STEPHANIE DALEY: Hilary Brougher grew up in upstate New York and started making Super-8 films at age fourteen. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1990 and went on to work in a variety of production jobs on independent films. In 1997, she wrote and directed her first feature, The Sticky Fingers of Time. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and after playing many other festivals, including the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival, enjoyed a small U.S. theatrical release with Strand Releasing. Stephanie Daley: When a newborn is found dead in a ski lodge bathroom, the sixteen year old mother is charged with murder and a pregnant forensic psychologist is charged with discovering the truth behind the harrowing event.

Josh Sternfeld (writer/director), WINTER SOLSTICE: Born and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, Josh Sternfeld studied English Literature at Washington University before going on to New York University’s Graduate Film Program. His short film Balloons, Streamers screened at the 1997 New York Film Festival and the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, and has subsequently appeared on the Sundance Channel. His thesis short, Colin’s Date, screened at the 1999 Haig Manoogian Screenings in Los Angeles. Sternfeld wrote Winter Solstice, his first feature screenplay, while working as an assistant editor in New York. In Winter Solstice, a suburban widower must simultaneously confront his older son’s decision to leave home and his younger son’s self-destructive behavior.

The Sundance Institute, founded by Robert Redford and dedicated to the development of artists of independent vision and the exhibition of their new work, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The Feature Film Labs of the Institute offer emerging screenwriters and directors a place to develop new, distinctive work in a creative environment away from the pressures of the marketplace and with the guidance of respected, accomplished filmmakers. The Sundance Film Festival, presented by the Institute since 1985, provides a showcase of the best independent films from around the globe to an international audience of filmmakers, press, industry and film enthusiasts. Through its International Program, the Institute conducts Screenwriters Laboratories, Producers Conferences, and independent film screenings in ten countries, with an emphasis on Latin America. The Institute also maintains the Sundance Collection at UCLA, an archive dedicated to the collection and preservation of independent film. The Sundance Theatre Program encourages and supports the development of new work for American theatre through its Theatre Laboratory and by exploring and reexamining the American musical theatre repertory. It is also actively involved with commissioning and producing new plays for young audiences. The Sundance Composers Lab has a dual purpose: to provide a group of talented composers with first-hand experience composing for film and to enhance the musical understanding of independent filmmakers participating in the Institute's Film Lab. The newest endeavors of the Institute include the Writers Fellowship Program, which identifies and supports young writers whose talent and passion are focused on writing about the arts for a wider public, and the Documentary Film Program, which nurtures the growth of nonfiction filmmakers, encourages the exploration of innovative nonfiction storytelling, and promotes documentary exhibition to a broader public. More information about the Sundance Institute and its programs is available at www.sundance.org.

Updated: 12/28/2000

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