Peter Luos Stars Collective, Sundance Institute partner for new grant funding Metaverse projects; The first three winners have been announced

EXCLUSIVE: The Sundance Institute and Peter Luo’s Stars Collective (Crazy Rich Asians, Midway, Marshall, Scary Stories in the Dark) are collaborating on the new Imagination Grant, which will award $25,000 each to three Metaverse-based projects that demonstrate innovation “in a rapidly evolving media landscape.”

Applicants were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier program, and winners were selected by festival programmers and representatives from Stars Collective, a talent incubator.

The award expands a 2020 collaboration by the Sundance-Stars Collective, which created the Granting Fund to support diverse filmmakers from historically marginalized communities. The money has so far supported more than 30 films, including works by Jamila Wignot (Ailey), Alison O’Daniel (tuba thieves), Nikyatu Jusu (take care) and Isabel Castro (mija). Nine premiered at Sundance.

First Imagination Award Winners:

40 hectares: Lead artist Tamara Shogaolu. A cross-platform exploration of black American farmers and herbalists and their changing relationship with the land.

Block Party Bodega: With: Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari, Andres Perez-Duart. “A psychedelic Banksy meets an open-world universe in Brooklyn that celebrates culture, diversity and creative mischief, where collaboration is king, competition is a party and players are mercenaries of joy.”

year 2180: Lead artist Vanessa Keith. A multi-platform game set in a virtual utopian world where players can undertake climate missions in different cities to save our future.

“We are very excited to partner with Sundance again to support filmmakers with ideas and innovation,” said Luo. “The film industry has evolved to the point where it needs innovative genres, styles, narrative structures, forms of expression and business models that are more contemporary. The third Internet revolution will also have major consequences for cinema. We at Stars Collective will continue to support filmmakers in this direction.”

“The Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier Program is thrilled to partner with Stars Collective, a company we’re pleased to see aligned with values ​​focused on diversifying our community of creators and important, human-centered fostering innovation in line with our dynamic media landscape,” says Shari Frilot, Sundance Fest Senior Programmer and Chief Curator at New Frontier.

The award goes to so-called Metaverse Ecosystem Projects and can be narrative, non-narrative, film, video or TV series and in any creative format – digital, film and VR/AR/MR/X – if they “show a complete metaverse “. “. worldview and visual concept.” Competitors must demonstrate “artistic creativity, ecological extensibility of the meta-universe, and commercial viability of intellectual property.”

Stars Collective will launch its Web3 film platform Footage and its Metaverse platform SC Meta in the current first quarter.

The company financed and co-produced Justin Chon’s Sundance premiere musical drama jamojaya with Indonesian rapper Rich Brian, who played in Park City last week to rave reviews. Chon and Alan Pao (Under the Silver Lake) are manufacturers. The film will be directed by Luo, Chris Lee (Superman is coming back), Jennifer Pritzker and Shaun Sanghani (The Fallout).

others include Nezouhdirected by Soudade Kaadan, winner of the Armani Beauty Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival; playground, artist-filmmaker Georden West’s debut film, premiering in the Tiger competition at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2023; and Wuhan Wuhandirected by Yung Chang, produced by Donna Gigliotti, Diane Quon and Executive Produced by Donnie Yen.

A proponent of bringing Asian culture to Hollywood, Luo has signed content deals with prominent filmmakers such as Robert Zemeckis, Sam Raimi, Sylvester Stallone, James Wan, F. Gary Gray, Roland Emmerich and Jon Chu.