Sundance Film Festival award winners 1997
List activity
12 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
12 titles
- DirectorTina Di FeliciantonioJane C. WagnerDocumentary about four urban teenage girls, and their opinions about religion, music and sex.Grand Jury Prize Documentary
- DirectorTheodore WitcherStarsLarenz TateNia LongIsaiah WashingtonDarius Lovehall is a young black poet in Chicago who starts dating Nina Mosley, a beautiful and talented photographer. While trying to figure out if they've got a "love thing" or are just "kicking it," they hang out with their friend, talking about love and sex. Then Nina tests the strength of Darius' feelings and sets a chain of romantic complications into motion.Audience Award Dramatic
- DirectorMonte BramerStarsJudith LightRobert DesiderioTom HulceThis documentary focuses on AIDS activist, novelist and film writer and National Book Award winner Paul Monette's life, from his childhood in Massachusetts up to his life in Hollywood and diagnosis and death from AIDS. His story is told in readings from his memoirs and by those who knew him. Narrated by Linda Hunt.Audience Award Documentary
- DirectorArthur DongStarsDonald AldrichCorey BurleyRaymond ChildsWinner of both the Directors and Filmmakers Trophy awards at the Sundance Film Festival, "Licensed to Kill" goes behind the media headlines of recent high-profile anti-gay murders to investigate their causes. Attacked by gay bashers in 1977, filmmaker Arthur Dong probes the hearts and minds of murderers convicted of killing gay men he faces them in one-on-one cell block interviews and asks them directly: "Why did you do it?" Probing on-camera interviews with seven convicted killers behind bars propel the narrative drive of "Licensed To Kill." These inmates include a wide range of distinct profiles: a young man who claims he justifiably killed as protection from his victim's sexual advances - a defense known as "homosexual panic"; a self-loathing, religious gay man who killed because of his own homosexual tendencies; a victim of child abuse who feared losing his manhood; an army sergeant angry over the gays in the military debate; and a self-described homeboy looking for easy prey.Filmmakers Trophy Documentary
- DirectorNeil LaButeStarsAaron EckhartMatt MalloyStacy EdwardsTwo business executives--one an avowed misogynist, the other recently emotionally wounded by his love interest--set out to exact revenge on the female gender by seeking out the most innocent, uncorrupted girl they can find and ruining her life.Filmmakers Trophy Dramatic
- DirectorMacky AlstonStarsMacky AlstonWilliam BadgettA gay man seeks to discover what kinship, if any, exists between his white family and the nearby blacks who share the name of Alston.Freedom of Expression Award
- DirectorLaura Angelica SimonFreedom of Expression Award
- DirectorRenee Tajima-PenaStarsRenee Tajima-PenaIntoxicating and irreverent, Renee Tajima-Peñas documentary and Sundance Film Festival award-winner, MY AMERICA...OR HONK IF YOU LOVE BUDDHA, is inspired by the Jack Kerouacs novel, On the Road, and recaptures his spirit in a fresh and different journey through a new American subculture. In MY AMERICA, the filmmaker recalls her childhood--back in the days when her vacationing family would cross five states lines without ever catching a glimpse of another Asian face. Returning to the road more than 20 years later, she finds that new immigration has suddenly put Asian Americans on the map. With Latinos, they have become the countrys fastest growing ethnic group. Tajima-Peña sets out to search for the new American identity that will arise from the multi-culti hoi-palloi that is America at the end of the 20th century. MY AMERICA is a rollicking ride across this changing terrain. Tajima-Peña first began chronicling the burgeoning Asian American population with her Academy Award-nominated film, WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? In MY AMERICA, she searches for the meaning of that identity today in a racial landscape drastically transformed. Her metaphorical guide is the films road guru, Victor Wong. An iconoclastic actor (JOY LUCK CLUB, DIM SUM, THE LAST EMPEROR), ex-photojournalist, ex-Beat Generation painter and wanderer, Wong was immortalized by Kerouac in the novel, Big Sur. In MY AMERICA, the 70-year-old Wong emerges as a complex, Buddha-like character who has traveled the currents of post-war American life: the Beat Generation, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War era. His story frames Tajima-Peñas travels, as she discovers how deeply Asian Americans have been entangled in the politics of race. In New Orleans, 8th generation Louisianan Filipinas describe growing up as honorary whites in the Jim Crow South. In Seattle a pair of Korean rappers, known as The Seoul Brothers, express the political awakening of a new generation. Through it all, Tajima-Peña delivers comic projectiles at the stereotypes that color attitudes towards Asians, with characters like Mr. Choi, a fortune cookie-maker-entrepreneur who she dubs a veritable Horatio Alger on amphetamines. But beyond the critique of racism, Tajima-Peña also explores the challenge for Asian Americans now that they are no longer the invisible minority. Refusing to be cast as second class citizens, Asian Americans are grappling with the question, what then is their role in the public life of the nation? In Mississippi and Arkansas, the legendary activist Yuri Kochiyama - a contemporary of Malcolm X - traces the roots of her own passion for justice to her years of incarceration at a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans. In Los Angeles, a young student named Alyssa Kang defies her mothers expectations and risks arrest to protest anti-immigrant legislation. As film critic B. Ruby Rich writes of MY AMERICA, The real road that Tajima-Peña is traversing is the delicate one separating public and private, group identity and individual personality, and she aint no tourist. If Asian Americans have too often been cast as spectators in the drama of black/white America, MY AMERICA restores their centrality.Excellence in Cinematography Award Documentary
- DirectorKirby DickStarsBob FlanaganSheree RoseKathe BurkhartDiagnosed with cystic fibrosis from a young age, performance artist Bob Flanagan shared his life and pain in his art, usually through sadomasochistic practices.Special Jury Recognition
- DirectorMark WatersStarsParker PoseyJosh HamiltonTori SpellingA mentally unbalanced young woman - who is convinced she is Jackie Kennedy - flies into a murderous rage when her brother returns home to reveal he is engaged.Special Jury Recognition
- DirectorJosé AraújoStarsBeth AlencarAntero Marques AraújoEdnardo BragaAntero and Maria Araújo's story is the shortcut chosen by the director to show life in Maraima, a small town in the state of Ceará, Brazil, including life in community and the military influence. Maria wanders through the state praying to ward off the symbolical presence of the Dragon. That's when she finds Antero, an end-of-the-world prophet, who will join her in her pilgrimage and fight against the mythical being.Latin American Cinema Award
- DirectorArturo RipsteinStarsRegina OrozcoDaniel Giménez CachoSherlynThe life of a man who preys on unsuspecting women for a living is changed when he finds an accomplice in the woman who loves and controls him.Honorable Mention Latin American Cinema