Kickstarter Makes A Splash At The 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Crowd-sourced projects account for nine films at the festival this year.

sundance film festival
Kickstarter is debuting nine films at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. (Photo by Mat Hayward/Getty Images)
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You shouldn’t be surprised that Kickstarter is at the Sundance Film Festival. The crowdsourcing site isn’t just to help folks invent a new app or build a new bakery. It’ s also in the movie business.

At the 2019 Sundance Film Festival Kickstarter is debuting 9 films that were funded through the platform. A record-breaking 14,259 projects were submitted this year.

“We are incredibly excited to have nine Kickstarter-funded projects premiering at Sundance this year,” Director of Documentary Film at Kickstarter, Liz Cook Mowe, told Cool Hunting. “From Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco to Knock Down the House, to a documentary following the campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other women running for US Congress in the 2018 midterm elections, this year’s films push forward new narratives and showcase emerging talent.”

Cook Mowe has an important job as Director of Documentary Film as that genre is Kickstarter’s most popular among the site’s film community.

Kickstarter is on-site at the festival and playing host to some of the most diverse filmmakers, films, and creatives within the industry.

“Sundance’s 2019 mantra is ‘Risk Independence’ which is exactly what Kickstarter champions every day,” Cook Mowe said. “Kickstarter enables filmmakers to retain complete creative control, find funding on their own timeline and speak to their audiences directly. Filmmakers on Kickstarter are not just risking independence, they’re embracing it.”

Throughout the site’s history, 123 films have made their way from the platform to the festival since 2011.

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