So as part of a class through Chapman University, I'm spending the next week at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. This week, the News section will basically be my journal of the experience.The 22 of us in this class flew this morning from LA to Salt Lake City, Utah, and from there we piled into a giant private bus that took us to Park City, about 45 minutes into the mountains. Park City is where Sundance happens. Usually it's just another sleepy mountain ski town, but for this week in January, Sundance explodes into its streets. I've heard that the businesses here literally make 100% of the money they need for the year in this single week.
Park City itself is kind of like an Alpine Disneyland - all the locals know that they make their money from tourism, so they really ham up the "adorable mountain town" atmosphere, complete with strings of Christmas lights, pretty wooden condos, and niche shops. Robert Redford himself, the man who started Sundance in Park City, said that Sundance, as a festival, as almost nothing thematically or aesthetically in common with Park City. They just rent the town for a week.
It's also damn cold - which should be no surprise in a ski town where you can literally board a lift from the center of town - but it's definitely a change of scenery from LA, where recently it's been about 80 degrees.
Later in the evening I attended the Sundance opening night party, which was a big hoopla in one of the resort lodges in town. We had tickets to attend, which made us feel very special. The place was absolutely crammed with people. It became almost impossible to move from room to room by the end of the night.
Still, it was crammed with filmmakers, actors, and press - no one immediately recognizable, but everyone wore badges that explained what their position was and what film they were there for. Everyone was in a chatty mood, and it was by peering at badges that I was able to talk for a good while with Greg Hajdarowicz, the Polish producer of the Spanish/Brazilian film Carmo, Hit the Road, which is playing at Sundance. I lamented to him that I was unable to get tickets to his film, and we chatted for a while about his upcoming projects. He mentioned that he's looking into making his next film in New Mexico, and we exchanged cards.
It all felt very Hollywood. But really, we just chatted movies. And that's the great part about Sundance - everyone already has movies in common.
