The Morning Feed: Get Ready for Sundance London!

Sundance Film Festival regulars who complained (regularly) about the overall chaos and hassles of squeezing into intimate Park City, Utah every January celebrated the news of a London edition of the independent film fest. Sundance founder Robert Redford told London’s Guardian that Sundance London would launch April 2012 at the 02 as a four-day event with an emphasis on American independent film and independent music.

“Time will tell how it works but we’re coming in very small,” Redford said. ‘I’ve wanted to come to London for a long time and it was a question of how and when. It could only happen if there was someone who wanted us.”

Artists and attendees took a break from screenings, panels and parties at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas to gather at the Vimeo Theater inside Austin’s Convention Center and celebrate the award winners. Natural Selection; writer/director Robert Pickering’s drama about an infertile Texas housewife in search of her dying husband’s illegitimate son; won the audience award and grand jury prize for best narrative film. Pickering and his crew also won prizes for best editing, best screenplay and best score. Leads Rachael Harris and Matt O’Leary won breakthrough performance prizes.

Tristan Patterson’s skateboarder doc Dragonslayer won the grand jury prize in the documentary category. Vikram Gandhi’s Kumaré (documentary), Jeff Myers and Jack Sanderson’s Becoming Santa (Spotlight Premiere) and Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (Emerging Visions) also won audience awards in their specific categories.

The 2011 SXSW Film Festival continues through Saturday.

Drew Barrymore stepped behind the camera as a director for the first time on her 2009 roller-girls drama Whip It and she recently announced her sophomore directing gig How to Be Single.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barrymore re-teamed with He’s Just Not Into You scribes Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn (Barrymore produced the film) as well as her Flower Films partner Nancy Juvonen.

Barrymore did not say whether she would also play a role in the movie, based on Liz Tuccillo’s 2008 novel about a group of New Yorkers falling in and out of love over a period of ten years.

Barrymore next appears on-screen as a Greenpeace volunteer working to save trapped whales in director Ken KwapisEverybody Loves Whales.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

CommentLuv badge