2014 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour Showcasing a wide variety of story and style, the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour is a 94- minute theatrical program of eight short films from the 2014 edition of the January Festival, which over the course of its 30-year history has been widely considered the premier showcase for short films and the launchpad for careers of many now-prominent independent filmmakers. With both fiction and documentary, the diverse 2014 program ranges from beautiful insight and the struggle to understand the meaning of life to a hilarious, all-too familiar government deposition. Afronauts Written and directed by Frances Bodomo. USA, 12 minutes. It's July 16, 1969: America is preparing to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of kilometers away, a group of Zambian exiles are trying to beat America to the moon. The Cut Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction Written and directed by Geneviève Dulude-Decelles. Canada, 15 minutes. The Cut tells the story of a father and a daughter, whose relationship fluctuates between proximity and detachment, at the moment of a haircut. Dawn Directed by Rose McGowan, Written by M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller. USA, 17 minutes. Dawn is a quiet young teenager who longs for something or someone to free her from her sheltered life. I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked Short Film Jury Award: Non-fiction Directed by Yuval Hameiri, Co-Director: Michal Vaknin. Israel, 9 minutes. A man with poor means recreates a lost memory of the last day with his mom. Objects come to life in a desperate struggle to produce a single moment that is gone. I'm a Mitzvah Directed by Ben Berman, Written by Ben Berman, Josh Cohen. USA, 19 minutes. A young American man spends one last night with his deceased friend while stranded in rural Mexico. Love. Love. Love. Short Film Special Jury Award: Non-fiction Directed by Sandhya Daisy Sundaram. Russia, 12 minutes. Every year, through the endless winters, her love takes new shapes and forms. MeTube: August Sings Carmen “Habanera” Written and directed by Daniel Moshel. Austria, 5 minutes. George Bizet`s "Habanera" from Carmen has been reinterpreted and enhanced with electronic sounds for MeTube, a homage to thousands of ambitious YouTube users and video bloggers, and gifted and less gifted self-promoters on the Internet. Verbatim Directed by Brett Weiner, Screenwriter: Court Document. USA, 7 minutes. A jaded lawyer wastes an afternoon trying to figure out if a dim-witted government employee has ever used a photocopier. All the dialogue in this short comes from an actual deposition filed with the Supreme Court of Ohio. Full program = 94 minutes www.sundance.org/shortfilmtour DIRECTOR BIOS AFRONAUTS than 20 festivals, including Telluride and SXSW. She is currently traveling with her second short film, AFRONAUTS, which is making its world premiere at this year's Festival, and developing a feature version. THE CUT: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles studied for an MA in film and moving images at the Université du Québec à Montrél. She paused for a trip around the world, armed with her camera, and made documentaries for Jacques Antoine's television game show La course autour du monde, broadcast on Canal Évasion. Upon her return, Dulude-De Celles wrote and directed the short film THE CUT. DAWN: Rose McGowan was born in Italy and raised on a steady diet of pasta, European cinema, and classic films. Along with her cinephile father, she became an amateur film historian, later hosting a show on a classic movie channel. Seeing Lawrence of Arabia restored on 70mm was the high point of her 14th year. Realizing that her passion lies in filmmaking has been a transformative experience for McGowan. DAWN is her directorial debut. I THINK THIS IS THE CLOSEST TO HOW THE FOOTAGE LOOKED: Yuval Hameiri is a cinema director, theatre artist, and actor who was born in 1987 in Haifa, Israel. He graduated from the theatre department at the WIZO Haifa Academy of Design and Education and studied in the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. Hameiri is a member of Tarbut, a social movement of artists and educators in the community. I THINK THIS IS THE CLOSEST TO HOW THE FOOTAGE LOOKED is his first film. Co-Director Michal Vaknin is a director, actress, and puppeteer who was born in 1987 in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the cofounder and a member of Puppet Cinema, a group based in Tel Aviv and New York that combines puppetry, film, and theatre. The group's signature work is video filmed and projected live onstage. Vaknin created The Opposite of Alive, which was performed at the Natural History Museum in Jerusalem, and Dum Dum Baby—Puppet Theatre for Grownups and Naughty Children, which played at the International Festival of Puppet Theater, Jerusalem, and the RS & PS: Richard Schechner and Performance Studies, an international conference honoring Richard Schechner on his 76th birthday in Haifa. I'M A MITZVAH: Ben Berman is a writer/director working primarily in the comedy television world. He has worked closely with Tim & Eric, Jon Benjamin, Zach Galifianakis, Scott Aukerman, and Will Oldham. Berman started as an editor for the Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and went on to direct the pilots and series for Jon Benjamin Has a Van on Comedy Central and Comedy Bang! Bang! for the IFC television network. I'M A MITZVAH is his first venture into more sincere and serious drama. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.: Sandhya Daisy Sundaram is a final-year postgraduate student in film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India and a graduate in visual communication from the University of Madras. Women have been the constant focal point of her work. She is presently experimenting with the synthesis of fiction and nonfiction. Besides filmmaking, traveling and exploring are high on her agenda. DIRECTOR BIOS continued METUBE: AUGUST SINGS CARMEN "HABANERA": Daniel Moshel was born in 1976 in Offenbach am Main, Germany. During his multimedia studies, he directed the short film komA. In 2003, he founded the production company Moshel Film. In 2009, he produced the short film Der Doppelgänger, which was directed by Stephanie Winter. The film won the Excellence Award at the Busan International Short Film Festival. Login 2 Life (2011) was his first feature-length documentary. METUBE: AUGUST SINGS CARMEN "HABANERA" is his first music video. VERBATIM: Brett Weiner is a writer/director based in Los Angeles. He has directed sketches for Awesomeness TV on Nickelodeon and recently produced a pilot for NickMom.com that he co-wrote with his sketch group Back of the Class. Weiner directed the first season of the Web series Oishi High School Battle, which has had more than 16 million views online. He also co-created The Screen Junkies Show and the Honest Trailer series, which have had more than 100 million views on YouTube. ABOUT The Sundance Film Festival shorts program Each year the Sundance Film Festival has over 8,000 short films submitted and selects between 60-80 to show in the Festival. Choosing a 90-minute selection from the Festival program, the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour travels across the US to art house theaters. A staple of the Festival since its start, a wide variety of emerging talent got their start in the short film format, including filmmakers Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sophie Barthes, David O. Russell, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Tamara Jenkins, Jamie Babbit, Tim Blake Nelson, Alexander Payne, Andrea Arnold, Jason Reitman, and many others. The 2013 program played in 54 cities and 28 states in 2013 and early 2014, which amounts to a strong list of some of the best local art houses across the US today. A part of the box office proceeds is split among the filmmakers. In the 2014 Festival, five directors in the US Dramatic Feature Competition were previously in the short film program at Sundance: Fishing Without Nets – directed by Cutter Hodierne, who won the Short Film Jury Prize in 2012 with his short version of the story. Hellion – directed by Kat Candler, based on her short film of the same name from Sundance 2012. Jamie Marks Is Dead – directed by Carter Smith, who won the Short Film Jury Prize in 2006 with his short Bugcrush. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter – directed by David Zellner, who had six shorts at Sundance made by himself and his brother Nathan. Whiplash – directed by Damian Chazelle, who won the Short Film Jury Award for US Fiction in 2013 with his short version of the story. Fueled by artistic expression and limited only by their runtime, short films transcend traditional storytelling. They are a significant and popular way artists can connect with audiences. From documentary to animation, narrative to experimental, the abbreviated form is no longer just for the novice. Shorts have and will continue to be an important part of cinema, storytelling, and culture. The Sundance Film Festival has always been proud to treat short films with the highest regard and to give a home to new (and old) projects for audiences to discover and celebrate. .