particular: sundance institute and peter luoStars Collective (Crazy Rich Asians, Midway, Marshall, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) have partnered with the new Imagination Award, which grants $25,000 each to three metaverse-based projects that showcase innovation “in a rapidly evolving mediascape”.
candidates were submitted sundance film festivalThe New Frontiers program along with the winners were selected by fest programmers and representatives from Stars Collective, a talent incubator.
The award expands the Sundance-STARTS Collective partnership from 2020 which launched a grantmaking fund to support diverse filmmakers from historically marginalized communities. Cash has so far assisted in the development and completion of over 30 film projects, including Jamila Vignot (Elle), Alison O’Daniel (tuba chor), Nikyatu Jusu (Midwife) and Isabel Castro (Miza, Nine has premiered at Sundance.
Inaugural Imagination Award winners:
40 acres: Starring Tamara Shogolu. A multi-platform exploration of black American farmers and herbalists and their changing relationship with the land.
Block Party Bodega: Starring Navid Khonsari, Vasiliki Khonsari, Andres Pérez-Duarte. “A psychedelic Banksy Brooklyn meets Brooklyn open world universe that celebrates culture, diversity, and creative mischief where collaboration is king, competition is a party, and players are mercenaries of pleasure.”
year 2180, Starring Vanessa Keith. A multi-stage game set in a virtual utopian world where players can undertake climactic quests in different cities to save our future.
“We are very excited to once again partner with Sundance to collaborate with filmmakers with ideas and the ability to innovate,” Luo said. “The film industry has evolved to a point where it needs innovative genres, styles, narrative structures, expressions and business models that suit the present times. The third revolution of the Internet will also have a profound impact on cinema. We at Stars Collective will continue to support filmmakers in this direction.
“Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers Program is excited to partner with STARS Collective, a company we found aligned in our values of diversifying our community of creators and driving critical, human-centered innovation on our dynamic media landscape,” said Sharri. Have got.” Frilot, senior programmer at Sundance Fest and chief curator at New Frontiers.
The prize goes to so-called Metaverse ecosystem projects and can be narrative, non-narrative, film, video or TV series and in any creative format – digital, film and VR/AR/MR/X – if they “showcase a complete Metaverse”. are” worldview and visual concept. Entrants must demonstrate “artistic creativity, ecological extensibility of the meta-universe and commercial viability of the IP”.
Stars Collective will launch its Web3 film platform for footage and its Metaverse platform, SC Meta, in the current first quarter.
The platform funded and co-produced Justin Chon’s Sundance-premiere musical drama Jamozaya With Indonesian rapper Rich Brian who played Park City last week to great reviews. Chon and Alan Pao (under silver lake) is the producer. The film is executive-produced by Luo, Chris Lee (Superman Returns), Jennifer Pritzker and Shawn Sanghani (Result,
others include Nezouhdirected by Soudad Kadan, which won the Armani Beauty Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival; playland, the feature film debut of artist-filmmaker Jordan West, which will premiere in the Tiger Competition at the 2023 International Film Festival Rotterdam; And wuhan wuhanDirected by Yung Chang, produced by Donna Gigliotti, executive produced by Diane Kwon and Donnie Yen.
An advocate for bringing Asian culture to Hollywood, Luo has brokered content deals with major filmmakers such as Robert Zemeckis, Sam Raimi, Sylvester Stallone, James Wan, F. Gary Gray, Roland Emmerich and John Chu.