As I am about to depart to attend my 10th Sundance Film Festival (SFF), and will be blogging from there for the next 10 days, I thought I would post some details about Sundance that I often get asked and give a preview of this year's program.
What, exactly, is so important about this festival?
Sundance has become the most important film festival in the USA, if not the world, for independent film. The films that are shown here must have developed outside the normal Hollywood Studio system. Some films do have Hollywood distributors by the time they get to Sundance, or have had some influence from actors, writers, directors that have Hollywood careers, but the production and financing is expected to come outside of that system. Ever since 1989 when sex, lies and videotape premiered, was picked up by a distributor, and became a hit in general release, Hollywood has descended on Park City, Utah for ten days at the end of January to see if they can discover the next hit, such as The Blair Witch Project and Little Miss Sunshine, both of which premiered at SFF.
What is a "Sundance Film"?
"A Sundance Film" has become a kind of adjective for films that have a certain "Not a typical Hollywood Film" quality — and couldn't be made through the usual Hollywood system. The films usually have a much smaller budget, interesting characters and dialogue, plots that are original, endings that aren't necessarily the predictable, happy ending, and a certain spirit that, well, you just know it when you see it.
So why see a film at SFF and not wait until it gets to theaters?
The most obvious answer is that many of these films, especially the documentaries and foreign films, never get to theaters, or only make it for one week runs in alternative film houses. The second reason is because after a film is screened, the Director and actors (or subjects in the case of a documentary) hold a Q and A session where anyone in the audience can ask questions — a great perk if you have ever left a film with questions about the story or the director's choices. Third, it is like camp for film lovers. Thousands of people are there for the same purpose and it creates a fun sense of camaraderie — you start talking to people on the buses, on shuttles, and in wait-list lines about films they saw and what they would and would not recommend others to see.
Can anyone get tickets to see films at SFF?
Yes, but it does take a bit of work. After all the VIPs and Package Holders pick their tickets, there is a drawing for all the rest of us for time slots when we can buy our own tickets online. However, not everybody in the lottery gets a time slot, and after the first couple of days, most of the HOT tickets are gone. However, there are still a few ways to get tickets, the most prominent being the Wait List line — but you must be willing to get in line at least 2 hours before the film is set to start and there is no guarantee of getting a seat. Some people wait 5 and 6 hours for a film that they really want to see. One bonus of the wait-list line is that tickets are $10 if you do get in, rather than the $15 it costs of you order via the box office.
If you have any other questions, please post them in the comments and I will try to answer them in future posts.

I am more excited about this year's program than I was for the last couple of festivals, as the Iraq War and the general malaise of the Bush years does not seem to be affecting the overarching mood of the themes as it seemed to in recent festivals.
There are four main categories that films compete in at SFF, Dramatic, Documentary, World Dramatic and World Documentary. There are also other categories that aren't up for the big awards: New Frontier, Park City at Midnight, and Spectrum are. for whatever reason, in those categories. Sometimes the films are more experimental but for the most part they are just categories in which to put films. There is a Shorts category that also has its own awards, but the category that gets the most attention is the Premieres section. Premieres are films that have too much star value, too high a budget, too much Hollywood input, to be part of the competition, but they are small enough that whoever has produced, funded or will be distributing them does not want to spend the funds or effort to have a big-time premiere in New York or LA, so they use Sundance to premiere their films and get buzz. Each premiere is only viewed 2 or 3 times at the SFF, but the first viewing is almost always at the largest, most prestigious venue, the Eccles Theater.
So, with that, here are the films that interest me this year.
Dramatic — The Last Word, a writer who makes his living composing suicide notes with Winona Ryder — The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, based on the Michael Chabon novel and with Peter Sarsgaard and Sienna Miller — Sunshine Cleaning, has two sisters who start a business cleaning up after murders and suicides, with Amy Adams — The Wackness, A teen dealer trades his product for psychiatry sessions, with Ben Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen (and they reportedly share an on-screen kiss).
Documentary — FLOW: For the Love of Water, focuses on the thirst for fresh water around the world as access to it becomes more difficult for many peoples — IOUSA, focuses on the unsustainable fiscal policies of the American government — Secrecy, looks at how the feds use document classification to keep their activities from citizens' eyes and thus undermining democracy.
World Documentary — Triage, highlights the experiences of the former president of Doctors Without Frontiers — Up the Yangtze, looks at the impact of the Three Gorges Dam project in China on the people who live along the river.
Premieres — Assassination of a High School President, a school reporter investigates an SAT scandal, with Bruce Willis as the crazy principal — Incendiary, deals with how a random act of terror affects a family.
The film that will be hardest to get into but I most want to see is Morgan Spurlock's Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden. The director of Super Size Me returns with this visit to the Middle East to find out what created the creature that is OBL. It was sold out across the board very quickly, so wish me luck in the wait-list line.
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