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Sundance Film Festival USA

Presented by Sundance Film Festival USA and Belcourt Theatre at Belcourt Theatre

January 26, 2012

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Films from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival will screen in independent theaters in nine different cities around the country, including Nashville. The screenings are part of Sundance Film Festival USA, a program designed to bring the Festival experience to film-loving audiences nationwide. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival takes place January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

On January 26, the second Thursday of the Sundance Film Festival, nine filmmakers will each travel from Utah to one of the following cities: Ann Arbor, MI; Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Chicago, IL; Houston, TX; Nashville, TN; Orlando, FL; San Francisco, CA; and Tucson, AZ. Their travel is courtesy of Official Airline Sponsor Southwest Airlines. In each city, the filmmaker will introduce and screen their film and participate in a Q&A with the audience. A video featuring highlights from this year’s Sundance Film Festival will precede each screening.

The Sundance Film Festival USA initiative was established in 2010.

“Bringing new voices in independent cinema to communities across the country at the same time they’re breaking for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival is an exciting proposition for artists, audiences, and for us,” said Robert Redford, Founder and President of Sundance Institute. “Even with the accessibility of films everywhere, there is still something incomparable about discovering, with others, a new world in a great story onscreen.”

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “Sundance Film Festival USA is our way of celebrating arthouse theatres across the country and thanking them for their year-round support of independent film. For these filmmakers, it’s also an opportunity to connect with the growing audiences for independent film outside of Utah and offer them a first look at the year ahead.”

Nashville, TN – Belcourt Theatre

West of Memphis / U.S.A. (Director: Amy Berg) — Three teenage boys are incarcerated for the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. 19 years later, new evidence calls into question the convictions and raises issues of judicial, prosecutorial and jury misconduct – showing that the first casualty of a corrupt justice system is the truth.

For many people, the case of the West Memphis Three has become synonymous with wrongful conviction. Despite a lack of physical evidence, three Arkansas teenagers were found guilty in 1994 of the ritual murder of three eight-year-old boys. Media attention led to an outpouring of support that has helped to keep them in the public consciousness for nearly two decades.

Director Amy Berg examines the crime and its aftermath, providing a voice for the victims’ families, including those with doubts about whether the right people are behind bars. Rather than focus on the accused, the film follows their supporters—including loved ones, attorneys, and celebrity advocates such as Eddie Vedder and Peter Jackson—as they seek the truth. With the help of a former FBI profiler, a less sensational, yet still chilling, motive and suspect emerge—ones, shockingly, never investigated.

With compelling, immediate access, WEST OF MEMPHIS follows the story of the West Memphis Three to its dramatic and unexpected conclusion, raising serious questions about justice and its compromises. - B.T.