Welcome to Sundance
Woke to the sound of avalanche charges…fitting somehow, since there‘s an avalanche of people coming. But not yet. Press office: lull before the storm, sidewalks passable, spirits high. Snow yesterday and today contributed to a slower start, but by tonight when Friends with Money (35mm) screens it will be business as usual.
So while Park City fills up with stars, star gazers, and aspirants, we take a pass on the parties and heads straight for what we care about most.
That would be technology. We‘ll give you a window into the Sundance Film Center–the techy hub of town, where we‘ll eagerly queue and shove our way into workshops with names like “4:4:4 RGB HD/DI” and “Emerging Technologies and the Delivery of Digital Content”. We‘ll also be mixing with filmmakers who have technical stories to tell.
Sundance has always had an ambivalent relationship with technology. The content of the films is first and foremost; the idea that how a film was made would eclipse why it was made is completely un-Sundance. However, Robert Redford and Ian Calderon, who heads the Sundance Institute, are both passionate about the power of technology for one important reason: it provides access to filmmakers who were previously shut out of the community by the sheer expense of making and printing film. Increasingly, technology is not only important in democratizing the creation of film and giving greater control to the filmmaker, it is also redefining how filmmakers find their audiences–another area of great passion for Sundance. It gives new meaning to the word “networking”–always a staple of Sundance, now redefined by the proliferation of digital networks.
So check back to see a side of Sundance you won‘t hear about anywhere else.
