Question Bridge Selected to Take Part in First Sundance New Frontier Story Lab, 10/23-28

The New Frontier Story Lab has selected Question Bridge as part of the five project teams to attend. The lab will focus on supporting projects that have original stories and engage audiences in innovative ways, across multiple platforms. Organized as an immersive lab experience, activities will include individualized story sessions, conversations about key artistic, design and technology issues, and case study presentations. Drawing talent and expertise from all of Sundance Institute's creative programs, including Feature Film, Documentary Film, and the Sundance Film Festival, the Lab has been planned under the supervision of Michelle Satter, Director of The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.

"Over the past few years, new forms of storytelling have emerged and already proven the potential to engage audiences in creative and innovative ways," said Satter. "We created the New Frontier Story Lab to support visionary artists developing projects that will change the way we experience stories in the future. We are thrilled to include such an exciting group of projects in our inaugural Lab."

The New Frontier Story Lab builds on The Sundance Institute Lab model, which offers an intensive, residential retreat focused on creative support, as well as the New Frontier program at the Sundance Film Festival, which launched in 2007 to showcase work of this nature. Artists previously featured in the New Frontier program at the Festival include Pipilotti Rist, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, James Franco, Jennifer Steinkamp, Matthew Barney and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

"The New Frontier Story Lab is an exciting expansion of our work to a new and important field where we felt independent voices needed nurturing and resources," said Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute. "This new Lab is building upon the already-established legacy of the New Frontier program at the Sundance Film Festival, celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, which was an early supporter of work that extends beyond the big screen."

Creative Advisors for the New Frontier Story Lab include Susan Bonds (42 Entertainment), Nick Fortugno (Playmatics), David Gale (MTVX), Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Contact), Aaron Koblin (Google Data Arts Team), Richard LaGravenese (Water for Elephants, Oscar nominated for The Fisher King), Marti Noxon (Fright Night, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Takaaki Okada(Condition ONE), Laura Poitras (The Oath, Flag Wars), Wesley Strick (True Believer, Cape Fear), Noland Walker (Citizen King) and Lance Weiler (Pandemic, The WorkBook Project).

The Coca-Cola Company and their long-time agency partner McCann will support Sundance Institute as the inaugural underwriter of the New Frontier Story Lab. Coca-Cola and McCann have long understood the value of story and how new technologies are vital to creating and sharing these stories. Through the collaboration, Coca-Cola and McCann will explore developing content using the same principles that drive the New Frontier initiative.

The New Frontier Story Lab is also generously supported by MTVX:

The artist teams and projects selected for the New Frontier Story Lab are:

Question Bridge: Black Males
Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayete Ross Smith, Kamal Sinclair , Innovent (Elise Baugh and Antonio Kaplan)
U.S.A.
18 days in Egypt
Jigar Mehta & Yasmin Elayat
Egypt / U.S.A.
Kill Shakespeare
Anthony Del Col & Conor McCreery
Canada
Follow Back
Brigitte Dale & Robbie Wilkins
U.S.A.
The Last Hijack
Tommy Pallotta & Femke Wolting
Netherlands
Rome
Chris Milk
U.S.A.

About the Question Bridge Collaborators

· Chris Johnson (creator/co-director) originated the Question Bridge concept with a 1996 video installation he created for the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Malcolm X library in San Diego, CA. His photographic artwork has been published and exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, the Oakland Museum and numerous galleries and is represented in collections including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson Arizona and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1994, he co-produced and directed The Roof is on Fire with Suzanne Lacy, which was broadcast on KRON-TV. Chris Johnson has served as President of SF Camerawork Gallery, Chair of the Cultural Affairs Commission for the City of Oakland under Jerry Brown and Director of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography. Additionally, he authored The Practical Zone System: for Film and Digital Photography; currently in its 5th edition. Currently, he is a full Professor of Photography at the California College of the Arts where for ten years he served as President of the Faculty Senate. He is also the Media Wall Project Manager and Public Art Management Team member for Oakland Museum/Port of Oakland.

· Hank Willis Thomas (co-director) completed many successful digital media works, including video exhibitions: "Winter in America," "Progeny," and "Along the Way" (which exhibited at the Oakland International Airport, Sundance Film Festival's New Frontiers on Main gallery and Pangaea Day the world film festival). He is the winner of the Aperture West Book Prize for Pitch Blackness. His work was featured in the Rubell Family Collection, the Studio Museum in Harlem; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Wadsworth Atheneum; Oakland Museum of California; the Smithsonian; National Museum of American History; the High Museum of Art, among others. He received a B.F.A. in Photography/ Africana Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts; and his M.F.A./M.A. in photography/visual criticism at the California College of the Arts. Thomas received the Renew Media Arts Fellowship (Rockefeller Foundation) and a W.E.B DuBois Institute fellowship at Harvard University.

· Bayete Ross Smith (producer) began as a photojournalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charlotte Observer and Newsday. He received a B.S. in Photojournalism from Florida A&M University and an M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts. Bayeté's exhibited at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the Goethe Institute (Ghana), the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland), the Leica Gallery and Rush Arts Gallery (NYC), the SF Arts Commission's "Art at City Hall" and the Oakland Museum of California. His work has been published in Posing Beauty, SPE Exposure, the Society of Photographic Education Journal, Black: A Celebration of A Culture, 25 Under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers, The Spirit Of Family (Al & Tipper Gore), Black Enterprise, Working Mother, Village Voice, and more. He worked as a fellow and artists-in-residence at the Kala Institute, Can Serrat International Art Center (Spain), McColl Center for Visual Art and Southern Exposure.

· Kamal Sinclair (producer) was a six-year cast member of STOMP, and she is the founder of Universal Arts and director of The Beat and Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She directed the 2003/2004 Oneness Awards at Universal Studios (awarding Edward James Olmos, Michael Jackson, Ed Begley Jr., Jim Hensen Muppet Company); multiple National Black Arts Festival fundraising galas (honoring Dr. Cornel West, Big Boi, Samuel Jackson, Lynn Whitfield & Jasmine Guy); multiple Woodruff Arts Center events (honoring Ambassador Andrew Young, Wynton Marsalis, Andre 3000, Jamie Foxx and Ludacris. She served on the board of Fractured Atlas and Children's Theatre Company NYC; and currently serves on the boards of Atlanta Celebrates Photography and as an Alvin Ailey Ambassador. She is the Principal Consultant for Strategic Arts (clientele: High Museum of Art, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, ALLIANCE THEATRE, Young Audiences and SCAD). She graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (BFA) and GSU's Robinson College of Business (MBA).

· Innovent (Antonio Kaplan & Elise Baugh) - Question Bridge has forged a strategic partnership with Innovent to facilitate and develop the transmedia production strategy. This alliance will drive the envisioned website, mobile application, museum patron interaction strategy, and community "HotSpots," Strategies have been designed to engage the target community by extending the narrative to various platforms. Innovent was founded to affect socio-cultural change by using technological innovation that extends traditional storytelling delivery. Last year, Innovent founders, Antonio Kaplan and Elise Baugh, joined Lance Weiler in bringing a complex transmedia story-world experience to Sundance 2011, by developing 'Pandemic 1.0. Innovent's 'Mechanic' and 'Muse' divisions provide unique market innoventions designed to suit each projects narrative. Innovent's toolset provides audience engagement opportunities via multiple points of entry, such as mobile, online, experiential and emerging media to communicating the story to audience members. Innovent's transmedia storytelling toolbox allows audiences to interact with the project in a medium that's familiar and meaningful.

About The Sundance Institute

Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program - The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program provides year-round support to nonfiction filmmakers worldwide. The program advances innovative nonfiction storytelling about a broad range of contemporary social issues, and promotes the exhibition of documentary films to audiences. Through the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Documentary Edit and Story Laboratory, Composers + Documentary Laboratory, Creative Producing Lab, as well as the Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and a variety of partnerships and international initiatives, the program provides a unique, global resource for contemporary independent documentary film.www.sundance.org/documentary

Sundance Institute - is a global nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazzaand Angels in America, and through its New Frontier initiative, has brought the cinematic works of media artists including Pipilotti Rist, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Twitter andYouTube.

 

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