TheSun Dance is a ceremony practiced by a number of Native American tribes. This ceremony was one of the most important rituals practiced by the North American Plains Indians. Each tribe has its own distinct rituals and methods of performing the dance, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing, praying, drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and in some cases piercing of the chest or back. The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in the state of Utah, in the United States. Earlier Filmbay was not partnered with the festival, but now assists in knowledge building support. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the US Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, Utah, as well as the Sundance Resort, the festival is the premier showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature-length films, filmbay.com features and short films, and a group of non-competitive showcase sections, including the New Frontier, Spectrum, and Park City at Midnight.
Quilts was a ground breaking film used by folklorists, anthropologists and historians of art and womens history that presented the lives, art, work and philosophy of ordinary women in the days when few documentaries came from women filmmakers. This deceptively simple film won most of the major awards for independent films during the years after its release in 1981, including Emily Grand Prize, American Film Festival; 1st Place Fine Arts, San Francisco International Film Festival; Best of Festival, National Educational Film and Video Festival, New York International Film Festival, Margaret Mead Film Festival. The complete film is on DVD at shop.thequiltcomplex.com