Sundance Institute - Sundance Collection at UCLA

Sundance Collection At UCLA

The Institute maintains the Sundance Collection at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to conserve and archive the history of independent film. Film preservation is an especially pressing need in independent cinema. Despite their historical, artistic and cultural value, good prints of far too many indie films – even some made within the past decade – no longer exist. Chemical decomposition, neglect, and the changing ownership of film libraries have caused these prints to disappear.

To create a living record of the history of independent film, Sundance Institute and UCLA Film and Television Archive initiated the Sundance Collection at UCLA in 1997, and with contributions from studios and distributors as well as hundreds of individual filmmakers, the Collection’s holdings have grown to include over 300 film prints. The archive represents a diversity of work from the Sundance Film Festival as well as projects developed through the Sundance Labs. From features to documentaries to shorts, prints in the Collection include Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Reservoir Dogs, The Living End, Smoke Signals, Amores Perros, Harlan County, USA, Love & Basketball, and Welcome to the Dollhouse, among many other works that might otherwise no longer exist.

The first significant archive of its kind, the Collection also provides a central resource for the study of independent film, containing a rare assemblage of material related to the history of independent cinema, including press kits and filmmaker interviews.

To further its preservation work, the Collection continues to actively seek donations from filmmakers and studios alike. By donating prints to the Sundance Collection at UCLA, filmmakers can join us in ensuring that your own work and the heritage of independent cinema endures for future generations to experience and to study. Company Donors: Artisan Entertainment, Gramercy Pictures, Lions Gate Films, Miramax Films, New Line Cinema, October Films, OTM, Sony Pictures Classics, Strand Releasing and Trimark Pictures.