Author Archives: Jill Adler

WarnerMedia Lounge at Sundance

WarnerMedia Lodge: Elevating Storytelling with AT&T programming includes:

  • Variety Studio presented by AT&T – January 24-27: WarnerMedia together with AT&T will host Variety Studio, featuring interviews and portraits with the festival’s top A-list actors and filmmakers.
  • Jon & Vinny’s Pop Up – January 24-27: AT&T and WarnerMedia will partner with Jon & Vinny’s Italian Restaurant for a pop-up culinary experience from the famed Los Angeles restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo.

Adjacent to the main space is Lateral, a new chic, underground hotspot hosted by WarnerMedia featuring panel discussions, receptions, live entertainment and late-night programming. Activations at Lateral, located at 600 Main St., include:

  • TNT Presents Snowpiercer Featuring Sneak Peek Footage and a Conversation with Stars – January 25: A panel with Daveed Diggs, Lena Hall, and Showrunner Graeme Manson, moderated by JD Heyman (Editor-in-Chief, Entertainment Weekly).
  • TBS Presents Miracle Workers: Dark Ages Screening & Panel with Cast and Creators – January 25: Screening followed by a panel with Steve Buscemi, Geraldine Viswanathan, Karan Soni and the show’s creator Simon Rich, moderated by Rachel Handler (Vulture). 
  • Career Conversations hosted by WarnerMedia’s Talent Acquisition Diversity Outreach – January 25: As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion, WarnerMedia invites festival participants to stop by the lounge to view content, better understand our work culture and discuss current or future professional aspirations. View https://www.warnermediagroup.com/careers for a list of potential opportunities.
  • “The Impact of Innovation on Today’s Connected Consumer” Panel – January 25: from 5-7pm at LATERAL. Cross-industry leaders in content, technology and innovation will detail the ever-growing demand to connect on multiple platforms and devices, and how companies of any size can scale innovation efforts while measuring success, sentiment and smiles, during an era of ongoing change. Moderated by Jesse Redniss (EVP Data Strategy, WarnerMedia & GM, WarnerMedia Innovation Lab), panelists will include Tony Driscoll (SVP, Emerging Technology & Innovation Strategy at Warner Bros.), Jacee Scoular (Director, Brand Marketing Strategy at Hollister Co.) and Sarah Vick (Executive Producer, Intel Studios).
  • Particular Crowd Celebrates Latin America at Sundance Lunch – January 26: A few days after its official launch at NATPE, Particular Crowd, Turner Latin America’s film division, will participate for the first time at Sundance with a lunch to celebrate Latin America. This is following the premiere of one of its movies POSSESSOR the night before.
  • HBO Presents Welcome to Chechnya – A Conversation with Filmmaker David France and Film Subjects – January 27: In the present-day Russian republic of Chechnya, gay and transgender citizens are targeted as part of a deadly “cleansing” campaign. This searing documentary shadows a group of brave LGBTQ activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing persecution, working undercover to rescue the victims of this aggression. HBO will host a panel with Filmmaker David France, Alphonso David, President of the Human Rights Campaign, subjects featured in the film and moderated by Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change.

 

Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier Installations

Biodigital Theatre

All Kinds of Limbo
The National Theatre of Great Britain’s communal musical journey reflecting the influence of West Indian culture on the UK’s music scene across the genres of reggae, grime, classical, and calypso. Immersive technologies, the ceremony of live performance, and the craft of theatrical staging bring audiences into a VR performance space.

Anti-Gone
In a post-climate-change world, environmental catastrophe has become normalized. Cities are sunken, yet the vestiges of late-capitalist culture live on, clinging like barnacles to the ruins of civilization. Spyda and Lynxa are a couple navigating this world, gliding frictionlessly from shopping to movies to psychedelic drugs.

Atomu
Go inside the cyclical center of a Kikuyu tribal myth from Kenya, where man may become woman and woman may become man. Through virtual reality, dance, and music, a sacred space is created to explore many versions of yourself.

BLKNWS

Tickets are required; eWaitlist access is also available.

Kahlil Joseph’s mesmerizing news-creation machine is a soulful and rousing intervention into the current epidemic news addiction powered by the “news-industrial complex.” Rejuvenating what news can be, BLKNWS combines appropriated news and social media with originally produced anchored segments to create a continuously updated broadcast that is as much a news service as it is a portal to an elevated state of awareness. “A fugitive newscast,” BLKNWS is only accessible at specific terrestrial sites.

Ongoing broadcast installations can be seen at Filmmaker Lodge and the Festival Co-op.

New Frontier In The Wild

All the world’s a stage! Find these works woven into the digital landscape of the Festival campus.

Dance Trail
A dance piece in augmented reality enabling users to invite virtual dancers into our world. Site-specific and mobile, the app allows audiences to see dance sequences outdoors and indoors during the Festival. Users can place dancers anywhere in the world and share snapshots and videos.
Details on how to experience this exhibition will be announced soon.

Guisado on Sunset
Missed-connection regret at that one late-night spot—the kind you keep playing back in your head but not quite ever remembering right, until it starts to look like something else.
Details on how to experience this exhibition will be announced soon.

Spaced Out
An underwater VR experience transports you aboard a voyage from the Earth to the moon, as well as within, led by the audio conversations of the Apollo 11 mission. Using special underwater VR goggles and a snorkel, the experience becomes a space simulation immersing all of the senses.
Open to credential holders Sat. 1/25–Thu. 1/30, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. at Festival Headquarters (Sheraton Park City, 1895 Sidewinder Dr.)
Bring your swimsuit; towels available on-site.

VR Cinema Program 1

The Box at The Ray
1768 Park Ave., Park City

Tickets are required; eWaitlist access is also available.

Azibuye—The Occupation
When Masello and Evan, two homeless black artists/activists, break into an abandoned mansion in an affluent part of Johannesburg, they proclaim their occupation to be an artistic and political act in defiance of inequalities in land ownership in South Africa.

Bembé
Bembé is a Cuban tradition that encompasses elements of both Christianity and the African Yoruba, where the souls of dead slaves come to Earth and family, friends, and neighbors take part in a celebration lasting up to seven days.

After the Fallout
In March 2011, an earthquake caused a tsunami and a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The devastating consequences filled the communities in Fukushima with fear of the intangible and split Japan in a distinct before and after.

VR Free
Exploring the nature of incarceration spaces by portraying slices of life inside a prison in Turin, Italy. The film also captures the reactions of several inmates during brief encounters with immersive videos of life outside of prison.

CATEGORY New Frontier Exhibitions

RUN TIME 50 min

VR Cinema Program 2

About

The Box at The Ray
1768 Park Ave., Park City

Tickets are required; eWaitlist access is also available.

Flowers & a Switchblade
An everyday scene—a real-life conversation in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—collaged together from hundreds of videos to form a fractured, hyperstimulating, 360-degree cubist world.

tx-reverse 360°
What is behind the cinema screen? What if the auditorium dissolves and with it the familiar laws of cinema itself? As reality and cinema collide, viewers are drawn into a vortex where the familiar order of space and time seems to be suspended.

Go
Searching for stability in his life, Peter Thaler sets out on a hike in the Swiss mountains from which he will never return. An unprecedented symbiosis of literature and virtual reality, telling a story of everyday and final farewells and opening the door to eternity a tiny crack.

Hominidae
Against a landscape of X-ray imagery and wild anatomical reimagination, a mother and her children struggle for survival. This experience follows an “arachnid hominid,” an intelligent creature with human and spider physiology, from the birth of her children to her premature death in the teeth of her prey.

CATEGORY New Frontier Exhibitions

RUN TIME 46 min

PERSUASION MACHINES

Artists Karim Amer and Güvenç Özel use a virtual smart living room, and an HTC VIVE headset, to allow the user to visually confront the invisible process of data collection and question the nature of the digital machines that are supposed to be making our lives better.

Where the Sundance Pop-Ups Are

Sundance on Main Street

Here is a quick hitlist of the companies at the Sundance Film Festival 2020 and where they are “popping”.

  • Silvercar/Audi, 2300 Deer Valley Drive
  • TNT, TBS and HBO Docs, 306 Main St.
  • Heineken USA, 710 Main St.
  • The Walt Disney Company, 738 Main St.
  • Fox Searchlight, 675 Main St.
  • Tao, 1251 Kearns Blvd.
  • Stella Artois, 1251 Kearns Blvd.
  • Mastercard International, 427 Main St.
  • Nestle Coffee/Chameleon Cold Brew, 427 Main St.
  • Los Angeles Chargers, 710 Main St.
  • CNN, 562 Main St.
  • HBO, 268 Main St., 804 Main St. and 306 Main St.
  • Kia Motors America, 890 Main St.
  • Molson Coors Brewing Company/Peroni, 890 Main St.
  • Facebook, 801 Main St. and 804 Main St.
  • Apple/NVE, 657 Park Ave.
  • Chase Sapphire 573 Main St.
  • WarnerMedia AT&T Lounge, 660 Main St.
  • Indiewire/DropBox, 660 Main St.
  • Audible, 692 Main St.
  • Canada Goose 558 Main St.
  • Amazon FireTV 591 Main St.
  • IMDB 480 Swede Alley
  • Lyft 305 Main St.
  • The Los Angeles Times 580 Main St.
  • SundanceTV 268 Main St.
  • Acura 480 Swede Alley

There are also public relations firms, colleges and talent agencies spaces. 

Montana, Boise Film Office/Idaho Horror Film Festival and Mammoth Lakes Foundation are sharing 710 Main Street.  

Planned Parenthood, at 427 Main St

The Creative Coalition at 890 Main St.

The American Civil Liberties Union at 625 Main St.

 

Matchstick Ski Crashes: What Goes Up Must Come Down

Matchstick ski crashes

At the start of every winter, the top ski action filmmakers like Warren Miller and TGR bust out their latest homage to Ullr. Sponsored pro athletes travel the world in search of epic lines and bravado for the camera. What we audiences of enthusiastic recreational skiers don’t see is the pain and turbulence behind those lines.

For nearly every stuck landing are multiple fails that are never seen. Talented editors make those athletes look like superheroes of the slopes. Well, Matchstick Productions compiled this little reel of crashes, slams and tomahawks from their latest ski porn- Return to Send’er. They remind us that everyone’s human. These guys just have superhuman balls…and rubber limbs.

 

Ski Utah Fifth and Sixth Grade Passports: Get’em While They’re HOT

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I’m coming out this season! My best friend in Washington texted. It had been nearly 10 years since we had skied together as instructors at Deer Valley Resort. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take all the credit for this spontaneous announcement.

Ski Utah’s Fifth and Sixth Grade Passport program had a serious hand in the planning.

 

Since 1998, Ski Utah has been inviting 5th graders to its slopes for next-to-nothing and Jada was finally in 5th grade. Krista wanted to show her daughter what Utah skiing was all about and what better way than with FREE skiing? Well, practically free.

 

For $49 and the five minutes it takes to fill out the online form, Jada could ski three times at all 15 resorts.* That’s basically $1/ticket. And for one week, we took advantage of every day starting with Deer Valley, moving to Solitude, Canyons, Snowbird, Alta, Brighton and Snowbasin.

Her mom, a high school teacher, does her best to groom her kids to be skiers but resources are finite. With the Passport, it was cheaper to make the drive to Utah, stay with me and ski, than go anywhere else. Plus, let’s be honest. Where else would she have this kind of fun in March? The snow was deep, the sun high and the apres in full swing.  When they packed up the car for home, plans were already growing for the next year because Ski Utah also has a Sixth Grade Passport.

Sixth Graders Too

Whether you missed participating in the Fifth Grade Passport, Ski Utah invites Sixth Graders back to keep skiing on the cheap. This time around, however, they’ll get one day (instead of three) at 15 Utah resorts for $49.

The kicker is that both Passports are available to any child in the world, throughout the ski season. Home schoolers can also register. Plus, the Pass comes with extra perks for parents since they are the ones getting the kids to the slopes. Contact the individual resorts to learn more. mong those are free buddy passes to Powder Mountain and half-off at Alta and Cherry Peak, and $50 tickets to Brighton. They also rental and lesson perks throughout Utah. 

With the prices of everything involved with a ski vacation reaching maximum velocity, the Passport is a golden ring for ski families. I can’t tell you how often I hear that people quit skiing because it costs too much. But then I mention the Passport and their eyes light up. My kids can ski and I don’t have to forgo next month’s groceries? The Snowsports Industries of America actually report that more kids ski and keep skiing because of the Pass.

 

The Theory Behind The Ski Passport

The idea is simple. Winter is long, especially in Utah. One of the best ways to keep children engaged is to get them outside and moving. Studies show that kids between the ages of 10 and 12 begin to find their passion for skiing because they are ready for more complex sports. They have the motor skills and cognitive ability to explore movements and mountains.

In addition, children this age are also at a crossroads for mental and physical health. Do they sit inside playing video games and smartphone apps or do they embrace something healthier and active? Get them active now and they will be active as adults.

You Don’t Need To Live in Utah

Let’s say it again. If you are considering a winter trip and you have fifth and sixth graders in your midst, a Utah visit is a no brainer. The Fifth and Sixth Grade Passport pays for itself in a single day. You apply online, upload a current photo of the fifth or sixth grader and use your credit card to complete your transaction. You’ll get confirmation within 24-48 hours and can use it immediately after.

How You Know What You’ve Skied

This year’s Passport is completely digital from registration to tracking. See where you’ve gone and what resorts remain to be ridden through your online portal. Chances are you’ll have enough days left for a second vacation.

I’ll probably need to find another reason to get Krista and her family out to Utah now that Jada’s in high school but soon she’ll be in college and Krista can come by herself again.

This kind of makes me sad. You know how you look at your kids and wish they stayed little forever? College. Wow. Ski Utah gives you one more reason to wish they never grow up.

Find more information and to get your kid registered for the Ski Utah Fifth and Sixth Grade Passport go to www.skiutah.com/passes/passports.

*Deer Valley, Solitude, Park City, Alta, Snowbird, Cherry Peak, Snowbasin, Powder Mountain, Sundance, Brighton, Nordic Valley, Eagle Mountain, Beaver, Brian Head, Woodward Park City

Blackout dates exist for holidays and weekends during the 2020/21 season due to Covid restrictions. But you can still use the pass during spring break!

 Disclaimer: Although this post is sponsored by Ski Utah, the words and opinions are solely those of Ski Play Live.   

 

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