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This one's for Bingham.
The Sundance Institute has announced it will create a creative producing fellowship in honor of legendary indie film executive Bingham Ray, who died Jan. 23 in a Provo hospital after suffering a stroke on the first day of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
"Bingham embodied so much of what makes a great independent film producer – passion, unwavering commitment, tenacity and a deep love of cinema," Keri Putnam, Sundance's executive director, said in a statement. "We hope that his clarity of purpose around films that he championed lives on in the spirit of a new generation of producers."
The fellowship will include a $5,000 living stipend, a $5,000 pre-production grant, year-round mentorship from two advisors from the industry, support from Sundance staff, and attendance at Sundance events (the Feature Film Creative Producing Lab, Creative Producing Summit and the film festival).
A recipient will be announced this summer.
Ray, 57, was a co-founder of the indie distributor October Films in the 1980s, and for a time was president of United Artists. He had just taken the executive director's job of the San Francisco Film Society (which runs that city's film festival) when he died.