Sundance Institute Announces Projects for 05 January Screenwriters Lab

Los Angeles, CA Sundance Institute announced today the 12 projects selected for the 2015 January Screenwriters Lab, an immersive, five-day writers workshop at the Sundance Resort in Utah taking place January 16 - 21. The Lab is one of the 24 residency programs the Institute hosts year-round, in addition to granting more than $2.5 million to independent artists each year.

Participating independent screenwriters drawn from around the world, including the United States, Latin America, Europe, China, and the Middle East will have the opportunity to work intensively on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers in an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking. The fellows will work with a distinguished group of Creative Advisors at the Lab, led by Artistic Director Scott Frank, and including Naomi Foner, Rodrigo Garcia, Michael Goldenberg, John Lee Hancock, Erik Jendresen, Kasi Lemmons, Walter Mosley, Marti Noxon, Howard Rodman, Susan Shilliday, Zach Sklar, Elena Soarez, Peter Straughan, Joan Tewkesbury, and Audrey Wells.

Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, said, Together with my colleague, Labs Director Ilyse McKimmie, we are honored to welcome our new group of fellows to the January Screenwriters Lab. They represent a broad spectrum of independent vision with stories that reflect our complex world with emotional truth and urgency. The Lab is the beginning of our year-round support for these filmmakers. We look forward to working with them throughout the life cycle of the project.

The projects and fellows selected for the 2015 January Screenwriters Lab are:

Archive (USA) / Jonathan Minard (Co-writer/Director) and Scott Rashap (Co-writer)

In the wake of a virtual affair lived entirely through email and gchat, two lovers face the intangibility and distance that characterized their relationship. A search for the physical traces of their connection prompts a journey to the data center which holds their intimate messages. This project is the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.

Jonathan Minards films examine our dreams of the near future through documentary and science fiction. He has directed a web series on the history of the internet called The Information Age, and created Clouds, an interactive movie presented in virtual reality which premiered as part of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, and was awarded Best Interactive Film at the Tribeca Film Festival. Minard has received support through research fellowships and commissions from Eyebeam, the Studio for Creative Inquiry, NASA Ames, and the US Fulbright Program in Mongolia. In 2009, he founded Deepspeed Media, a production company with a focus on science and technology.

Scott Rashap is a screenwriter and director of live action and animation. Since graduating from NYUs Tisch School of the Arts, he has written a series of historical and biographical films told through a nontraditional lens, including Toru, the story of a terminally ill baby who lives out his brief life in a simulation; Songs from a Room, a study of a dead mans identity based on the items found in his office; The Epic History of Everyday Things for the History Channel; and Past Perfect, an interactive documentary directed with Jonathan Minard, which invited participants to back up their memories to the Cloud.

Beach Rats (U.S.A.) / Eliza Hittman (Writer/Director)

On the dirty beaches of South Brooklyn, a teenagers misguided attempt to come out sparks an explosive hate crime.

Eliza Hittman is an award-winning filmmaker, born and based in Brooklyn. Her debut feature film It Felt Like Love premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in NEXT <=> and the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Tiger Competition in 2013. It was released in the US by Variance and was a New York Times, Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times Critics Pick. She was recently named one of Filmmaker Magazines 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Hittman was nominated for a Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Gotham Award (2014) and for two Independent Spirit Awards (2015).

Beretta (Qatar) / Sophia Al-Maria, (Writer/Director)

Barraged by daily harassment from men on the streets of Cairo, a mute young woman is finally pushed over the edge when she is attacked and raped by a stranger. Transforming from victim to vigilante, her feelings of powerlessness and rage echo the complex dynamics unfolding in the Arab world today.

Sophia Al-Maria is a Qatari-American artist and writer based in London. Her memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, was published in 2012 by Harper Collins and has been translated into Arabic. Her video work has been shown in galleries, biennales and museums all over the world from New Zealand to South Korea to the United Arab Emirates. She has been interviewed about her work on Gulf Futurism in Vice Magazine, Dazed and Confused and TANK.

Eggplant (China/Canada) / Yung Chang (Writer/Director)

A wedding photographer and his girlfriend drift across the country on the run from their pasts, when they encounter a young grifter who irrevocably changes the course of their lives. Eggplant follows three Chinese millennials who strive for a better, more meaningful existence in a society fixated on money, materialism and duty.

Yung Chang ( ), based between China and Canada, is known for his feature documentaries, Up the Yangtze (2008), China Heavyweight (2012), and The Fruit Hunters (2013). Both Up the Yangtze and China Heavyweight premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to garner numerous awards including two Taipei Golden Horse Awards. Up the Yangtze had one of the highest documentary box office releases in 2008 and China Heavyweight had a theatrical release in over two hundred mainland China cinemas a first for a social issue documentary. Eggplant is his fir

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