By Michael Idato
American Director's Guild award nominee Alethea Jones is leading an Australian assault on the Sundance Film Festival.
The filmmaker, who won the 20th anniversary Tropfest in 2012, is taking the film Fun Mom Dinner, which stars Australian actor Toni Collette and US comedian Molly Shannon, to the festival.
Bridget Everett, Molly Shannon, Katie Aselton and Toni Collette in Fun Mom Dinner by Australian director Alethea Jones, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.Credit: Robb Rosenfeld, Courtesy of Sundance Institute
"I don't have nerves, I have learned to just resign myself to letting an audience be with my films," Jones said. "I used to hate it but that's because I was probably making really bad films."
Jones was also just nominated for a prestigious Director's Guild of America award for her first US television series, Gortimer Gibbons' Life on Normal Street, which streams on Amazon.
Berlin Syndrome producer Polly Stanford and Fun Mom Dinner director Alethea Jones at the Australians in Film Sundance event in Los Angeles.Credit: Leslie Rodriguez
Her next project is Pride and Joy, starring Sarah Silverman.
The festival will also feature several high-profile Australian stars, including Collette, Cate Blanchett (Manifesto), Jason Clarke (Mudbound), and Teresa Palmer (in Australian director Cate Shortland's Berlin Syndrome).
Collette and Blanchett were both on the Tropfest judging panel that awarded Jones' short film Lemonade Stand the first prize in 2012.
"Toni and I bonded over a bunch of other things, and when we approached Toni for the role, I reminded her that her decision had changed my life," Jones said.
Melbourne filmmaker Kitty Green's Casting JonBenet has been acquired by Netflix and is screening in competition at Sundance.Credit: Michael Latham, Courtesy of Sundance Institute
"I had never thought about LA as an option as a filmmaker and then Tropfest gave me a trip here."
Other Australians heading to Sundance include Red Dog: True Blue producer Nelson Woss and star Maya Stange, and Killing Ground producers Lisa Shaunessy and Joe Weatherstone, director Damien Power and actor Aaron Glenane.
Producer Lisa Shaunessy, composer Leah Curtis, actress Maya Stange, writer-director Damien Power, producer Joe Weatherstone and actor Aaron Glenane at the Australians in Film event in Los Angeles.Credit: Leslie Rodriguez
One of the more unusual selections for the festival is the virtual reality project Orbital Vanitas, whose producers, Shaun Gladwell and Leo Faber, are attending.
Orbital Vanitas, whch is produced in the VR format, has been submitted in the "new frontier storytelling" section of the festival.
Other attendees include Melbourne documentary filmmaker Kitty Green, Berlin Syndrome producer Polly Standford and Slapper director Lucinda Schroder.
Green's documentary, Casting JonBenet , has just sold to Netflix.
Many of the Australians heading to Sundance were guests at a VIP reception in Los Angeles hosted by the industry group Australians in Film at their "creative workspace" Charlie's, on the Raleigh Studios film lot in Hollywood.
Other guests at the VIP reception included Los Angeles-based actors Ben Lawson, Damon Herriman, Natasha Bassett, Hannah Marshall and Sean James Murphy.
In the early days of Hollywood, Raleigh – then known as Clune Studios, and later California Studios – was the lot where A Star Is Born (1937) and What Ever Happened To Baby Jane (1962) were filmed.
More recently it was production base for hit television series such as Ellen, Ugly Betty and The Larry Sanders Show.
Sundance, which was founded in 1978, is the largest independent film festival in the US, drawing almost 50,000 attendees to Park City, Utah, where it is held annually.
The first festival, chaired by Robert Redford, backed by the Utah Film Commission and then named the Utah/US Film Festival, initially focused on American independent films; the first festival screened now iconic films including Deliverance, A Streetcar Named Desire and Midnight Cowboy.
In 1991, the festival's name was changed to the Sundance Film Festival, after Redford's character in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
This year's festival runs from January 19 to January 29.