From the Press Release
Film Independent announced today that it is producing the 2014 Sloan Film Summit taking place November 14 – November 16 at L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. The Summit, co-hosted by Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will celebrate the thriving nationwide Sloan film program, bringing together 150 screenwriters, directors and producers, as well as representatives from leading film schools and film organizations, who work to bridge the gap between science and popular culture. To date, Sloan has awarded $4 million in direct grants to film students in support of over 500 projects. The Sloan Film program was launched in 1997 and forms part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s broader effort in Public Understanding of Science and Technology.
“The 2014 Sloan Film Summit marks a watershed moment for the Sloan Foundation’s pioneering science and technology Film Program and for science themed films in general as they begin to move into the cinematic mainstream. The Foundation has developed over a dozen theatrically released feature films through its own pipeline since the last Summit in 2011,” said Doron Weber, Vice President at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “Three of 2014’s major Oscar-winning films—Gravity, Her and Dallas Buyers Club –and at least two early 2015 contenders—Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game—exemplify the kind of work long championed by Sloan. The Imitation Game has already received two Sloan awards this year. We are thrilled to host this summit with our partners at Film Independent and to celebrate the achievements of so many talented new voices, in theater and television as well as film, who have turned a fundamental but little understood driver of modern life into the raw material of new art.”
Josh Welsh, President of Film Independent, said, “Film Independent and the Sloan Foundation have a long and strong history of supporting independent voices in the creative field. A large number of the projects we have supported with Sloan grants in the past few years have gone throughproduction and been released – from Jenny Deller’s Future Weather to Musa Syeed’s Valley of Saints to the upcoming Basmati Blues, directed by Dan Baron. Hosting this prestigious Summit is an honor and we look forward to getting to know all the Sloan Foundation supported filmmakers and seeing their work.”
For the first time in Sloan Film Summit history, a limited number of seats to select events will be released to the public on a first come first serve basis. RSVP information will be available November 3 at SloanSummit2014.org.
The Sloan Film Summit will kick off on Friday, November 14 at 7:30 pm with a public screening of Academy Award-winning director James Marsh’s new movie The Theory of Everything, followed by a Q&A with the FocusFeatures film’s stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones and Professor of Physics David Kaplan.
On Saturday, November 15, the Summit will continue with a full day of private panels, workshops and networking sessions with esteemed scientists and industry professionals for all the Sloan supported filmmakers and organizations gathered in Los Angeles for this special event. Among the highlights will be presentations by four eminent scientists from the Science and Entertainment Exchange followed by four Sloan-winning artists responding with short, original pieces.
On Sunday, November 16, the Summit will be open to the general public for a full day event titled "Science and The Art of Storytelling," a celebration of Sloan-winning works that will include a Keynote by Sloan-supported playwright and screenwriter Beau Willimon (House of Cards, The Ides of March), a shorts program, staged readings and a sneak peek at soon to be released Sloan films Basmati Blues (starring Scott Bakula, Brie Larson and Donald Sutherland); The Man Who Knew Infinity (starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel); and Experimenter (starring Peter Sarsgaard, Taryn Manning, Winona Ryder and Kellan Lutz), featuring exclusive footage and a discussion with the films’ producers.
The weekend long conference will conclude with a preview screening of Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, the recipient of this year's Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, and recently picked up the People's Choice Award at TIFF after bowing at the Telluride Film Festival. The film was previously supported by the Sloan Foundation as part of its partnership with the Tribeca Film Institute. The film will be released by The Weinstein Company on November 21, 2014.
New this year, Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are launching an initiative that supports the distribution of finished films with a science and technology theme. A $50,000 Sloan Distribution Grant will be awarded for three years by Film Independent to eligible finished films entering the distribution phase, with the requirement that the money be spent on standard P&A expenses (creative marketing, advertising, etc.) for the film’s release. Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have a long history of collaboration including the annual $30,000 Sloan Producers development grant and the $20,000 production grant to support a participant at Film Independent’s Fast Track, a film financing market taking place during the Los Angeles Film Festival.