all of those plans to write during the festival? sucked away by professional obligations…
I loved Sundance this year. There, I said it. As a programmer, I can only dream of the constant scrutiny and complaining leveled at the festival by the various factions that make up the filmmaking, press, industry and public audiences that swarm Park City, Utah every January. And yet, I am consistently impressed by the hard work that the Sundance staff accomplishes; no film program will perfectly cater to any individual’s tastes, but Sundance always bears fruit if you’re willing to take the time to look.
This year’s festival was no exception; I saw 30 films in Park City, and I really enjoyed about 25 of them, which is a great feat, all things considered. Add to it the intimacy of the parties I was able to attend, the slew of familiar and friendly new faces unveiled from beneath a pile of scarves and hats, the relatively consistent shuttle transportation, and the wicked cold that made sitting in a theater so inviting (and, upon reflection, felt warm compared to the freezing temperatures at home in New York), and I can’t help but think of this year’s festival as a real success.
That said, any time the biggest, most recognized American film festival tries to cast itself as the home of some sort of a rebellion, it is bound to open itself up to unnecessary criticism. The marketing campaign the festival waged to reclaim the independent high ground after a decade of serving (and helping foster the collapse of) the interests of the mini-majors was actually legitimized by most of the films, but the contrast between Sundance’s artistic message and the nature of the coverage of the festival (that is, focused tightly on the sales market and the meaning of the market’s machinations) is a reminder that no matter how hard you try to rebrand it, Sundance is the big dog because of the way in which it embraces its economic function; none of the thousands of filmmakers who submitted to the festival, none of the film buyers who spent thousands of dollars each on passes, none of the press covering the festival did so because they were interested in being a part of a rejection of cinematic commerce. The Sundance dream remains the dream of the big sale and as long as it does, the commercial interests of the independent film community will be intimately tethered to the festival; a more rebellious campaign might have been to sell that reality back to the industry as an honest embrace.
About Half Of The Ticket Holder’s Line For Blue Valentine, January 25, 2010, 7:45 AM, Racquet Club, Park City, UT
For all of the tension that exists between the festival’s self-imagined message and its communal function, everything comes down to the films, created by a wide array of artists with different visions and culled from a massive pile of submissions into a single program. This year’s program was impressive not as a statement against the market, but because it seemed to be advocating for an older idea of the market, one in which independent films were still a powerful force in shaping the national conversation. The 2010 festival felt like a throwback in more ways than one; the narrative films featured several small scale, domestically themed projects that have defined the independent film community for years and the documentary program once again proved to be consistently excellent in its exploration of politics and the social conditions that shape our society. Even at its most populist, Sundance has never been a bellwether of national taste, but more of an idea and snapshot of the state of American independent moviemaking, a home for art whose meaning exists outside of the methods of how the films are distributed and seen.
Unfortunately, the independent film community continues to struggle for answers to the diminishing returns the films are finding at the box office (and in their influence on our idea of the American cinema); the films may be of the same or better quality, but the world keeps changing and the industry is in the midst of a struggle to keep up. Sundance didn’t offer any solutions to these problems, focusing instead on its primary role as discoverer and promoter of new films, but it is the fragmented vision of the future of the business that kept the festival feeling both relevant and, for me, a little nostalgic. Until we have a comprehensive strategy and broad consumer adoption of a meaningful solution for the dozens of Video On Demand/ Internet streaming/ TV device/ Theatrical release problems that confront the independent sector of the industry, solutions that will ultimately be driven by Hollywood’s interests (on how many platforms did Avatar open? One.), the festival world can only do so much in its limited window of opportunity to shape the business. In the meantime, showing great movies will have to do, and while, like any festival, this year’s event had some clunkers (makes you wonder what the thousands of films on the rejection pile look like), there were also plenty of films to love.
Separate posts on the Narrative and Documentary films to follow… stay tuned (and I mean it this time)…
Sorry for not posting. I have been seeing 6 films a day and in between meetings and a few small social obligations, I have been scrambling to find time for one meal a day and a few hours of sleep. Lots to talk about, but this schedule is impossible for writing, More when I can…
Today is the day to celebrate the civil rights and think about the state of social injustice. As such, it is, for me, a day to think once again about legal equality for the LGBT community. While most American news outlets will draw the obvious distinctions between Dr. King’s “dream” and the ascendancy of Barack Obama as President of the United States, I can’t help but think of the irony as, now one year into the President’s first term, he continues to sit on his hands while our fellow citizens, neighbors, friends and family in the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community have not been granted equal protection under the law in this country. It’s interesting to me to see so many movements attach themselves to King’s mission—environmentalism, animal rights—without speaking about the only direct correlation in modern American society between the legal conditions that created the Civil Rights movement and the bigotry of the majority in establishing those conditions. The denial of equal rights for the LGBT community is the only social condition where ballot initiatives and civic law is structured to deny basic civil rights to our citizens, and yet here we are again, another Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and people still draw literal correlations between the color of King’s skin and his mission without thinking about the way in which Civil Rights and the denial of those rights operate today.
I wrote a long essay on this topic back in November of 2008, as voters in another american state lined yo to deny equal marriage rights to their fellow citizens, and since then, things have only gotten worse. My position at the time remains unchanged today; without either the Congress and President passing and signing an equivalent of the Civil Rights Act for LGBT Americans or the country having this case brought before the Supreme Court, where a precedent against legal discrimination can be won, the movement’s broken strategy of fighting for rights state-by-state remains doomed to fail under the weight of popular bigotry. This idea, one that has made sense to me for years, is the subject of a recent New Yorker article by Margaret Talbot, who worries it may be “too soon” to address the Supreme Court because of the conservative bent of so many of the justices. In that article, Ted Olson, the ultra conservative lawyer who is hoping to petition the court in favor of same-sex marriage, evokes Dr. King directly in his defense of his position:
“I have spent a fair amount of time reading Dr. King’s response to people who said, ‘People aren’t ready for this,’ ” he said. “His ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ one of the more moving documents in history, addresses this. If people are suffering and being hurt by discrimination, and their children and their families are . . . then who are we as lawyers to say, ‘Wait ten years’? ”—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, January 16, 2010.
“On January 11th, a remarkable legal case opens in a San Francisco courtroom—on its way, it seems almost certain, to the Supreme Court. Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California referendum that, in November, 2008, overturned a state Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. Its lead lawyers are unlikely allies: Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and a prominent conservative; and David Boies, the Democratic trial lawyer who was his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore. The two are mounting an ambitious case that pointedly circumvents the incremental, narrowly crafted legal gambits and the careful state-by-state strategy that leading gay-rights organizations have championed in the fight for marriage equality. The Olson-Boies team hopes for a ruling that will transform the legal and social landscape nationwide, something on the order of Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, or Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.”—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, January 16, 2010.
For me, leaving social equality up to a popular vote has been a great mistake that has cost the LGBT community civil rights for years now. It is time for the nation to take a stand for equality and, if the Supreme Court cannot properly apply the Constitution to defend the civil rights of LGBT Americans, time for all of us to take to the streets and force the Federal government to do its job and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I hope you will join me in thinking of and acting for true civil rights in 21st century America. The parallels could not be more clear, and the need for change could not be more urgent.
On Friday night, I headed to the Times Center in, of all places, Times Square for the third annual Cinema Eye Honors, an evening celebrating the craft of non-fiction filmmaking. I have served on the Nominating Committee for the Cinema Eye Honors since its inception (a huge honor to be invited to participate) and these awards, along with my role as a nominator for the Gotham Awards, are among the two great professional pleasures of my year. I hadn’t been to the Gotham Awards in over a decade until this year (it was lovely) and now, since the Cinema Eye Honors moved to January, I was finally able to attend the ceremony itself. All I can say is, as long as AJ Schnack, Thom Powers, Esther Robinson, Andrea Meditch and the rest of the organizing committee will have me, I will do whatever I can to see this orgainzation survive and thrive. Despite the cynicism of some who see the move to January as a way to get the awards in front of the Oscar, on the night, the point was completely moot; The Cinema Eye Honors are all about community building and celebration. How to tell the difference? While most award events focus on red carpets and celebrity turnout, flashy PR events seeking to venerate the already venerated, the Cinema Eye Honors serve the singular purpose of casting a spotlight on the people who make the non-fiction filmmaking community tick, a noble mission if ever there was one.
Of course, this can lead to a little bit of inside baseball at the event itself: witness AJ Schnack, who hosted the event, playing a game of MAD LIBS by calling on a random selection of members of the audience. The reason the gag worked? Because AJ could simply look around the auditorium and call on familiar faces. Why? Because everyone in the audience was a familiar face. Literally.
For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the event. Without the support of the documentary community, the whole evening might seem a bit odd. Instead, because of that support, it feels nothing but special, which is nearly an impossible feat for an event in an industry hell-bent on awarding itself into oblivion. This is primarily driven by two factors; the Cinema Eye Honors deciding to award trophies in the areas of editing, cinematography, score, graphics and animation, all of which are crucial to the sucess of a given film and none of which get attention in the mainstream film industry (due to the complete exclusion of these artists from “fiction only” craft categories at other awards programs), and the unique position of non-fiction filmmaking to have a few of its pioneering artists still with us, many of whom attend the Cinema Eye Honors year after year. It was most heartening to see Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles, Peter Davis and Ross McElwee, each with her or his own contribution to the art of documentary, surrounded by hundreds of people who have contributed to the blossoming of what once must have been very lonely work. I can only imagine how they felt, looking out over a big, full room inside the Times Center (a lovely theater by the way), and thinking about the form they helped create, now thriving in numbers and quality (and box office in some cases). It was Peter Davis who was most eloquent in discussing this growth, directly addressing the community and reminding everyone to keep working toward depicting an emotional reality without relying too much on the Hollywood tricks of the trade that can blur the lines between truth and entertainment.
As the award winners came forward, men and women from all over the world, representing a wildly diverse set of nominees, it was incredibly heartening to watch documentary celebrate itself, on its own terms and in its own unique way. More than the thrill of victory, it was the reality of the show itself that was the most profound. Congratulations to all and I look forward to another rousing success in 2011.
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