Spying in the House of Sundance
NAMAC was long overdue to establish a presence at Sundance, so in January, our co-directors, Jack and Helen, went to the Festival. Our raison de venir was to proselytize by giving out our membership materials and publications, like Deep Focus, at the Filmmaker Lodge. We got into some movies, we attended some parties, we stopped in on some panels, we handed out our stuff. We shared a condo with our friends Michael Lumpkin and Jennifer Morris from Frameline. Helen stayed for the first weekend of the event, and Jack followed for the next three days. Because we were not there at the same time, we had some different experiences, which are recounted below.
Helen
It had just snowed. Red holiday lights were still garlanded on the trees throughout the town, everywhere only tiny red lights. It was the evening, the first night of the twenty-fifth Sundance Film Festival, and you could see miniature figures gracefully skiing down a run that led right to the town’s main street. The Pioneer Square Albertson’s was full of grocery shoppers like us buying healthy breakfast food, coffee, snack items, and cases of bottled water for the long weekend ahead.
I liked wandering around outdoors in the ten-degree weather and staring at the surrounding mountains of Park City, wondering if it would be more satisfying to be skiing on that night-lit slope or sitting in a packed auditorium watching Nicole Holofcener’s opening night film, Friends With Money. Instead I was invited to a large group dinner, and we talked our way into a lounge party where we picked up the best free gift of the week (at our level), a huge Timbuktu courier bag. And then I almost fainted walking too quickly down the street. I had forgotten we were at 8,000 feet.
I had no official festival badge with my name and affiliation on it, nor had I been able to purchase more than one ticket during my prescheduled online ticket-buying time-slot earlier in the month. Without that badge, the “passport” that gets you into venues and events, I was prepared to stand in line at 8 a.m. in order to do what I was supposed to do—see as many movies as I could, particularly those I’d never have a chance to see again, and make face-to-face contact with film people I hoped I would meet again in other settings.
Over and over I marveled at how the media arts field, like a small country, seems to share only a common border with commercial media. We are the perpetually developing nation persisting in the shadow of the superpower. We understand the language of the superpower, but we have other languages that we speak and values that we try to keep alive. We have to do a lot of listening and watching at Sundance, because the majority of people aren’t there to hear what we have to say. So I observed the screenings, which were anticipated like fashion shows; enjoyed the well-deserved happiness of the chosen filmmakers; and tried to catch a glimmer of how this year’s market forces were fuelling aesthetic trends in theatrical cinema. I thought about those lucky few individuals who were able to cross these borderlands skillfully, and how they always seem to do well at Sundance.
Because we all converged in crowds in this highly stylized and completely atypical Utah resort town, it was easier to mostly imagine, though sometimes actually glimpse, the social hierarchies that layer and drive the dynamics of the Festival. The volunteers, from college-age kids to retirees, dressed in logo’d Kenneth Cole jackets, worked the shuttle bus stops, the ticket sales booths, and lounges of all kinds. The affluent film lovers had made pilgrimages from around the country for a vacation of movies, star spotting, and snow sports. There were the filmmakers themselves, nervous soldiers in battle, glad-handing, fielding cell-calls from sales agents, grabbing appetizer-meals at endless parties, and trying to keep the buzz going. Distributors, public TV personnel, exhibitors, festival programmers, industry free-agents, and PR people intermingled, moving in clusters from event to event clutching bags full of swag, notes, paper, and water bottles as they worked fifteen hour days, from dark rooms to sun-filled lounges and back again. The media press, bloggers, and trend-watchers moved around quickly and anonymously, focused on filing their daily reports. And the mostly invisible but extremely palpable entertainment culture added the champagne-like fizz to the event—the promise of proximity to celebrities cruising the clogged streets in private SUVs, accumulating gift bags and being spotted at occasional screenings.
It was amazing to see how hyper-branded and self-conscious this event has become, all the more strange as the backdrop to movies that have taken their creators years to get made, and which, for the most part, are not primarily selling fun and entertainment. In such a closely circumscribed environment, it was odd to attempt to behave as a member of the virtuous film culture—several films a day, maybe one reception to check in with pals, and then early bedtime—and to veer toward indulging the desire to celebrate the excesses of media culture, be pampered as a creative guest, promote your work, get in to lots of parties, and practice the language of the industry superpowers in informal but privileged settings.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, the Filmmakers Lounge became a relatively comfortable place to relax between activities. We set up our wares on a large pool table between the food-and-beverage bar and one of the party rooms. During my scheduled time, I shared the table with Katie Chevigny of Media Rights and Robert West of Working Films. Since the door-watchers only let in official badge-holders, only a random selection of festival goers came by our table to look at what we were all about.
This was the other Sundance—the independent media field that is not in competition with the beauty, power, money, mystery, and the luck-quotient required to launch an independent movie into today’s marketplace. It was the festival of movie lovers, those open to unpredictability, willing to partake of anything and everything available, those who move quickly and purposefully from screening to screening, keeping warm, gathering evidence, watching audiences watch.
Standing at the pool table as passers-by inquired about who we were and what we did, we tried our best, but we knew this might not be the ideal site to convince the public of our value. For most people, media is not broken. When there seem to be more options and opportunities than ever before, what are we trying to fix?
At this moment the marketplace governs, and the individual creator must adhere to its rules or risk rejection and indifference. What is the story we are telling about the independent media field, its history and future? And does that story work anymore? We can’t tell our story in the language of the media superpower, so how must the story transform in order to tap into another, deeper vein of interest and loyalty?
On my last morning, the young filmmaker-volunteer at my bus stop told me about getting into the W party and almost getting into the Paris Hilton party. He asked me what I did and took my business card. He said he was looking for financing for his Polanski-style thriller script; another guy at the bus stop overheard and gave him his business card. Within an hour I was on the shuttle van to the airport, listening to our Mormon driver explain how he regretted not seeing his family much and not being able to take his kids to church during the Festival’s heavy work weeks. Behind me, a producer from Canada was telling her seatmate, a film editor, about her husband’s feature film and its positive reception at the Festival, and he was telling her about his dinner with John Waters.
There is no underestimating the power of the dream—which within twenty-four hours of reentry back home was just that, a dream-event that lives on in memory, held together with a few logo’d scarves, bags, caps, and mittens, until the next big one.
Jack
As I approached Park City, Utah, in a van from the airport, I got my first glimpse of the generational differences I would observe throughout my few days at the Festival. One of my companions was an internationally recognized feature-film director who was premiering her new documentary at Sundance. Two others were successful first-time directors from last year’s Festival. When I asked the seasoned director her name, which I recognized immediately having seen many of her films, she turned to me and said that she was a complete unknown to the younger filmmakers in the back. This, for me, brought up the sad and sorry state of film education and—my projection—film curiosity in America today.
I was born into a time when crazed and passionate cinephiles, committed activists, and boundary-crossing creators (a number of them founding members of NAMAC) charted the course for independent media in America, I grew up spoiled by access to cutting-edge dramatic work, provocative documentaries, and experimental pieces on film and video. All of this was available at any number of venues in Philadelphia, where I came of age, in both commercial theatres and nonprofit centers.
These days, outside of major cities, it is virtually impossible to access such a plethora of expression. Rarely do commercial theatres show foreign films or anything that falls outside of conventional dramatic structure. Even a Sundance prize doesn’t guarantee exposure. Last year’s winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize, The Hero, tells of the daily struggles of family reunification in Angola and shows images of Africa that few in the West see except as a backdrop for commercial films like The Constant Gardener. This riveting film had few theatrical opportunities in the last year—so much for the power of a Sundance award. There was a time when PBS, now a mere shadow of what it was, presented American independent and international cinema regularly. Though innovative distributors like Netflix are savvy enough to recognize the “niche” that independent work fills in our culture, in no way do they carry the diversity of voices and visions that was easily available a generation ago and continues to be produced annually. What struck me at Sundance was what a loss this situation is for younger creators like the ones in the van with me.
In Park City for the second time, it became clear to me that there are, in fact, two Sundance Film Festivals. The first is the U.S. competition, which annually garners the buzz. It includes a total of thirty films in the dramatic and documentary competitions and a handful more in the Premiere section. Then there is the other festival of approximately 100 films, which includes the competitive world dramatic and documentary categories, along with the Frontier, Spectrum, and Park City at Midnight sections. Much of the work I associate with my developmental years screens at this other festival. I applaud Sundance for their continued commitment to this work, for it is here that we get the glimpses of vision or provocation that are absent from much of the—for lack of a better word—commercial fare. (Not that there aren’t exceptions. It was a bold programming decision to include Alan Berliner’s intimate, personal work, Wide Awake, in the documentary competition alongside films about the Iraq War and crowd-pleasers about crossword puzzles.)
One thing that I find fascinating about the Sundance Film Festival is how friendly everyone is to each other. In lines and on the bus, you can strike up a conversation with the person next to you that can lead to a film you may have overlooked—or provide good advice about one to avoid. What surprised me was how Sundance has become a family affair—parents bring their adult children to see a cousin’s film, or bring their college-age children as an educational trip. A generation ago this was unthinkable. These are not industry people but just “regular folks” with some disposable income.
Filmmakers continue to have the cultural clout that rock stars had a generation earlier, and by extension, many of the young men I spoke with in line were planning on being directors. They weren’t sure yet what kind of director (dramatic or documentary), and upon reflection I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. They all own DVCams, have Final Cut Pro on the computers, and are rather savvy with self-distribution and vlogs. And though they all want to be star filmmakers, I also wonder what their intervention in the field will be. Every generation needs to create a world in which to exist.
Another part of Sundance’s parallel universe is in the Filmmaker Lodge. Expertly managed by the Sundance Institute’s Kristin Feeley and Shannon Kelley, the Lodge is the place where filmmakers and organizational leaders all eventually land. It’s a wonderfully relaxed area to catch up with old friends and colleagues. Many of the festival panels occurred there. One that I attended, Postnational: Stories of Migration, was packed with younger documentary filmmakers eager to learn how the panelists gained access to their subjects and asking the perennial question, “How did you raise the funds to make your project?” By contrast, the panel Creative Independence, and How to Keep It looked at the commercial industry, asking the question of how to maintain that all-important hallmark of independent filmmaking—editorial control—when working with studios. It was a bit surprising to hear everyone talking about low-budget filmmaking in the $10 million range. Even more surprising was hearing panelists recount their struggles to make independent commercial work, because the struggles are not so different from those of previous decades. The major difference now is cost.
While there was curiosity about NAMAC and what we did, most of the visitors during my stint at the information table were interested in the American Film Institute, which shared our time-slot. At the table I had a chance to talk with a colleague from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the implications of NAMAC’s study, Deep Focus. Like their American counterpart, the CBC is struggling with how to make sense of the new distribution environment afforded by ever-exploding technological developments. Interestingly, when this subject came up at the Creative Independence panel the previous day, it was framed in terms of how “broadband is killing independent filmmaking,” especially in Europe (it is estimated that the continent will be fully connected in two years). Just how broadband was going to undermine independent filmmaking was not made completely clear, and no one on the panel spoke to how independents might take advantage of this changing system. It is incumbent on us not to fall victim to this imminent change, which is already underway globally, but to figure out our place in this new world.
Sundance was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with a number of our member organizations and to see how they functioned in this commercialized world. Frameline gave its signature party, attended by distributors, festival programmers, and filmmakers, both commercial and public interest; and ITVS threw a celebratory fifteenth anniversary party, complete with a velvet-rope waiting-line and clipboard wielding sentries, which much of the noncommercial independent filmmaking community showed up for, including a number of our international colleagues. We shared stories about our favorite films, speculating on who would walk away with prizes, and lamented the current state of almost everything. In these social gatherings, we appeared to be as great a force as those in the commercial world, complete with people wanting to crash our parties. But our challenge remains: Within the context of Sundance, how do our organizations assert our values of independence?
© 2006 National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. All Rights Reserved.
