2011 Sundance Film Festival Announces Jury Members
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For Immediate Release Media Contacts: January 17, 2011 Amy McGee (310) 360-1981 [email protected] 2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES JURY MEMBERS Sundance Alum Tim Blake Nelson to Host 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on January 29 Susanne Bier, Jeffrey Blitz, America Ferrera, Matt Groening, Clark Gregg, Bong Joon-Ho, Jose Padilha, Kim Peirce, Jason Reitman, and Lucy Walker Among This Year’s Jurors Park City, UT— Sundance Institute today announced members of five juries awarding prizes at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival which runs January 20-30, 2011. The juries are comprised of 23 individuals spanning the global arts community. Juror photos and extended biographies, in addition to the complete Festival lineup and schedule, are available at www.sundance.org/festival. All awards will be announced the evening of January 29 at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony. The Short Film Awards will also be named earlier at a ceremony on Tuesday, January 25 at Park City’s Jupiter Bowl. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards will be hosted by Tim Blake Nelson at the Basin Recreation Field House in Park City, Utah. Nelson has appeared in more than thirty films including The Incredible Hulk, Meet the Fockers, Syriana, The Good Girl, Minority Report, The Thin Red Line, and O Brother Where Art Thou? Nelson has a long history with Sundance Institute as both a Fellow and an Advisor at the Feature Film Program’s Directors and Screenwriting Labs. He made his directorial debut at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival with Eye of God, and has attended the Festival multiple times as a director, actor and panelist. U.S. DOCUMENTARY JURY Jeffrey Blitz Jeffrey's film career started in 2002 with the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary Spellbound. His fiction feature debut, Rocket Science, became his first to play the festival (Sundance, 2007; Dramatic Directing Award). He has also directed the documentary Lucky (Sundance, 2010) and multiple episodes of NBC's "The Office." In 2009, he won the Emmy for comedy directing. Matt Groening Matt Groening created the longest-running comedy in television history…The Simpsons. As a cartoonist, Groening began his “Life in Hell” weekly comic strip series in the 1980’s which continues to this day in newspapers nationwide. Laura Poitras Laura Poitras is working on a trilogy of films about America post 9/11. The first film, My Country, My Country , was nominated for an Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award, and Emmy Award. The second film, The Oath, received the Cinematography award at Sundance, the Grand Jury Award at Edinburgh, Special Jury prizes at Hot Docs and Full Frame, the True Vision Award at True/False, and the -more- 2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES JURY January 10, 2011 Page 2 of 9 Gotham Award for Best Documentary. She has attended the Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Lab as both a fellow and creative advisor. Jess Search Jess Search is the Chief Executive of the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation which has given funding and support to over 60 British documentaries including Sundance films Afghan Star, The End of the Line, The Yes Men Fix the World, How Is Your Fish Today and Black Gold. Jess moderates The Good Pitch, a partnership with the Sundance Institute which connects filmmakers with NGOs, foundations and brands. Sloane Klevin Editor Sloane Klevin won an Emmy for her work on the feature documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The film also won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Her latest project is Freakonomics, for which she edited segments for Alex Gibney, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. U.S. DRAMATIC JURY America Ferrera America Ferrera made her Sundance Film Festival debut in 2002 with Real Women Have Curves, which earned her a Special Jury Prize for Acting. Since then, she has starred in the Festival films How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, Steel City, La Misma Luna, and The Dry Land (also an Executive Producer). America is well-known for her Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG Award winning role as Betty Suarez in the hit television series Ugly Betty. She has starred in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 1 & 2, Our Family Wedding, and voiced Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon. She currently serves as an Artist Ambassador for the global humanitarian organization Save the Children, most recently helping to build an elementary school in Diassadeni, Mali. She is also a member of the 2011 Sundance Institute Alumni Advisory Board. Todd McCarthy Todd McCarthy is chief film critic for The Hollywood Reporter and for many years held the same position at Variety. He has made several documentary films, including the award-winning Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematographyand won an Emmy for writing Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer" He is currently a member of the selection committee of the New York Film Festival. Tim Orr A native of North Carolina, Tim Orr studied cinematography at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for David Gordon Green’s first feature George Washington, and has directed photography on all of Green’s films, including Sundance Award winner All the Real Girls; as well as Undertow; Snow Angels, Pineapple Express and the upcoming Your Highness. Orr also served as director of photography on Mike White’s, Year of the Dog; Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas, and Mark Milgard’s Dandelion for which Orr was again nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Kimberly Peirce Kimberly Peirce staked her place as a director of singular vision and craft with her unflinching debut feature, Boys Don’t Cry, which she developed at the Sundance Institute Feature Film lab and went on to earn numerous honors including the Best Actress Oscar for the film's star, Hilary Swank, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Awards for Chloe Sevigny, and National Board of Review and Boston Film Critics Directing Awards for Peirce. Peirce’s most recent film, Stop-Loss, is a topical and emotionally penetrating drama inspired by real-life stories of American soldiers, including her own brother, fighting in Iraq and coming home. Jason Reitman Jason Reitman made his directorial debut with the short film Operation at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. He has directed three other films that have screened at the Festival including the short films In God We Trust and Gulp, and the feature film Thank You for Smoking. Jason has received four Academy -more- 2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES JURY January 10, 2011 Page 3 of 9 Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director for the films Juno (2007), and Up in the Air (2009). He was also a member of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2008 Short Film Jury. Jason is currently in post production on his latest directorial endeavor Young Adult. He is also a member of the 2011 Sundance Institute Alumni Advisory Board. WORLD DOCUMENTARY JURY Jose Padilha José Padilha, is a Brazilian producer, writer and director. He directed and produced the documentaries BUS 174, Garapa and Secrets of the Tribe, as well as the feature film Elite Squad, for which he won the Berlin Golden Bear. Mette Hoffmann Meyer Mette Hoffmann Meyer is head of documentaries and co-productions for Danish DR TV. Mette has commissioned and supported great award-winning films over the years from Burma VJ, The Red Chapel' The Devil came on Horseback, Taxi to the Dark Side to Please Vote for Me. Lucy Walker Lucy Walker has directed four award-winning feature documentaries: Devil’s Playground about Amish teenagers (premiered Sundance 2002); Blindsight about blind Tibetan teenagers climbing Everest (2006); Countdown to Zero about nuclear weapons, and Wasteland which won Audience Awards at Sundance and Berlin and the IDA’s Best Documentary Award. WORLD DRAMATIC JURY Susanne Bier Bier’s Oscar-nominated After the Wedding (2006) and the US-produced Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), were both hits at the domestic box office. Her latest film In a Better World (2010) is the Danish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. Bong Joon-Ho Bong Joon-Ho is an award-winning writer-director born in South Korea. He graduated from the Korean Academy of Film Art. Film credits include Barking Dogs Never Bite; Memories of Murder; The Host ,and Mother. Rajendra Roy Roy joined the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art as Chief Curator in July 2007, leading the museum’s film collection, preservation and exhibition efforts. In 2009, he organized the first museum retrospective of the films of Mike Nichols, and same year co-organized the exhibition “Tim Burton” which will tour internationally through 2012. He is also a member of the selection committee for New Directors/New Films, presented annually with the Film Society of Lincoln Center. ALFRED P. SLOAN JURY Jon Amiel Jon Amiel is an English film director who has worked in film and television in both the UK and the US. After studies in English literature, Amiel graduated from Cambridge University and ran the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company, which often toured the USA. He worked as a story editor at BBC before directing the critically-acclaimed TV series The Singing Detective. He has directed for TV and film, and is currently in production on his latest feature film. -more- 2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES JURY January 10, 2011 Page 4 of 9 Paula Apsel Paula S. Apsel is a Senior Executive Producer, NOVA, and Director of the WGBH Science Unit. Today, NOVA is the most popular science series on American television and on the Web.