UArts Professor’s Film Accepted to 2021 Sundance Film Festival

For the second year in a row, a work by UArts Film Program Director Michael Attie has been accepted to Sundance Film Festival, one of the film industry’s highest-profile festivals. 

This year, Attie and his co-directors, Meghan O’Hara and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, submitted The Field Trip, a short nonfiction film about a group of fifth-graders who learn what it takes to get ahead in the modern U.S. workplace. The film’s production team included two UArts alumni—Andrea Parmelee BFA ’18 (Film Design), who served as The Field Trip’s assistant editor, and Timothy Day ’99 (Jazz), part-time film faculty member, who is doing the sound design.

“It’s a real honor and thrill to have The Field Trip selected for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival,” Attie said. “You can’t ask for a better place to premiere a documentary short. 

“My co-directors and I shot the film back in 2017, and it went through numerous iterations to get it to this point. We live in three different cities, so we actually finished the edit, color correction and sound mix using Zoom and other tools for virtual collaboration.”

Another of Attie’s recent short films, Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa, garnered numerous honors and awards in 2020, also including acceptance to Sundance. This year’s festival will take place Jan. 28 through Feb. 3 in Park City, Utah. 

Pictured above: A still from The Field Trip