Annenberg Foundation | News | Sundance Institute Announces Seven New Filmmakers for 2007 Annenberg Fellows Program

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Sundance Institute Announces Seven New Filmmakers for 2007 Annenberg Fellows Program
Support Provided for Emerging Filmmakers and their Projects Ranging from an Unflinching Look at the Chicano Experience in Los Angeles to the Unexpected Effects of a Family Tragedy in Philadelphia

Date: September 20, 2007

Source: Sundance Institute

Contact Name: Amy McGee, amy_mcgee@sundance.org

Contact Phone: (310) 360-1981

More Information: http://www.sundance.org

Los Angeles, CA: Sundance Institute announced today the selection of seven filmmakers as the 2007 Annenberg Film Fellows – Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Sophie Barthes, Caran Hartsfield, Braden King, Eric Lahey, Richard Montoya, and David Riker. The Annenberg Film Fellows Program helps provide direct financial support towards the realization of the Fellows’ projects. Each of the 2007 Fellows will receive a $10,000 - $15,000 grant to support the further development of their projects and next steps in planning for production.

The 2007 Fellows reflect the creative risk-taking, distinctive point of view and discovery at the core of independent film. The projects cover a wide range of geography, both literally and figuratively, including FARMING by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a story of the practice of Nigerian parents who would farm out their children to white working-class families in 1960s Britain and the heartbreaking consequences it spawned; COLD SOULS, by Sophie Barthes, an existential comedy about an actor’s desperation as he attempts to first shed, and then recapture, his soul; and WATER AND POWER, by Richard Montoya, a visceral and authentic tale of two East LA brothers reckoning with the reality of what their hard-earned influence has wrought.

Created in April 2004 by a $5 million grant directed by Annenberg Foundation trustee Charles Annenberg Weingarten to the Sundance Institute, the Annenberg Film Fellows Program is a five-year initiative designed to provide a combination of personal stipends, residencies and creative support for selected participants in Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program. The goal of the Annenberg Film Fellows Program is to identify and foster a new generation of leading film artists, who generally have limited access to direct support for the development of new work. Each year, the Annenberg Fellows Program supports a selection of Fellows of the Feature Film Program, as they develop their work through the different aspects of the Institute’s Feature Film Program, including the Directors and Screenwriters Labs, the Film Music Lab, the Independent Producers Conference, Screenplay Reading Series, and ongoing creative and strategic support. In addition, the Annenberg Fellows Program provides direct grants towards post-Lab script refinement, pre-production expenses, and post-production and completion.

“These seven independent filmmakers represent the powerful vision and individuality at the heart of American independent film and the Sundance Institute," said Ken Brecher, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute. “As recipients of Annenberg Film Fellowships, these talented filmmakers will receive crucial, timely support to enable their films to get to the next level."

“The Annenberg Fellows Program allows us to provide vital financial support to independent filmmakers at critical moments in a film's development," said Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. “Through this initiative, we have significantly expanded the ways we can foster creativity and help filmmakers more fully realize their first features."

Previous Annenberg Film Fellows include the critically acclaimed filmmakers Hilary Brougher (STEPHANIE DALEY), Academy Award™-nominated filmmaker Taika Waititi (TWO CARS, ONE NIGHT; EAGLE VS. SHARK), Sterlin Harjo (FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND), and David Kaplan (YEAR OF THE FISH). Upcoming projects from Annenberg Film Fellows include THE SLEEP DEALER, written and directed by Alex Rivera, and THE TOE TACTIC, written and directed by Emily Hubley.

Previous fellows currently in pre-production include Cruz Angeles (DON'T LET ME DROWN) with principal photography to begin in October 2007; So Yong Kim (TREELESS MOUNTAIN) with producers Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen (OLD JOY); Sophie Barthes (COLD SOULS) with producer Paul Mezey (HALF NELSON) and Paul Giamatti attached to star and co-produce; and Caran Hartsfield (BURY ME STANDING) with attached cast including Alfre Woodard, Mos Def and Kerry Washington scheduled to go into production October 2007.

2007 ANNENBERG FILM FELLOWS PROGRAM
This year's seven Annenberg Film Fellows and their projects are:

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje / FARMING
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was born in London, England. After earning a master’s degree in law from London’s prestigious King’s College, he began his career as an actor with a role in the film CONGO. This quickly led to appearances in both film and on television, most notably in THE MUMMY RETURNS, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS, LEGIONNAIRE, HBO’s DEADLY VOYAGE, the television series CRACKER, and NEW YORK UNDERCOVER. However, it was his performance in the HBO series OZ that garnered the most acclaim, resulting in two NAACP Award nominations. Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s most recent films include MISTRESS OF SPICES, opposite Aishwarya Rai, and GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’, directed by Jim Sheridan. He was also recently seen as Mr. Eko on the hit ABC series LOST, which won the 2006 Golden Globe for Best Ensemble Cast.

In FARMING, a young African boy abandoned by his parents desperately searches for love and belonging within a brutal skinhead subculture where violence becomes his only companion.

Sophie Barthes / COLD SOULS
Born in France, Sophie Barthes grew up in the Middle East and South America. In 2000, she moved to New York to attend Columbia University Graduate School of International & Public Affairs for a curriculum in international affairs and film. She graduated after directing a documentary in Yemen on the UNICEF literacy programs for women with cinematographer Andrij Parekh. Together they directed the short film SNOWBLINK in Ukraine. She recently wrote and directed the award-winning short HAPPINESS, which screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Both HAPPINESS and COLD SOULS won the NYSCA Individual Artists Grants and the Showtime Tony Cox Award for Best Screenplay (Feature & Short categories) at the Nantucket Film Festival. Barthes also completed a residency at the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony. COLD SOULS will be produced by Touchy Feely Films and Journeyman Pictures.

COLD SOULS blends elements of humor and irony with incursions into darker atmospheres as it explores the profound moods and inner struggles of a man in search of his soul.

Caran Hartsfield / BURY ME STANDING
Caran Hartsfield is a recent alumnus of NYU's Graduate Film Program. She has won numerous honors and awards for her previous short films DOUBLE-HANDED and KISS IT UP TO GOD, including Second Place at the Cannes Film Festival Cinefoundation, the Directors Guild of America Award, the Martin Scorsese Fellowship, the Spike Lee Fellowship, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Film Fellowship. Her feature screenplay BURY ME STANDING was developed at the Cannes Film Festival's Cinefoundation Residency in Paris and later went on to win the IFP's Gordon Parks Screenplay Award and the First Place Richard Vague NYU Alumni Screenwriting Award.

BURY ME STANDING mixes comedy and drama in an ensemble film that follows five family members after the sudden death of 26-year-old Evan MacKay. In the family neighborhood, a working-class section of North Philadelphia, Ruth, Gloria, Chooch, Mott, and Darryl are each forced to deal with Evan’s death in their own unique way.

Braden King / HERE
Braden King co-directed the film DUTCH HARBOR: WHERE THE SEA BREAKS ITS BACK, a lyric examination of the life and landscape of an Aleutian Island community off the west coast of Alaska. Made in collaboration with photographer Laura Moya, DUTCH HARBOR toured internationally with live, improvised soundtrack accompaniment by the Boxhead Ensemble under the direction of composer Michael Krassner. King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Chan Marshall, Will Oldham, Tortoise, Dirty Three, Low, Yo La Tengo and Sparklehorse, and television commercials for clients including American Airlines, ESPN, Miller Beer, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and UNICEF. He is currently in post-production on the feature-length documentary 1000 MILES, an expressive mediation on music, landscape and travel as reflected through nature and moods of several recent North American tours by the Australian band Dirty Three. King attended the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California.

HERE is a structurally unique, landscape-obsessed road movie. The film tells the story of Will Shepard, a solitary American cartographer working for a company contracted to create a new, more accurate satellite survey of the country of Armenia who meets an Armenian expatriate and art photographer. The story of their trip is seamlessly interwoven with a series of brief, mythical "explorer stories" – fantastic tales of fictional explorers who mapped the world in unique and idiosyncratic ways.

Eric Lahey / SPOONS
Eric Lahey has a diverse background in the visual and performing arts. In high school he took filmmaking courses at the North West Film Center and The North West Academy and had internships at Nike, Adidas, Ackerman Films and the world renowned Will Vinton Animation Studios. He received a BFA in film at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2005 his first feature documentary, THE CENTURY PLAZA, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It has been fully endorsed by the National Coalition for the Homeless, and currently has a broadcast deal with the Showtime Networks. In late 2005 he received, in corroboration with the Oregon Department of Education and The Oregon Business Council, a communications grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create a video propagating systemic education reform in Oregon. Most recently, Lahey has worked as the Director of Photography for Alex Hammond’s documentary on Haitian street kids in Cap Haitian, which has gotten recent moral support from the National Coalition for Haiti Rights. He has also illustrated a dark children’s story about the extermination of the human race by animals, called THE ANIMAL MUTINY, and his artwork can be seen throughout Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT.

In SPOONS, after years of struggling with addiction, a father reunites with his son, and the two men realize that no matter how far you move from the present, you never live that far away from the past.

Richard Montoya / WATER & POWER
Richard Montoya is a founding member of Culture Clash, a performance trio that has been creating works for the national stage since 1984. WATER & POWER, which was presented in the 2006 season at the Center Theater Group/Mark Taper Forum, was an official submission for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Drama. CHAVEZ RAVINE, ZORRO IN HELL and WATER & POWER represent a trilogy of works committed to exploring the Chicano experience in Southern California. New works for the stage include PALESTINE/NEW MEXICO and 32 COFFINS; both plays explore narratives of the ongoing Iraqi civil war. Montoya is an actor and Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles.

WATER & POWER explores the Chicano experience in Los Angeles through the lives of twin brothers Gilbert and Gabriel Garcia, nicknamed Water and Power. Water the Senator, Power the Lieutenant – good cop and conscious politico. The brothers are locked in an end game where they must navigate the darker recesses of the city’s most powerful who operate in the shadows of a city known for its sunshine.

David Riker / THE GIRL
David Riker is a New York-based filmmaker currently living in Mexico. His debut feature, La Ciudad (The City), filmed over the course of five years in New York’s Latin American immigrant community, was inspired by the promise of a neo-realist cinema in America. The film screened at Sundance, and won a number of awards including the Open Palm from the Independent Feature Project. Riker is a recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the father of two young daughters, Leila and Maria.

In THE GIRL, a young mother from South Texas, embittered by the loss of her four-year-old son to the foster care system, is thrown into an unexpected and life-changing journey when her attempt to smuggle immigrants across the border goes terribly wrong.

The Annenberg Foundation
Established in 1989 by Walter H. Annenberg, the Annenberg Foundation provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally through its headquarters in Radnor, Pennsylvania and offices in Los Angeles, California. Its major program areas are education and youth development; arts, culture and humanities; civic and community; health and human services; and animal services and the environment. In addition, the Foundation operates a number of initiatives which expand and complement these program areas. The Annenberg Foundation exists to advance the public well-being through improved communication. As the principal means of achieving this goal, the Foundation encourages the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge.

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981 in the mountains of Sundance, Utah, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated year-round to the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work. Since its inception, the Institute has grown into an internationally recognized resource for thousands of independent artists through its Film Festival and artistic development programs for filmmakers, screenwriters, composers, writers, playwrights and theatre artists. The original values of independence, creative risk-taking, and discovery continue to define and guide the work of Sundance Institute, both with US artists and, increasingly, with artists from other regions of the world.

The programs of Sundance Institute include the annual Sundance Film Festival, held in Park City each January and considered the premier U.S. showcase for American and international independent film. The Institute supports nonfiction filmmakers through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program by providing year-round support through the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund and a series of programs that encourage the exploration of innovative nonfiction storytelling and promote the exhibition of documentary films to increasingly broader audiences. The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program is a year-round program dedicated to supporting artist development and the advancement of distinctive, singular independent projects. Each year 20-25 emerging filmmakers from the U.S. and abroad participate in the program which includes the Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs, ongoing creative and strategic advice, production and post-production resources , and financial support through fellowship opportunities. The Sundance Institute Theatre Program is committed to invigorating the national theatre movement with original and creative work and to nurturing the diversity of artistic expression among theatre artists. The Sundance Institute Film Music Program is dedicated to supporting the development of emerging film composers, as well as impacting the ways in which independent filmmakers approach music in their films. The Institute also maintains The Sundance Collection at UCLA, a unique archive of independent film.

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