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Spike Lee Joint Sets Off ‘Sundance Selects’

17 Aug, 2009 By: Billy Gil

Thank you, Robert Redford. Rainbow Media, which bought Sundance Channel last year, is starting Sundance Selects Aug. 26 to offer Sundance favorites on demand, bowing with Spike Lee’s Passing Strange The Movie, which is based on a musical developed through Sundance and premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Comcast, Cox and Cablevision are among the cable companies offering Sundance Selects, which is offering one film a month at first, and two films a month later on.

Future films offered that premiered at Sundance will include Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (Sept. 9); Academy Award-winner Adam Elliot’s animated Mary and Max, which opened the festival (Oct. 14); and Chris Wiatt’s documentary A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (January 2010). Other films include two more documentaries: Kief Davidson’s Kassim the Dream, which premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival (Nov. 4), and Tom Thurman’s Nick Nolte: No Exit (Dec. 16).

“The hallmark of the Sundance brand is creating an environment of discovery, for both artists and for audiences,” Redford said. “Sundance nurtures new, independent voices in the creative realm, and is committed to bringing their work to larger audiences in new ways. Sundance Selects is a perfect complement to this mission and I am really energized about working with Sundance Channel and Rainbow Media on this new venture.” 

Lee had this to say: “It makes sense that Passing Strange The Movie will launch Sundance Selects, as Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the original musical’s co-creators, developed the project at the Sundance Theater Lab and Director Lab.  I’m pleased to work once again with Robert Redford, and with the Sundance Channel, on the launch of this new service.”

Folk like me without the funds to fork over for premium cable are lovin’ it like McDonald’s. This is probably the coolest thing Robert Redford has done since Indecent Proposal.

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