The creative workshops at the Sundance Film Festival (Sundance Lab), which have served as an incubator for directors such as Quentin Tarantino either Christopher Nolanconclude this week their last cycle of advice and tutoring of the year for works by emerging artists with a balance of at least ten projects that they hope to materialize.
The laboratories “are a place of radical creativity, emotional security, hyperintensity and concentration,” says its director and founder, Michelle Satter.
Diana Peraltaa New York filmmaker with Dominican roots, describes the program as “the most rewarding, intense, creative and stimulating experience” of her life.
In this edition, his script ‘No Love Lost’ managed to be one of the ten projects selected by the Directors and Screenwriters Laboratory, which, for the first time, left the facilities of the Sundance Resort (Utah) to travel to the Stanley Hotel, located in the town of Estes Park (Colorado).
The director of the film ‘De lo mio’ (2019) had also tried to enter this “mysterious” scholarship program years ago and, although her project was rejected then, she decided to take the risk again, since it is well known among filmmakers that “if “You have the opportunity to be part of it, it will change the course of your career.”
Since it opened with Robert Redford -founder of the Sundance Festival- the support program for emerging artists for 40 years, Satter has been in charge of training entire generations of new filmmakers.
Each year, the director and her team review more than 3,000 applications, from which they select 30 projects to finally award a scholarship to the creators of between 10 and 16 scripts.
To choose the lucky ones, Satter assures that she “trusts her instinct,” the one that already led her to detect the potential of directors like Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) either Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) before they were consecrated at the Oscars.
“We are not looking for a finished script ready to shoot, but rather characters and stories that come to life; stories that we have never seen before and that we think can create a change in our culture,” says Satter.
Once selected, fellows travel to a hotel located in a natural setting where they will work on perfecting their scripts with a group of accomplished advisors, which this year included Miguel Arteta, Rick Famuyiwa or Keith Gordonas well as professional production teams, with whom they rehearse, film and edit key scenes from their scripts.
“Sundance has no hierarchies, we are all together and we are all part of this incredible team and community that we have created,” says Satter.
While Peralta, whose new film is a psychological thriller that follows the story of three black women in the state of New York, explains that in the directors’ laboratory they have “the opportunity” to record two scenes from their films; “an experimental test” just to practice directing before the final shoot.
This year’s selection also includes the scripts for ‘Rubber Hut’, for Hanna Gray Organschi, which tells the story of a former flight attendant who opens a condom store in her Catholic Italian town; or ‘Arc’, from Keisha Rae Witherspoon and Jason Fitzroy Jefferswhich chronicles the life of Ev, an outcast Miami hustler who believes his mother was abducted by aliens when he was a child.
Once the workshop is over, the scholarship recipients can continue with Sundance’s support in consulting and searching for resources or producers to carry out their projects.
However, they have no commercial link with the institution: “Sundance does not own, produce or finance any of these films. So we developed a relationship of trust with them; They can take advantage of what they want from our comments and make their project,” says Satter.
Source: EFE
