Sundance Film Festival

In Chimayo Friday night, when the blackout took down most of Main from for most of 90 minutes, people were cheerful in that resigned way that seems to be catching on all over. Of course the blackout only reinforced what every human in Park City already knows: there are more of us than ever. The Festival now sprawls across every logistical boundary, as the balance between people who are here to work and watch films, tips in favor of a limitless supply of people here for other reasons. For the last several years, this always comes up at the opening press conference as Robert Redford–in a kind of cheerful/resigned way–acknowledges the circus rings that orbit Sundance and says it’s still about the films.

But since I’m here to talk to our readers–the people behind the cameras and in the post suites–I do see the fallout in unfortunate ways. It may still be about the films, but in some ways it’s not as much about the filmmakers as I would like (I’m biased). Just at the most basic level, tickets are so competitive that editors, sound professionals, and visual effects artists sometimes can’t get into their own films. To be blunt, there are second class citizens on the team, pushed into that position by sheer scarcity.

Further, the Sundance mythology of director-as-auteur is not really a modern position anymore, as directors are also cinematographers and/or editors, or as veteran cinematograhers save first time directors’ butts (and vice versa sometimes), as digital technology blows apart the old workflows and job descriptions and people who come here via music or photography or motion graphics just see the world and their place it in a little differently. There are both the multi-hyphenates (call them auteurs I guess) and the team players. But collaboration and overlap of disciplines is all over the place in real life.

(Here’s just one tiny example of how Sundance logistics don’t reflect reality: The credential badges carry one title; they aren’t designed to indicate that a person was both DP and producer. Or screenwriter and sound editor. So as the professional networking hits an increasingly frenetic and competitive pace, people can be underestimated just by what’s printed on their badge. When someone’s making decisions at a glance, that can hurt.)

Filmmaking has always been a collaborative art; I’m sure everyone at Sundance knows that and in fact does a great deal to foster it. They know that things are changing–especially who makes films and how. But I’m less sure the organizers are clear about this: the working person’s preminance is diluted as the festival expands infintely into finite space. As an advocate for my readers, I hate to see people who are here to work–and to celebrate work with their collaborators–left in the dark as the peripherals suck all the juice out of the grid.