Sundance Icon Michelle Satter, Who Lost Palisades Home in Fire, Feted by Robert Redford During Emotional Gala: “You Are the Lighthouse”
Like so many great stories, Michelle Satter’s Sundance backstory started with a phone call and ended with the boldest of propositions.
More than 40 years ago, Satter, a recent college graduate who had just co-founded a performing arts organization in Boston, answered a call and a question from a close friend that would forever change her life. “Would I consider coming to the Sundance Institute in Utah for the first monthlong filmmakers lab that Robert Redford was starting up? How can you say no to that?” Satter recalled from a ballroom stage inside the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley during the Celebrating Sundance Institute gala on Friday. “There was an immediate yes.”
Satter arrived that following summer during which time Redford laid out his vision for the Sundance Institute, blueprints that called for “well-established screenwriters, directors and actors to share their decades of experience with filmmakers early in their careers with the goal of helping them write and direct the best version of the stories they were destined to tell.”
Satter was hooked. Actually, she called it “love at first sight,” so when the time came to head home a month later, she took a chance and asked for five minutes with Mr. Redford, aka “Bob.”
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“With all the confidence I could muster, I told him he needed me to open an L.A. office and help him fulfill the vision that he had created. He looked at me for a moment and then said, ‘Sure, call me when you get there.’ Right then and there, I learned quickly that when somebody says yes, stop talking.”
The year was 1981, and Satter snagged the job as founding director of artist programs for the Sundance Institute. Working alongside Redford and a small but mighty team, they hatched a plan to support independent storytellers through an annual June filmmakers lab. Over the years, she’s also been integral in building the episodic program, producers program and the Institute’s global initiatives. She also oversees the Indigenous, catalyst and documentary film programs, and is credited with founding the global digital platform Sundance Collab.
Ask any auteur, scribe, festival veteran or insider who best exemplifies both the spirit of Sundance and the heart of independent film, and chances are Satter’s name is the first you will hear in reply. She is seen as an influential mentor to generations of auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Chloé Zhao, Dee Rees, John Cameron Mitchell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ryan Coogler, Miranda July, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi and more.
Satter will also be the first to say that she’s most comfortable behind the scenes and far from the center of attention but she made an exception last night to step into the lights and receive her flowers as the marquee honoree at Celebrating Sundance presented by Google TV. The starry evening, which raised funds for the Sundance Institute and its work, had a shortlist of honorees that also included James Mangold (Trailblazer Award), Cynthia Erivo (Visionary Award), Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie (Vanguard Award for Fiction) and Sean Wang (Vanguard Award for Nonfiction).
The majority of names on that list just received Oscar nominations last week, and while all their tributes and speeches had the capacity crowd glued to the stage, the gala undeniably transformed into the Michelle Satter show. She was feted by three separate presenters courtesy of Glenn Close, filmmaker and lab veteran Marielle Heller and Bob’s daughter, Amy Redford, who read a letter her father wrote.
When she accepted the trophy, Satter, whose speech was bookended by standing ovations, had the room in awe with her powerful words matched with a resilient spirit in the wake of tragedy. Satter and her writer-producer husband, David Latt, lost their family home in the Palisades Fire, a blow that came a little more than a year after the tragic murder of the couple’s son, Michael Latt.
More on both later, but back to Bob’s letter. “You have survived these four decades of changing administrations, pandemics and pandemonium, not only because of what you do, but who you are. The world has changed so much in these four decades, but in the midst of all of this change, one thing has remained steadfast. You, Michelle, through every challenge, every triumph, every cultural twisted turn, you are the lighthouse,” Redford said in his prepared remarks, which brought his daughter Amy to tears. “Yet it has never been about you as you’ve always been laser focused on the craft, the artist, and what they need. It may be to encourage them to keep digging or maybe back off, maybe give them a hug or maybe a little kick in the butt.”
Close said she’s had a front row seat to all of the above. “I have observed her in actions. She is present. Her concentration is laser beam. She listens, she empathizes, she questions, she challenges, and she exalts when the inevitable breakthrough happens and a new voice emerges,” said Close, who then nodded to the fractured cultural and political landscape. “Never before in the history of mankind has the voice of the artist been more vital to speak truth to power, to keep us connected to our humanity, to move and inspire us, to make us strong and powerful.”
The veteran actress then said Satter may not look the part of strong and powerful but she is that and more. “Michelle has a soft voice. She’s a diminutive woman. But Michelle, you are a giant, an explorer, a visionary, a magician, a warrior, a provocateur, a mentor without fear, and on top of all that you are a wife and a mother, which basically says it all.”
In accepting her trophy, Satter talked a lot about family, both at the Institute and her own. A child of a Holocaust survivor mother (who is about to turn 102, and remains “one of the great bridge players”) and an artist father, Satter learned early on about the power of art to transform one’s life. “I grew up in a house surrounded by my father’s art and was immersed in a world where creativity knew no bounds. His work was everywhere, serving as a constant reminder of how art can bring beauty and truth into a dark world,” she said.
Early on in her remarks, Satter was moved to tears while detailing the tragic fire that claimed her home. She told The Hollywood Reporter that she escaped with only 10 minutes to collect personal items. Thinking that it was just an evacuation and that she might soon be able to return home, she only grabbed a few things and lost a life’s worth of prized possessions and artwork. “It’s a deeply devastating time for us and so many others. A moment that calls for all of us coming together to support our bigger community. As a friend recently noted, and I have to listen to this. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. We lost our village. At the end of the day, we are the village.”
She then thanked the village of filmmakers, artists and Sundance colleagues that share in “Bob’s change-making vision.” She expressed gratitude to husband David Latt and gave a special shout out to their son, Franklin Latt, a power agent at CAA who serves as co-head of the agency’s motion picture talent department. “That’s a big job,” she noted of his role in repping a long list of A-list stars. “He has worked hard to ensure that artists can thrive in our industry and find the opportunities to do great work.”
She saved the last part of her speech for her late son, Michael Latt, “a social justice leader” who was tragically murdered by a mentally ill homeless woman. Latt’s final film, the short Hoops, Hopes & Dreams is screening at Sundance this week. “He would want to say to all of you, ‘Leading with love, building and fostering equity and cultural change through art and storytelling, it is our essential way forward.’”
Other highlights of the evening included Erivo accepting an award from Olivia Colman, who wore an Elphaba-coded tiara to do the honors, Mangold being feted by both Edward Norton (on video) and Joel Edgerton (in person), Sara Bareilles performing two songs to close out the evening including a world premiere performance of “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet.” The track is featured in Ryan White’s Sundance doc Come See Me in the Good Light, and she wrote it with Andrea Gibson and Brandi Carlile.
As for Mangold, even though he was riding high off the eight Oscar nominations for his Searchlight film A Complete Unknown, he spent a chunk of his acceptance speech praising Satter and Sundance. He said that the fest has always been a kind of beacon for him when he was starting out in his career, “a far off place that I read about and saw on TV.” He visited first as a fan and later to attend the Sundance Lab to develop what would end up becoming his 1997 feature Cop Land. His first film, Heavy, was invited to the festival and it won him a director’s prize.
As Mangold’s career skyrocketed, he never forgot his roots by staying close to Sundance while serving as an advisor and mentor to other filmmakers through the years. “It really is a two-way street for us anyway, through all these years. It’s been a place where I made lifelong friends, and among them Robert Redford and Michelle Satter,” he noted. “It’s immeasurable how deeply these two people have shaped the course of filmmaking, not just Sundance, but filmmaking worldwide from the late 20th century until now with kind and gentle and firm and loving support of new voices.”
Mangold said that Redford’s hiring of Satter “has to be the single most significant and impactful decision” that Redford has made over many decades. The most pointed part of his acceptance speech came when he offered a call to action to all the storytellers in the ballroom and beyond.
“I think in this time of irony and snark and internet nightmares, we need sincerity and earnestness more than ever. That doesn’t mean every film has to be a history lesson or depressing, or weepy or political or provocative or wear its issues on its sleeve. It just means that we shouldn’t be embarrassed to feel shit and show it. We can battle the sleepwalking of our culture, not only with issue oriented films, but also as Michelle said, entertaining ones that feel, and feel earnest and vital and emotional and true. Anyway, that’s how, in some small way, I hope some of my work is remembered, and I’m sure that’s how the work of Sundance will be remembered.”
