Sundance Institute Sets Fellows For 2022 Directors, Screenwriters And Native Labs

K.J. Yossman BBC Director-General Tim Davie has revealed plans for a “digital first” BBC as the broadcaster celebrates its hundredth year as well as revealing at hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cutbacks.Davie said he plans to cut £200 million ($250 million) from the budget due to the government’s decision to freeze the license fee, which funds the BBC.

Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s longrunning radio series Fresh Air, has won the Peabody’s Institutional Award, an honor presented by Stephen Colbert.

Wilson Chapman editorTerry Gross has received Peabody’s Institutional Award, for her work on the long-running NPR radio program “Fresh Air.” The annual Institutional Award is presented to institutions and programs for their body of work and their impact on the media landscape. The honoree is selected by the Peabody’s Board of Jurors, and presented ahead of the regular announcement of this year’s 30 Peabody Awards winners.

Film Independent has set the filmmakers and projects for its 2022 Documentary Lab. The list includes Alissa Figueroa (Breaking the Blue Wall, w/t), Shalon Buskirk and Drew Swedberg (In love, in memory), Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir (Land of Women), Kit Vincent and Ed Owles (Red Herring, w/t), Alix Blair, Lauren Kushner and Elise McCave (Untitled Helen Project) and Jonathan Olshefski and Elizabeth Day (Without Arrows).

Annika Pham In April, Anette Novak took over as CEO at the Swedish Film Institute, a role previously held by the high-profile Anna Serner, champion of gender equality.A trained journalist, Novak was previously head of the Swedish Media Council, a government body responsible for film classification, children and youth protection.Earlier on, she was CEO of RISE Interactive, a Swedish state-owned IT and research institute.How do you feel about attending Cannes with a record number of Swedish films in Official Selection and what does film in general mean to you? I feel excited — three Swedish directors in competition for the Palme d’Or is amazing, and an impressive sign of strength for Swedish and Nordic films! Film is the seventh artform and as such a potential carrier of all the other artforms, thus difficult to catch in a short explanation. It is a medium with enormous impact, capable of transmitting knowledge, insights, raising awareness and empathy, triggering laughs and tears, addressing imbalances, and creating new ones.You’ve just started at the Swedish Film Institute in April. What are the priorities on your ‘to do list’? My top priorities at present is to listen and learn, to pick the brains of all the competences we have in-house in the Swedish Film Institute and within different segments of the Swedish film industry, film heritage sector, film literacy field, academia and beyond.What is your vision to help Swedish film navigate through this turbulent post-pandemic and streaming era? It is way too early to formulate a vision.

Lupe Fiasco is set to teach rap at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this year.“I been holding this for a while,” he tweeted on Friday (May 20) to announce the news. “I’ll put together something more sophisticated later that really captures the nuance and gravity but for now I’ll just say it straight and raw: I’m going to teach Rap at MIT.”Fiasco will be one of three new teachers recruited as part of MIT’s MLK Visiting Professor Program for 2022-23.

The Swedish Film Institute today launched its annual gender equality report. The survey ‘406 Days’, which looks at gender disparity in the development and production process, demonstrates that the average female-led fiction feature spends over one year longer in development than projects led by male filmmakers.

HBO Documentary Films has acquired worldwide television rights to the documentary feature “All That Breathes,” the company announced Friday. Directed by Shaunak Sen (“Cities of Sleep”), the film premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected as the Grand Jury Prize winner in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Manori Ravindran International EditorHBO Documentary Films has bought worldwide television rights for Cannes Special Screenings title “All That Breathes.”The film is the only Sundance movie to screen as part of Cannes’ Official Selection this year — a feat all the more impressive given Cannes is not known for its documentary programming. In Park City, the film picked up the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.Directed by Shaunak Sen (“Cities of Sleep”), “All That Breathes” follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites, which are a staple in the skies of New Delhi, India.In one of the world’s most populated cities, where cows, rats, monkeys, frogs and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people, the “kite brothers” care for thousands of these creatures, which fall daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies.

Kevin Hart’s multi-platform media company HartBeat today announced the return of its screenwriting fellowship and talent development initiative Women Write Now, created to champion the next generation of Black women in comedy through mentorship, advocacy, production and exhibition. The fellowship developed in partnership with the Sundance Institute will support three writers in developing short comedic scripts under the guidance of some of the most influential Black women in comedy.

EXCLUSIVE: UK film outfit Lightbulb Film Distribution has picked up well-received Sundance sci-fi comedy Something In The Dirt, marking the company’s biggest acquisition to date.

is already filming new episodes on location in New York and Rhode Island as it continues to explore the growing social and economic war between old money and new in the American period drama created by Julian Fellowes. While speaking to ET, Fellowes as well as stars Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski opened up about what they love about the series and the sprawling ensemble’s incredible roster of Tony winners and nominees. “We’re in production now,” Nixon confirmed, explaining that the series set in the late 1800s is “such a fascinating part of history, and New York history in particular.

Antonio Ferme editorThe Crawley’s are back — but with a twist.“Downton Abbey,” the hit British TV series that ran for six seasons on PBS, is making its way onto the big screen for a second time. Rather than spawning a seventh season, writer and creator Julian Fellowes explained why he decided to transform the series into a film franchise.“I think the cast particularly had enough of working from February to November, whereas a film is eight weeks out of their lives every two and a half years,” Fellowes told Variety on Sunday at the New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House.He continued, “It’s a different commitment.

Sex-positive vibes for each and every age, even the 50+-year-old crowd? Yes, please. Following its terrific reception at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe American Film Institute (AFI) has announced a call for applicants for its new program, the 2022 Cinematography Intensive for Women presented by Panavision.As female cinematographers have fought to close the gender gap for recognition, the program seeks to help aspiring female cinematographers. The four-day program will be held on the AFI Campus in Los Angeles from July 15 through July 18.

Rebecca Hall has enjoyed a diverse career, sinking her teeth into smaller passion projects and behemoth blockbusters alike. Demonstrating her mainstream appeal through her highly critically and commercially successful collaboration with Christopher Nolan in the 2006 film “The Prestige,” Hall has since become a stalwart of the Sundance Film Festival, having equally exhibited an inclination towards its more independently spirited projects.

Some 20 nonfiction mediamakers will receive a fellowship stipend worth $60,000 in installments over the next year after being named a Humanities Sustainability Fellow by the nonprofit Sundance Institute.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBig World Pictures has taken distribution rights in U.S. and Canada to Salomé Jashi’s documentary “Taming the Garden,” which competed at the Sundance Film Festival, and also played in the Forum section of the Berlinale. World sales are being handled by Toronto-based Syndicado Film Sales.In her review for Variety, Jessica Kiang described the film as “quietly magnificent and strange,” adding that it is “surreal, serene and maybe just a little bit sacred.”The opening shot of this environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the Black Sea.

EXCLUSIVE: The Gotham Film & Media Institute today named Ahya Simone, Bré Rivera and Paige Wood (Femme Queen Chronicles), Ariel Zucker and Daryl Paris Bright (GYNO), Chy Chi (Hot Dish), Stacie E. Hawkins (Night Watchers), Connor Austin Jones (On The Line), Maia Nikiphoroff (The Rise of Elisa Lynch), Lauren Ciaravalli (S.L.U.T.), Lori Webster Fore (Soul City), David Barker, Jerónimo Rodriguez and Jay van Hoy (Wiring Utopia), and Edith Rodriguez (Youth) as the fellows and projects for its 2022 Gotham TV Series Lab, taking place today through May 13th.

Jennie Punter Mila Aung-Thwin, a producer on 2022 Sundance Special Jury Award winner “Midwives,” will direct a feature documentary about Tiberiu Uşeriu (a.k.a. Romania’s Ice Man), an extreme ultramarathon champion who turned his life around after serving time in a German high-security prison for armed robbery, the filmmaker told Variety during Toronto’s Hot Docs festival.Aung-Thwin, a cofounder of the acclaimed documentary production company EyeSteelFilm, is this year’s recipient of Hot Docs’ Don Haig Award, which is given to an outstanding independent Canadian producer with a film in the festival in recognition of their creative vision and entrepreneurship.“Ultra” (working title) producers include Cristian Nicolescu (“Donbass,” “Quo vadis, Aida?”), EyeSteelFilm’s Bob Moore, and Lithium Studios’ Mike MacMillan.