Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
Christine Vachon is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector.
Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, a documentary series, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
R. J. Cutler is an American filmmaker, documentarian, television producer and theater director.
Black Gold is a 2006 documentary film that follows the efforts of an Ethiopian coffee union manager as he travels the world to obtain a better price for his workers' coffee beans. The film was directed and produced by Marc James Francis and Nick Francis from Speakit Films, and co-produced by Christopher Hird. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
This Is That Productions was one of the leading independent feature film production companies. Established in 2002, and based in New York City, the company was founded and fully owned by Ted Hope, Anne Carey, Anthony Bregman, and Diana Victor. The four partners previously worked together at the groundbreaking Good Machine, which Ted Hope co-founded in 1991.
Philip Kan Gotanda is an American playwright and filmmaker and a third generation Japanese American. Much of his work deals with Asian American issues and experiences.
Mark Randolph Osborne is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator. He is best known for directing the animated films Kung Fu Panda (2008) and The Little Prince (2015), the former of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also directed the stop-motion short film More (1998), which was nominated for Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Tamara Jenkins is an American filmmaker and occasional actress. She is best known for her feature films Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), The Savages (2007), and Private Life (2018).
Nanette Burstein is an American film and television director. Burstein has produced, directed, and co-directed several documentaries including the Academy Award nominated and Sundance Special Jury Prize winning film On the Ropes.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
David Kaplan is the writer/director of several films based on fairy tales and folklore, including the feature film Year of the Fish (2008), which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2008.
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers from all over the world. At the core of the programs is the goal to introduce audiences to the artists' new work, aided by the institute's labs, granting and mentorship programs that take place throughout the year in the United States and internationally.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Signe Baumane is a Latvian animator, artist, illustrator and writer, currently living and working in New York City. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she was a 2005 Fellow in Film of the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is also a teacher, having taught animation at the Pratt Institute from 2000 to 2002.
Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.
Braden King is a New York–based filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. His feature film, Here (2011), starring Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal, premiered at the 2011 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and was distributed theatrically by Strand Releasing in 2012. A multimedia installation version of the project, Here [ The Story Sleeps ], premiered at The Museum of Modern Art in 2010 and toured internationally with live soundtrack accompaniment by composer Michael Krassner and Boxhead Ensemble. King's previous work includes the feature film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks It's Back, the award-winning short film Home Movie and music videos for Glen Hansard, Sparklehorse, Sonic Youth, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Dirty Three.
Sterlin Harjo is an American Seminole filmmaker. He has directed three feature films, a documentary, and the FX comedy drama series Reservation Dogs, all of them set in his home state of Oklahoma and concerned primarily with Native American people and content.
Jennifer Phang is an American filmmaker, most known for her feature films Advantageous (2015) and Half-Life (2008). Advantageous premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, and was based on her award-winning short film of the same name. Half-Life premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won "Best Film" awards at a number of film festivals including the Gen Art Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as well an "Emerging Director Award" at the Asian American International Film Festival.
