Sundance Institute Celebrates New Frontier 0 Anniversary at 06 Festival

Park City, UT - A revolution a decade in the making, Sundance Institute celebrates the 10th Anniversary of its New Frontier program with an exhibition of new work at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, including immersive cinematic works, virtual reality installations, an extensive lineup of documentary and narrative mobile VR experiences and an inside look at the innovations being developed at some of world's leading media research labs. 10th Anniversary exhibitions will also be presented with MoMA in New York City in April, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as part of Northern Spark in June.

(L-R) #100humans, Credit: 8i; theBlu: Encounter, Credit: Wevr; Queen Rose Family (da Stories), Credit: Kalup Linzy Studio.

The 2016 edition of New Frontier at the Festival includes three feature films and a live performance, as well as 30 VR experiences and eleven installations in the more than 10,000-square-foot exhibition, taking place at multiple venues: Park City's historic Claim Jumper, The Gateway, a large-scale installation on Swede Alley by Chris Milk and a performance by Gingger Shankar at Festival Base Camp Presented by Canada Goose. In addition to a physical exhibition at the Festival, audiences everywhere will be able to experience more than 20 virtual reality pieces on mobile VR headsets. This year's Festival will also include a program of New Frontier short films to be announced at a later date.

Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute, said, For me, New Frontier has always embraced risk and innovation in a way that reflects the heart of Sundance and the ever-evolving nature of film. It champions films, artists and installations that use new media technology to expand, experiment and explode traditional storytelling. Independent artists continue to fuel the broader community with artistic innovation, bold thinking and groundbreaking narratives that can change the art of film forever.

Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, The 10th anniversary of our New Frontier program offers an opportunity for us to reflect on the growth and celebrate the excitement of the field in this time. Sundance's New Frontier program has grown over the last decade to support groundbreaking artists with grants, the New Frontier Story Lab, regional workshops and a new virtual reality-focused residency. Our artists have evolved as quickly as the technology, and the program continues to produce work way ahead of its time.

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer and Chief Curator, New Frontier, said, This year's program provides a sensory experience that powerfully transports audiences to uncommon places and ways of being, offering an opportunity to become viscerally aware of the vital connections between our brains, bodies and biosphere. The future of storytelling affords us the ability to observe ourselves and our instincts and become more conscious of the way we make choices and decisions.

Since its inception, the New Frontier program has showcased and advanced the work of artists and technologists working together to push the boundaries of storytelling, which have included Doug Aitken, Jennifer Steinkamp, Aaron Koblin, Pipilotti Rist, James Franco, Nonny de la Pe a and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The 10 New Frontier exhibitions since 2007 chronicle new media growth and advancements, including the progression of story-based, virtual reality-enabled experiences, which are viewed by many as the next big thing in film and entertainment. The VR headset first showcased in New Frontier at the 2012 Festival with Nonny de la Pe as Hunger in Los Angeles morphed months later into the Oculus Rift prototype.

In addition to curating and showcasing work at the Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier activities extend year round. The Institute hosts an annual New Frontier Story Lab for artists to develop new work. In cities across the United States, artists can participate in New Frontier Day Labs to seed their creative practice while learning from alumni and adviser projects. Additionally, the New Frontier Residency Program collaborates with partners to date including MIT Media Labs Social Computing Group and Jaunt Studios, which provide state-of-the-art tools, training and resources to independent artists innovating new data-visualization and virtual reality story experiences.

The Slithering Screens exhibition at MoMA in April will showcase landmark cinematic works that hack the theater space drawn from the past 10 New Frontier exhibitions and is curated by Shari Frilot and Rajendra Roy, Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, Museum of Modern Art. In June New Frontier will host a VR-focused celebration with Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Northern Spark. Individual works to be featured will be announced this winter.

These activities will be further complemented by two commissioned immersive journalism experiments from a program designed to enable independent journalists to explore VR as a way of communicating crucial stories. The project is supported by Sundance Institute with a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

In addition to the New Frontier program announced today, films in the U.S. and World Competitions, NEXT and Midnight sections have been announced and are listed at sundance.org/festival.

FILMS AND PERFORMANCE

Cameraperson / U.S.A. (Director: Kirsten Johnson) - By exposing her role behind the camera, Johnson reaches into the vast trove of footage that she has shot over decades around the world. What emerges is a visually bold memoir and a revelatory interrogation into the power of the camera. World Premiere

The Illinois Parables / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Deborah Stratman) - This suite of Midwestern parables about faith, force, technology, and exodus questions the role belief

LINK:	http://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/new-frontier-projects-and-films-ann...
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