ITVS Reaches Milestone with Over 100 Sundance Acceptances

ITVS announced today that, with four new films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, the organization has now funded and co-produced more than 100 Sundance premieres. Mandated by Congress in 1988 to address the lack of diverse voices in public media, ITVS has served as an incubator for filmmakers and a funder of more than 1400 films. The recipient of the 2017 Institutional Peabody Award, ITVS has been recognized for its "broad transformative impact on the media landscape."

Since debuting at Sundance in 1994 with Arthur Dong's groundbreaking documentary Coming Out Under Fire, ITVS has continued to pave the way for diverse and emerging voices, including MARLON Riggs (Black Is...Black Ain't), Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (Daughter from Danang), Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt (The Education of Shelby Knox), and Byron Hurt (Hip-Hop: BEYOND Beats and Rhymes).

ITVS collaborators include Sundance staples and rising stars alike, including Stanley Nelson (A Place of Our Own, Black Panthers, and Tell Them We Are Rising), Steve James (The Interrupters), Eugene Jarecki (The House I Live In and The King), Kim A. Snyder (Newtown) and Bing Liu (Minding the Gap). ITVS-funded films have become a mainstay at the festival, winning numerous awards and shaping the trajectory of documentary filmmaking.

"We are honored and truly grateful to be working with some of the most passionate and dedicated independent filmmakers in the world," said Sally Jo Fifer, President and CEO of ITVS. "Reaching this milestone, with over 100 films accepted by Sundance, is a testament to the commitment and drive of our storytellers, our public media colleagues, and our team. We look forward to this year's festival, and many more to come."

This year's ITVS Sundance premieres are:

Always in Season (Jacqueline Olive, producer/director)

Blending observational footage with first-person testimonies and expert insights, Always in Season is the first documentary feature film to spotlight recent grassroots efforts to acknowledge the victims of lynching, repair the damage caused by the crimes, and reconcile the costs to four communities in the U.S.

Bedlam (Ken Rosenberg, producer/director; Peter Miller, producer)

Haunted by the death of his mentally ill sister, psychiatrist Kenneth Rosenberg takes on the role of filmmaker to examine a national health crisis. Shot over the course of five years, Bedlamgoes inside Los Angeles County's overwhelmed and vastly under-resourced PSYCH ER, a nearby jail warehousing thousands of psychiatric patients, and the homes-and homeless encampments-of people afflicted with severe mental illness, where silence and shame often worsen the suffering.

Midnight Traveler (Hassan Fazili, director; Emelie Mahdavian and Su Kim, producers)

A powerful account from the front lines of the refugee crisis, Midnight Traveler traces the Fazili family's years-long, unpredictable journey out of Afghanistan and westward along one of Europe's most notorious smuggling routes, with stops in refugee camps in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Along the way, Hassan, his wife Fatima, and their two young daughters document their interactions with other travelers, smugglers, and police, collecting diverse perspectives on the refugee experience.

Words from a Bear (Jeffrey Palmer, director)

Words from a Bear examines the enigmatic life and mind of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Navarro Scott Momaday, one of Native America's most celebrated authors of poetry and prose. The film takes the audience on a spiritual journey through the expansive landscapes of the West, when Momaday's Kiowa ancestors roamed the Great Plains with herds of buffalo, to the sand-painted valleys of Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico where his imagination ripened and he showed superior writing skills as a young mission student. The film will have its exclusive U.S. broadcast premiere on AMERICAN MASTERS on PBS. Words from a Bear is produced by Jeffrey Palmer for Rainy Mountain Media LLC, and executive produced by Sally Jo Fifer for ITVS, Shirley K. Sneve for Vision Maker Media, and Michael Kantor for AMERICAN MASTERS Pictures.

About ITVS

ITVS is a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that has, for over 30 years,

funded and partnered with a diverse range of documentary filmmakers to produce and

distribute untold stories. ITVS incubates and co-produces these award-winning films

and then airs them for free on PBS via our weekly series, Independent Lens, as well as

on other PBS series and through our digital platform, OVEE. ITVS is funded by the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting. For more information, visit itvs.org.

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