Adrienne Shelly Foundation Announces First Recipient of Sundance Institute Women Filmmakers Grant

Adrienne Shelly Foundation Announces First Recipient of Sundance Institute Women Filmmakers Grant

Filmmaker and Sundance Lab Alumni Maryam Keshavarz Awarded Inaugural Grant

NEW YORK, Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Adrienne Shelly Foundation (ASF) in collaboration with The Sundance Institute announced today that the inaugural Adrienne Shelly Foundation Women Filmmakers Grant has been awarded to filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz. The establishment of the Grant unites ASF with Sundance in its mission to support the advancement of talented women filmmakers. The ASF is a non-profit organization dedicated to the memory of the late writer/director/actor Adrienne Shelly. Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program is a year-round program that supports the advancement of emerging filmmakers with distinctive, independent projects.

The ASF will provide a $5,000 grant to be awarded by Sundance Institute each July to a filmmaker coming out of the Feature Film Program's June Director's Lab. The first recipient, Maryam Keshavarz, participated in both the 2007 January Screenwriting Lab and the 2007 June Directing and Screenwriting Labs with her project CIRCUMSTANCE.

Sundance Institute joins an impressive list of organizations with which The ASF has awarded scholarships and grants in its eight-month history, including the American Film Institute, the IFP, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia University, Women in Film and the Nantucket Film Festival.

Adrienne Shelly's third film WAITRESS premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was purchased there by Fox Searchlight. The film, which stars Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines and Shelly opened in theatres May 2 and has since grossed nearly $20 million. Shelly began her career in starring roles in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth and Trust, the latter of which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, where Hartley's script received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

Source: Adrienne Shelly Foundation

CONTACT: Adam Walker of Jeremy Walker + Associates, +1-212-595-6161,
adam@jeremywalker.com, For The Adrienne Shelly Foundation; or Amy McGee for
Sundance Institute, +1-310-492-2333, Amy_mcgee@sundance.org

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Profile: International Entertainment