Advisor Studio: Liberating Your Story - Screenwriting Through a Decolonized and Abstract Lens
About this Advisor Studio
In Advisor Studio sessions, Sundance Collab Advisors share field experiences and insights into their specific areas of craft, including writing, directing and producing for TV and film.
At Sundance, we champion artists with unique voices, elevating personal and compelling stories that only they can tell. As independent filmmakers, you have the story you are excited to share with an audience, that has characters, and scenarios that have lived in your mind for, perhaps, years. With an oversaturated and ever-changing industry, the mindset of writing a story “that sells” can be limiting. How do you find a way to break out of this narrative of cyclical storytelling to get to the root of how you can meaningfully tell your story?
Filmmaker and Collab advisor, Maria Judice (Elephant, Neptune, Frost), discusses different ways that artists can rediscover their own stories. Taking philosophies from her independently run course Screenwriting Rooted in Decolonization and Abstract Thinking, Maria discusses tools that can be used to break away from classical storytelling to re-center your own narrative.
Advisor StudioTeam
Maria Judice
Writer/Director/Producer
M is an artist, cultural organizer, and visual storyteller in cinema with an MFA from CalArts. Wired magazine called M a "filmmaker provocateur." PALM TREES DOWN 3RD ST. won the Adrienne Shelly Award, and it was called "a masterpiece" by Film Threat. Obsidian Theater Festival produced and staged A METAPHOR IN 3 ACTS in 2020. ELEPHANT received the Departure Audience Award at Indie Memphis in 2022.
Directorial work includes short films PALM TREES DOWN 3RD ST. (2008), GERANIUMS (2009), MOONLESS (2012), SPACED (2014), and the feature film ELEPHANT (2022), which premiered at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
In 2021, M produced NEPTUNE FROST (Cannes 2021), directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. She launches the Black Maria Microcinema in the Fall of 2024. The microcinema is a dedicated screening and educational space for radical works.
Indigo Impact was founded in 2016 to produce impactful left-of-center documentaries, fiction narratives, art projects, and community campaigns. As a total cultural worker and hood educator, she sits on the board of School of the Alternative, offering affordable non-hierarchical arts education. Classes on cinema studies are taught in open virtual and public spaces to advance discussions on the future of Black cinema. Curricula include SCREENWRITING ROOTED IN DECOLONIZATION AND ABSTRACT THINKING, THE PRINCIPLES of GOOD STORY, BLACK FILM as PROTEST, and the 101 ESSENTIAL BLACK FILMS.
M can be found on unceded Ramaytush land of the Yelamu people, named San Francisco by settlers, kicking around the fog.
Katherine Street
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer
Katherine "Kat" Street is an LA-based award-winning filmmaker and Philadelphia native. A cinephile at heart, she writes female-driven stories with complex (oftentimes damaged) main characters, centered around self-discovery, self-love, and belonging.
She has written numerous short-form projects, including original shorts, pilots, and features. She wrote and directed the dramatic short film “Cycles,” which received festival recognition in both acting and best romantic short. She also created her award-winning flagship web series "The New Adult,” which is currently streaming on Kweli TV.
Kat is a Stowe Story Lab SAGIndie Fellow and a participant in the BlackMagic Collective Emerging Filmmakers Initiative. In 2021, she founded the Black Film Challenge, a project that showcases filmmakers of African descent and the movies they create.
She earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a concentration in Cinematography and has literary representation with Yak Yak Mgmt.