Patricia Finneran, who served as SILVERDOCS' festival director for the past five years, has signed on as Senior Consultant with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. She will be based in New York, responsible for recommending film projects, maintaining the Documentary Program's New York base and working on the program's initiatives such as the Sundance Doc Fund and the Skoll Foundation's Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary. Finneran replaces Bruni Burres, former head of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, who will be assuming the role of executive producer at the International Center for Transitional Justice.
"Under Tricia Finneran's
leadership, SILVERDOCS has become one of the leading documentary film festivals
in the country," said Cara Mertes, director of Sundance Institute's
Documentary Film Program, in a prepared statement. "Her background
encompassing diverse aspects of film, television and digital media lends itself
perfectly to the work we do here at the institute. She has been a great
advocate for the form, and we are thrilled she is joining the DFP team."
During Finneran's tenure,
SILVERDOCS attracted up to 25,000 documentary enthusiasts annually. She
previously served as artistic director of the IFP Market (now Independent Film
Week)
The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program provides year-round support to nonfiction contemporary-issue filmmakers internationally. The program encourages the exploration of innovative nonfiction storytelling, and promotes the exhibition of documentary films to a broader audience. It supports independent artists both domestically and internationally through the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Documentary Composers Laboratory and Edit and Story Laboratory, panels at the Filmmakers Lodge at the Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Independent Producers Conference, and a variety of collaborative international initiatives. For more information, go to www.sundance.org/documentary or www.sundance.org/DocSource.