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Sundance 2025 Kicks Off With Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm and Abby Wambach

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Sundance 2025 Kicks Off With Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm and Abby Wambach

“Our family, we have a word we say when we are in the middle of being scared and excited — it’s scited,” said Abby Wambach, the two-time Olympic gold medal winning soccer player. “That’s me right now: scited.”

It was Friday night, the first full day of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and celebrities and filmmakers were packed into a luxury hotel ballroom in sweaters and snow boots for a gala, which raised $1.5 million for the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit founded by the actor Robert Redford that supports independent artists.

The 450-person event took place in the vast ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, a new hotel at one of the bases of the Deer Valley ski resort, where lift tickets cost about $300 a day and snowboarding is still prohibited.

The Sundance Institute proceeded with the festival amid wildfires in Southern California, which have affected many in the entertainment industry and beyond, to bring its community together, organizers said.

“What gets us through, and moving forward, is the art form and the ability to tell these stories,” said Ebs Burnough, the chair of the board of trustees for the Sundance Institute, when asked if he felt uncomfortable about holding the festival this year.

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“Not every story is light and easy, but we have to tell them,” he said. “This is what storytellers do.”

The Sundance Film Festival, held nearby in Park City for more than 40 years, is credited with catapulting the careers of once-unknown talent, including Quentin Tarantino, Kristen Stewart and Christopher Nolan, and is now full of recognizable faces presenting big new projects while clomping in the snow and networking on Main Street.

Ms. Wambach was in Utah for the premiere of “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a documentary directed by Ryan White about two lovers who explore love and morality after receiving an incurable diagnosis. Ms. Wambach and her wife, the author Glennon Doyle, are executive producers on the film.

“It’s my first Sundance, and it’s my first time being part of a film,” Ms. Wambach said. “This is so exciting to be a rookie.”

The actor Jon Hamm, who was starring in “The Big Fix” a new audio drama from Audible about corruption in 1950s Los Angeles, was surrounded by gala attendees shaking his hand and asking for photos.

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He said he had difficulty recognizing people covered in winter gear.

“Everybody isn’t in tuxedos here,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Do I know you?’ They have hats on, so I can’t tell.”

Cynthia Erivo, who was wearing a wrap dress and big, clunky silver earrings, arrived encircled by an entourage. She had just been nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role in “Wicked,” and was coming off a whirlwind day of media appointments and events.

“We all love coming to Sundance because there are more indie, more off-the-wall ideas,” she said. “There is no pretense. You don’t have to dress up too much if you don’t want to. You just get to be cozy and see really good films.”

The festival, which opened just days after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for a second term, has a slate this year infused with politics.

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The actress Glenn Close was on the Sundance board for nearly 20 years and was thinking about current events. (She also played JD Vance’s mother in “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2020 film based on the vice president’s memoirs.)

“There is so much discord and darkness in the world,” she said. “We have to be reminded of what it means to be human beings. Art has the ability to inspire, and we need that.”

She was at the gala to give a tribute to her friend Michelle Satter, the founding senior director of artist programs at Sundance Institute.

Around 8 p.m., guests sat down for a dinner of bronzed salmon and speeches reflecting on the impact of the Sundance Institute.

The actress Olivia Colman, whose film “Jimpa,” about a mother taking a nonbinary teen to visit their gay grandfather, premiered Thursday at a packed Eccles Theatre, took the stage to give Ms. Erivo the Visionary Award.

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Ms. Colman, wearing face glitter and a costume tiara, lauded Ms. Erivo, “as a human, and as an actor, or as a singer, or activist, and ally, and a fashion icon, and as a frankly mind-bending practitioner of a whole load of gym exercises I can’t even name.”

Ms. Erivo walked on stage to a round of applause before putting the tiara on her own head. “It can’t be left here,” she said. “It must be worn.”

Throughout the program, audience members speculated on the festival’s future following the announcement by organizers about plans to move to a new location in 2027, which could include Cincinnati, Boulder, Colo., or Salt Lake City, with ancillary screenings in Park City.

“There is tons of traffic, it’s really hard to get around, it’s really hard to get housing, it’s expensive,” explained Amanda Kelso, the chief executive of the Sundance Institute.

“We love Park City, we love the community, but we also acknowledge that we need to think, ‘How are we going to be sustainable for the next 40 years?” Ms. Kelso said.

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Mr. Hamm said if the festival moved it should adopt a new name: “I think that’s the only fair way to honor this and honor what the new thing will be.”

But if Cincinnati is selected, he joked, “we can water ski on the river.”

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Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all

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Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all

Satirist Bill Maher is this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Maher will receive the award at the Kennedy Center on June 28th. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.

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Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Bill Maher will be receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor after all.

There’s been some confusion about whether the comedian and longtime host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher would, indeed, be getting the top humor award. After The Atlantic cited anonymous sources saying he was, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “fake news.” But today the Kennedy Center made it official.

“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” said Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”

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Is President Trump, chair of the Kennedy Center’s board, in on the joke?

Maher once visited Trump at the White House and he tends to be more conservative than many of his comedian peers but after their dinner Trump soured on Maher, calling him a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” on social media.

Maher’s acerbic wit has targeted both political parties and he’s been particularly hard on Trump recently, criticizing his decisions to wage a war with Iran and his personnel choices.

“Trump said, ‘when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.’ Um, who’s ‘we?,’” Maher said in a recent monologue.

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Past recipients of the Mark Twain Prize include Conan O’Brien, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Carol Burnett.

In a statement released through the Kennedy Center, Maher said, “It is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”

Maher will receive the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on June 28. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.

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What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion

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What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion
This week on The Debrief, BoF’s Diana Pearl explains why brands like Coach, Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch are outperforming many European luxury houses — and what their turnarounds reveal about pricing, product, retail and long-term brand building.
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Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name

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Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name

Workers react to the media after updating signage outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

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Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to force President Trump and the board and staff of the Kennedy Center to revert to calling the arts complex The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The motion, which Beatty filed on Wednesday, asks a federal circuit court judge to reverse the Trump administration and the center’s current board and staff’s decision to call the complex “The Trump-Kennedy Center.”

In the filing, Beatty’s attorneys wrote: “Can the Board of the Kennedy Center — in direct contradiction of the governing statutes — rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, ‘no.’ By renaming the Center — in violation of the law — Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the ‘sole national memorial to the late’ President in the nation’s capital.”

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In a statement emailed to NPR Thursday, Roma Daravi, the vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, wrote: “We’re confident the court will uphold the board’s decision on the name change and the desperately needed renovations which will continue as scheduled.” NPR also reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a reply.

In December, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the complex would heretofore be called “The Trump-Kennedy Center.” Although the new moniker was never approved by Congress, the Center’s website and publicity materials were immediately updated to reflect the administration’s chosen name, and the same day as Leavitt’s announcement, Trump’s name went up on the signage of the complex’s exterior, over that of the slain President Kennedy.

Later that month, Rep. Beatty who serves as an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, sued Trump, members of the Kennedy Center board appointed by Trump, and some ex-officio members, arguing that the complex’s name had been legislated by Congress in 1964. Wednesday’s motion is part of that lawsuit.

In a press release sent to NPR on Wednesday, Rep. Beatty said: “Donald Trump’s attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after himself is not just an act of ego. It is an attempt to subvert our Constitution and the rule of law. Congress established the Kennedy Center by law, and only Congress can change its name.”

For many patrons, artists and benefactors of the Kennedy Center, the name change was the last straw in politicizing the performing arts hub. Following the White House announcement of the new name, many prominent artists withdrew planned performances there, including the composer Philip Glass (a Kennedy Center Honors award recipient, who received his prize during the first Trump administration), the famed Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz and the 18-time Grammy-winning banjo master Béla Fleck.

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The Washington National Opera (WNO), which had been in residence at the Kennedy Center since 1971, also severed its ties in January after ticket sales dropped precipitously. Earlier this month, WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello told NPR, “We did try as best as we could to encourage [the patrons] that we are a bipartisan organization, but people really voted with their feet and with their pocketbooks. And so we realized that there was really no choice for us.”

On Monday, a coalition of eight architecture and cultural groups also sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board in federal court over the complex’s scheduled closing in July for unspecified renovations. Their suit seeks to have the White House and board members comply with existing historic preservation laws, and to secure Congressional approval before moving ahead with the renovation plans.

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