First here’s a quick recap on what this is all about, for those who missed last week’s announcement:
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival titles have been announced in the various categories, and so we now know who made the cut. But what about those many thousands who submitted their films and didn’t get in? If you’re one of them, here’s a chance for you to let us know who you are.
For the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, 118 feature-length films were selected, representing 37 countries and 54 first-time filmmakers, including 34 in competition. These films were selected from 12,218 submissions (72 more than for 2013), including 4,057 feature-length films and 8,161 short films. Of the feature film submissions, 2,014 were from the U.S. and 2,043 were international. 97 feature films at the Festival will be world premieres.
So really somewhere between 1% and 3% of total submissions were selected. Those are minuscule numbers. So that also means that there are roughly 97% of you remaining, with projects that didn’t get into the festival. And YOU are the folks we want to hear from!
Of interest to those of us on this blog (see the name and tagline of the blog at the top of page if you’re new here) are films by and/or about people of African descent. So, if you or your film fit the bill, we’d love to hear from you!
At the very least, it’ll be great just to know you exist, so that we can become familiar with you and your work, and track from here-on.
So, if you agree, feel free to send me an email to obensont@gmail.com, with all the vitals about you and your film, and we’ll go from there.
Today’s submission comes from British born Nigerian writer/director Sade Adeniran – a short film titled More Cake. This one especially got my attention when I watched the below trailer because I instantly recognized one of the actors in it – Clint Dyer, the writer and actor whose feature film, SUS, was heavily pushed on S&A years ago, before we joined Indiewire. It’s a film I championed, with good reason, but, unfortunately, as I just learned, it’s not available in the USA on any format. But now that I’m reminded of it, I’ll get in touch with Clint to find out what it’s status is, because it never received a formal release anywhere in the world that I’m aware of, despite playing at a few international film festivals. This was in 2010.
But, all that say, given what I know of Clint’s talents as an actor and a writer, any project he’s attached to will certainly get my attention… like Sade’s short film, More Cake.
Here’s what Sade had to say about the film in her email to me:
More Cake is based on a short story I wrote called Martha Mauden. It’s about a man who has a psychotic breakdown and is unable to differentiate between what is real and what is not. I changed the story after hearing a woman on radio talk about having a psychotic breakdown and taking a kitchen knife to her own mother, because she didn’t recognise her as such, but as her mortal enemy, out to kill her. More Cake is my exploration of what I imagine goes on in the mind of someone suffering from a psychosis. I decided to make this short because I’m adapting my award winning book Imagine This into a feature film and needed a calling card to show potential financiers. I’m hoping to get this project on the way next summer, but as you know, raising funds takes a little time. 🙂
