Director and Screeenwriter Mack Alston ’87 won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for an Agent of Change for his documentary Love Free or Die at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in January. Alston was one of seven Columbia College alumni presenting films at the festival in Park City, Utah. 

 The Sundance Film Festival is an annual celebration of independent filmmakers sponsored by the Sundance Institute. It provides a platform for independent artists to showcase their work to a global audience and a place for viewers to discover filmmaking’s newest talent. Each year, the festival selects 200 films for exhibition from more than 9,000 submissions, and more than 50,000 people attend those screenings. In recent years, The Sundance Film Festival has featured some of the most influential independent films, including Reservoir Dogs,  American Splendor, An Inconvenient Truth, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Cove. This year’s festival took place from Jan. 19 to 29.

Below are other Columbia College alumni whose works were screened at the festival:

Keep the Lights On: Elisabeth Vastola, CC ’07 – Costume Designer
About Face: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, CC ’74 – Director, Producer, and Photographer
Bachelorette: Carley Hugo, CC ’06 – Co-Producer
Celeste and Jesse Forever: Yana Gorskaya, CC ’96 – Editor
The Pact: Ronen Landa, CC ’01 – Composer of Original Score
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie: Ben Cosgrove, CC ’90 – Executive Producer