Sundance has announced the 12 independent artists who will be awarded the 2016 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowships and seven of them (58 percent) are women.
As a release details, this year’s bunch marks the 10th anniversary of the grants that aim to “discover and support independent artists from diverse backgrounds in getting their work made and seen. The program includes support for Fellows working in new media, documentary and narrative film, theatre and film music as well as from the Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program.”
“Over the past 10 years, our program with the Time Warner Foundation has supported an exceptionally talented, gifted and diverse group of artists,” said Keri Putnam, the Executive Director of Sundance Institute. “We look forward to working with this year’s class of Time Warner Fellows as they develop their craft and make a lasting impact in both their field and the artistic community as a whole.”
“We are very proud of our groundbreaking partnership with the Sundance Institute,” said Lisa Garcia Quiroz, President, Time Warner Foundation. “Together, we are ensuring that the next generation of talented storytellers resonates deeply with our diverse global audiences, and in doing so we have redefined storytelling.”
The female 2016 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellows are listed below, with bios courtesy of Sundance.
Frances Bodomo (Feature Film Program) — Ghanian writer/director Frances Bodomo grew up in Ghana, Norway and Hong Kong, before moving to New York City to study film at Columbia University (B.A.) and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (M.F.A.). Her short films “Boneshaker” and “Afronauts” both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to play various festivals including the Berlinale, Telluride and New Directors/New Films. She recently directed the short segment “Everybody Dies!” for the omnibus feature “Collective:Unconscious,” which premiered at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival. Bodomo is also a Sundance Institute | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.
Adrienne Maree Brown (New Frontier Program) — Adrienne Maree Brown is the co-editor of “Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements;” a writer, pleasure activist, healer and doula living in Detroit. She has been awarded two Knight Arts Challenge Awards, the 2013 Kresge Award, and was a participant in Clarion’s 2015 Sci Fi Short Story Writing Workshop and the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop at Voices of Our Nation in 2014.
Kirsten Childs (Theatre Program) — Kirsten Childs is the writer of “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin,” “Miracle Brothers,” “Fly”(with Rajiv Joseph and Bill Sherman), “Funked Up Fairy Tales,” and “Bella: An American Tall Tale.” Kirsten’s awards include Obie, Kleban, Larson, Richard Rodgers, Audelco and Gilman/Gonzalez-Falla awards. Nominations include Lortel and Drama Desk. Kirsten has written for Disney Theatricals, the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center, the New Electric Company, City Center Encores!, Works and Process @ Guggenheim Museum, and Premieres/Inner Voices.
Amie Doherty (Film Music Program) — Originally from Ireland and now based in Los Angeles, Amie Doherty works as a composer and orchestrator on a wide variety of film and television projects. Her most recent credits include drama-thriller “Feast Of Varanasi” (composer), HBO’s “The Night Of” and FX/Marvel’s “Legion” (orchestrator), Freeform’s “Shadowhunters,” and CBS’ “Extant” (additional music). Amie holds a master’s degree in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games from Berklee College of Music.
Holly Nordlum (Native American and Indigenous Program, Time Warner Foundation Native Producer Fellow) — Holly Nordlum is an Iñupiaq visual artist and filmmaker from the village of Kotzebue, a small hub of 11 other Alaska Native villages. She received a bachelor of fine art degree in Graphic Design and Photography from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Holly has received the Rasmuson Individual Artist Award and was also named to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Artist Leadership Program. Over the years, she has also taught Native students art through many programs and was recently awarded an Anchorage Museum Polar Lab Project which will focus on the revitalization of traditional Inuit tattooing techniques.
Annie Silverstein (Feature Film Program) — Annie Silverstein is an award-winning filmmaker and youth worker based in Austin, Texas. Her fiction and documentary films have screened at international festivals including Cannes, SXSW, Silverdocs, and on PBS Independent Lens. Most recently she wrote and directed “Skunk,”which won the jury award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival–Cinéfondation. Silverstein is a recipient of the San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for developing her first fiction feature.
Rose Troche (New Frontier Program) — Rose Troche is an award winning writer, director, and producer of film, television and new media. Her work includes: “Go Fish,” “The Safety of Objects,” “The L Word,” “Concussion Perspective — Chapter 1,” “The Partyand Chapter 2,” “The Misdemeanor,” and “Sugar.” The Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellowship Program Grant will support her VR series “LGBTQIA.” She is working on an additional VR project, as well as her fourth feature film, “This Is Not Me,” to be released in 2017.
