Watch the 2024 Windrider collection of films
Check them out for free at the Windrider website:
windriderstudios.org
It’s about being receptive to the way the Spirit is moving in film, finding where God is speaking through creativity, the folks at Windrider Institute believe. How do you do that? A good place to start is to celebrate what’s good.
Windrider Institute created a place to do just that. The conversation began years ago, with co-founders John Priddy and Ed Priddy. A couple of Fuller Theological Seminary students walked into a film festival. There at Sundance, they talked film and theology, and, in short, they kept it up.
Windrider describes the Sundance Film Festival as the perfect “dynamic learning laboratory.” The gathering they created — the Windrider Summit — celebrated 20 years of conversations at this year’s festival. Now an official partner of Sundance, Windrider is a place for filmmakers old, new, and aspiring to talk about the films they watch and make along with the many facets of faith.
“Windrider exists to engage in independent film and talk about how God is working in culture,” Windrider Institute’s director of programming, Ryann Heim, told Common Good earlier this year.
Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the United States and celebrated 40 years in 2024. Out of a record 17,435 submissions, 91 projects were selected for this year’s festival.
“At the Summit, filmmakers have the chance to open up about what they’ve created and get affirmation from a room full of Christians, celebrating their work and diving deep into conversations around it,” Heim says. “One filmmaker this year, after his Q&A, stuck around and talked to every student who had a question for him. He told our group, ‘I’ve never been asked some of those questions. I’ve never gotten to talk about what this meant in my film or why I made this choice.’”
It’s a powerful learning experience for everyone. It’s a shared appreciation for good work.
A major part of a film festival like Sundance is the opportunity to hear from filmmakers themselves, usually as they participate in panels and Q&As and appear at film premieres. The Windrider Summit aims to take that experience a bit deeper.
They ask makers, Who are you? Why did you create this film? How can we help? And what is your heart behind the subject?
“As Windrider, we believe that God is revealing himself through creation — and therefore through creative work like film. So even if a filmmaker doesn’t come from a faith perspective, the stories they’re telling often reveal truths that we’ve all experienced,” Heim says.
The Windrider Institute is more than just the annual summit. It includes Windrider Productions and Windrider Studios as well: “We create, curate, and respond to film and visual media sparking thoughtful conversation around the most significant topics in our culture.”
“Windrider Studios was really created to equip the folks that come to the Windrider Summit with the ability to continue the conversation after they leave Park City,” Heim says. To that end, Windrider Studios is a “library of resources, of short films and discussion guides, that can spark conversation and allow space to talk about how these stories move people.”
Windrider Productions has created a range of work, including a series of short films on faith and work. They’ve also partnered with Family Theater Productions on films that have been distributed nationally on PBS and won regional Emmys.
CELEBRATING GOOD WORK IN 2024
Ben Proudfoot is an Academy Award-winning director and a past Spirit of Windrider Award recipient. At this year’s summit, he received Windrider’s award for Best Documentary Short for Forgiving Johnny. Windrider also showed The Last Repair Shop, co-directed by Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
“It’s been really exciting to see that film be so successful, especially after having screened it at our event,” Heim says. “Proudfoot’s films tend to highlight fascinating people whose lives and work often fall under the radar.”
Other creators and friends of Windrider highlighted at the 96th Academy Awards were Sean Wang and Sam Davis, who is a previous Windrider award recipient. Their film Grandma and Grandma, screened at the summit, was nominated for Best Documentary Short. Wang’s film Dìdi, which premiered at Sundance this year, hit theaters July 24.
