The annual scrutiny applied to the award winning films at the Sundance Film Festival borders on the paranoid; Conspiracy theories abound, many of which propose the idea that festival jurors, not sequestered from the hype and flow of information surrounding the numerous film sales at the festival, often award prizes based not on merit, but instead on the premise that films needing an extra boost in the marketplace will be helped out by winning the big prize. How else to explain films like Quincañera (2006) and Forty Shades of Blue (2005) upending superior films like Half Nelson and Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) and Me And You and Everyone We Know, Junebug and The Squid and The Whale (2005)? There are also the complimentary theories of the ‘Sundance formula’ and ‘Sundance stigma,’ both of which are code for the same thing; The honoring of touchy-feely movies featuring people of color and/or women as protagonists that symbolize the Sundance mission of inclusion but which ultimately fail in the marketplace. I am not sure I buy into the paranoia or the stereotyping; What I do notice how often my own tastes and inclinations diverge from those of the juries at film festivals.* It is always fascinating to watch juries negotiate and arrive at their conclusions; Each group develops their own process for making a decision, paring down choices and favorites and arriving at some sort of consensus that best reflects the will of the group as a whole.

There is, as it is always said, no accounting for taste, which is why opinions vary so dramatically over the issue of award winners. There is certainly something to be said for the films that walk away from Sundance with a prize in hand; The attachment of the Sundance brand (in the shape of those powerful laurels) to a film’s life after the festival can lead to opportunities for distribution that might otherwise have slipped by; The Sundance Channel is only the most obvious symbol of the festival's afterlife. Do the festival’s laurels actually help a film in the market? I am certain it depends on the movie and the distribution strategy, but those laurels (and the prize) never hurt.

And so, the question of "deserving" winners arises as a result of wanting to see films that we enjoyed more than others (or those that we feel are simply better movies) have every chance to succeed out there in the big bad world of the film business. At the same time, to argue about the choices of the Sundance juries and audiences (a blind process that also draws scrutiny at any festival) is to acknowledge the power of the festival as a brand and to authenticate its imprimatur as the star-maker among domestic film festivals. For me, there is no question that Sundance does a great job of culling movies from the sea of American independent film and launching them into the world; The awards are just another component of the overall process.

As such, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to present my own thoughts on the films that captured my imagination at the festival this year. My awards are without conspiracy and without any impact on the marketplace, so I feel safe in simply discussing my favorite films of the festival and presenting my own reasons for selection. Unlike others, I am not opposed to film competitions and awards. At the same time, I certainly do not imagine art is created as a vehicle for the competitive drive, but I do think prioritizing work in some sort of a personal hierarchy can help me arrive at some deeper understanding of my own tastes, ideas and opinions. Whether as an expression of my feelings (in the case of creating ‘Best Of’ lists or silly blog-based awards) or as a statement of standards and values against which to react (in the case of my long-standing disagreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their choices at the Academy Awards), the competition among films in any arbitrary category serves a completely selfish and, I believe, valuable purpose by allowing us all to think about film in ways we otherwise might not.

With all of the caveats and excuses firmly in place (including the fact that I was not able to see every film in every category; Not even close), here are my choices as the best of (what I saw at) Sundance 2007.

Narrative Feature Competition
Snow Angels by David Gordon Green

Snow Angels announces a new phase in the filmmaking career of David Gordon Green. If Undertow was Green's first foray into genre and convention, Snow Angels marks a new level of professionalism and storytelling power for the director. I am a longtime fan of his films, so it might come as little surprise that I found myself rooting for this movie, but Green more than provides; The film's maturity and understanding of its characters is deeply empathetic and heartfelt. The most engaging aspect of the movie is Green's continued commitment to his young characters; A high school romance provides a lovely counterweight to the violence and deceptions of the adult relationships swirling around it. Much like Green's previous films, it is in the philosophy of youth that the film's deeper truths can be found. I heard a lot of festival goers complaining that Snow Angels was a downer (which it undoubtedly was), but I am happy to see that Green has refused escapism in favor of showing us the deeper, complicated realities of loss and misunderstanding. It may not be comfortable or fun, but the movie was, alongside Chris Smith's The Pool, the most accomplished and deeply felt feature I saw in the competition.

Documentary Feature Competition
Zoo by Robinson Devor

Without question, my favorite film at Sundance was Robinson Devor's haunting Zoo, a surprisingly beautiful account of the tragic death of a Seattle businessman who bled to death after having sex with a horse. The least appetizing premise for a film turned out to be an absolute revelation; Using a mix of actors and real participants in the events leading up to the death, Devor presents us with a shadow world of charcters whose inability to connect with their fellow men lead them to the sexual attentions of their pets. At times, I found Zoo to be deeply frustrating because of the subjects' seeming inability to articulate their feelings or to find change; I got the sense that the survivors have few regrets (aside from the accidental death) and that their feelings toward their animals hasn't changed at all. Devor, however, innovatively undermines his subjects' storytelling by providing images of startling beauty and compassion, inviting the viewer to move through the landscapes and interiors of the shadow world while implying far more complex feelings and disconnections than are ever articulated in words. In the run up to the festival, Devor was quoted as saying that he made the movie by "aestheticiz(ing) the sleaze right out of it." He most certainly did.

World Cinema Narrative Feature Competition
Once by John Carney

Mark my words, John Carney's Once is going to be a minor sensation if it is ever given the chance to build word of mouth in US theaters. The story of a busker in Dublin (Glen Hansard of The Frames) who befriends a Czech immigrant (Marketa Irglova) before working with her on a demo tape, Once is a love story, a musical and a classic tale of Irish emigration all rolled into one terrific movie. The integration of the film's music into the flow of the narrative is innovative enough to qualify as a Dogme technique; The characters sing and perform as the natural extension of their work as musicians in the film, and the songs are gorgeous and memorable (and available on iTunes; Check out The Moon and When Your Minds Made Up, both of which figure prominently in the film). The movie's heartbreaking romanticism is completely earned, yet it is heightened by watching the creative process unfold between two kind, engaging characters. Once's humanistic approach to issues of love, immigration and generosity make it a movie to root for. Fingers crossed for this one.

World Cinema Documentary Competition
In The Shadow Of The Moon by David Sington

A movie about heroism and the power of science and the human mind to conquer almost unbelieveable frontiers, In The Shadow of The Moon is a triumph. The film is just about as traditional as traditional can be; Using talking heads and archival footage of the US Apollo space program, director David Sington is able to construct the story of our lunar exploration in a way that is accessible to all ages. And yet, the film was unique in this year's Sundance program for its dedication to a heroic ideal of what man should aspire to become; Rational, curious and dedicated to pushing the limits of human potential regardless of nationality or belief system, the astronauts in the film represented (for me) the perfect antithesis of our current American political mindset. One of the most depressing moments of the festival came when this film ended and Holly and I discussed the lack of true ambition and honesty in public life; The underfunding of scientific research (to say nothing of education), intellectually dishonest leaders who utilize whatever information they can manufacture in order to support beliefs they already hold, and the absence of a desire to expand the scope of human knowledge all seem to define our times. There is a clear dedication in In The Shadow of The Moon to the power of our collective will to realize the fullest of human potential, and in the face of so many films highlighting the depths of human behavior, Sington's movie was a true breath of much needed (and highly enlightened) fresh air.

I had a great time at Sundance and thank the organizers (especially Rosie Wong and her team in the Industry office and the volunteers at The Yarrow and Holiday Village, who were terrific) for their hard work. It's always a tremendous luxury to spend ten days in the collective dark of a movie theater, and this year's festival was no exception. Now, off to get my own program in shape...

*Including my own. In 2005, I watched my Best Narrative Feature jury award our prize to Danny Boyle’s Millions at the expense of what I considered to be the best film of the year; Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings and Queen. While I still can’t get my head around that decision (despite the fact that I really loved Millions), I respected and honored their choice without a single word of protest or surprise. Which is, of course, how it should be.

It has been a long week, and the festival blues are kicking in; Many of the members of the industry have left town, the screenings are less frequent and the exhaustion of seeing five or six films a day has started to wear on me. There have been many surprises for me this year, but none more so than the steady stream of sturdy American independent films. Yes, there have been some real duds and yes, the documentary section has once again provided the majority of the festival's thrills, but all in all, most of the films have featured very strong performances and have been enjoyable. Always on the lookout for a thematic hook upon which to hang my own festival experience, I also believe that Sundance 2007 will go down in history as The Year of The Asshole.

In almost every single fiction (and, come to think of it, non-fiction) film I have seen at this year's festival, white American (heterosexual) masculinity has been exposed as the playground of self-serving, foul-mouthed, misunderstood pricks whose sole mission in life is to destroy the happiness of women and their fellow men. As a white American heterosexual man, I can understand how watching the constant parade of cultural and political douchbaggery might impact people's perceptions of what the tropes and parameters of the white guy ethos actually look like, but are we really that bad? It's almost enough to inspire introspection! Almost.

I was speaking to my good friend David after one particularly divisive screening, and as he excoriated a certain film for its unbelievable representation of female tolerance and forgiveness in the face of rampant numbskull masculinity, the pieces fell into place; It is a tough year for the boys at the movies, although maybe these guys are better than the neutered, incompetent drips that represent us on television. Where are the heroes? Ok, maybe asking too much; Where are the likeable men?

Let's take a look at the long sad parade of assholes that have dominated this year's Sundance...(Spoliers abound, but that's why you're reading, right?)

Expired by Cecilia Miniucchi
At the top of the pile, Jason Patric's performance as Jay in Cecilia Miniucchi's inspired romantic comedy Expired is perfection; The über-asshole to end all assholes. An emotionally detached internet porn addict with a self-regard that would make Friedrich Nietzsche blush, Patric's Jay lives to send mixed messages to sweet, unloved Claire (Samantha Morton, in a lovely performance that reads like Sweet and Lowdown with the mute button off). His preening, sexually destructive self-involvement is perfectly played and well written; Jay is such a jerk, he somehow spins every compliment he receives into an insult, using each and every opportunity to claim victimization and prop himself up. Miniucchi knows men more deeply than most of us would like to admit; Fractured and damaged, unable to confront his own failure, Patric's wonderful performance allows Jay's vulnerability to somehow leak through the cracks in his armor and we can understand why Claire would seek his attentions. That said, this is a recognizable if depressing picture of American masculinity at its most deluded.

Too...

Many...

Screenings...

Not...

Enough...

Time...

My fav so far? Zoo.

Best Quote?

"Don't tell me to talk to my lawyer. My lawyer doesn't work for me, YOU work for me, so get it together over there..."-- Random woman at the Yarrow, screeching into her Bluetooth earpiece. Ah, Sundance...

Between screenings (love the free Wi-Fi at the Albertson's!), so apologies for the brevity...

One of the best reasons to come to Sundance is to re-connect with colleagues and friends and today, my third day in Park City, offered me my first real chance to catch up. So far, so good; It was nice chatting with Alison Willmore, whose blog is one of the touchstones, saw Jill, who is moving to the neighborhood, Matthew between screenings, David is looking well. The reason for the delay? Yesterday, the first full day of screenings, I was completely leveled by food poisoning.

I don't know how many of you have experienced the absolute hell that is food poisoning, but its 36 hours after the troubles began and I still feel like someone is crawling through my stomach. Tomorrow, the pipes should be all mended, but boy, oh boy; Spending your first day at Sundance on the couch hallucinating for what seems like 8 hours only to look at the clock and realize that three minutes have passed, well, that is no way to kick off a festival. On the mend now, but what a start to the "festivities". Oy.

Today has been a nice start; Tom DiCillo's Delirious was a lot of fun with Steve Buscemi at his rageaholic best, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth had every man in the theater squirming with nervous laughter (more on this film later) and Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime was a terribly sad, highly accomplished portrait of small town America at its worst; Imagine Dogville without the smirk. Powerful.

Three for three today with three to go. I'll be writing more as the days go by (no Wi-Fi in the condo despite many attempts to fix it), and here's hoping the rest of the fest is sickness free. More soon...

The bags are packed and the plane, shuttle, condo, pass and movies await. It's Sundance again, and while I always enjoy going to the festival, this time, I feel a little bit stressed. I have my own fish to fry; A looming Programming deadline for Sarasota, a ton of invitations in a Park City holding pattern and several submissions to get through as we craft our own program. I will be at the festival with an eye on lots of films, some of which will hopefully make their way to our festival in April. We already have a lot of great movies locked in, and I expect that we will have some wonderful things to share with the crowds here. Still, there's work to be done before we get everything locked up and somehow, the night before heading off to screen 50 films in 9 days, I feel less excited and more serious about the journey than ever. There is a lot to do. I will post as often as I can, but my schedule is packed and my fingers are crossed. What I do know is I am planning on an exhausting ten days of intense work.

Here's hoping it all goes well... Best wishes to Sundance staff and volunteers on a great festival.

I'll see you in 12 hours.

Sunset, Sarasota, Florida

I know, you're kicking yourself for missing Climates, this blog's choice as The Best Film of 2006. But there's good news for you while you wait for the film to roll into your town; Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's stunning photographs are available for viewing online. You also buy them (if you happen to have $4000 for each print). The photographs are stunning; The movie is even better.

Village in Cappadocia, 2003
Paper size : 61x127cm. (24x50")
Image size : 45x117cm. (18x46")
archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper
edition of 20 + 2 AP
by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

(Thanks To Maria Thompson for the tip!)

Since I arrived in Florida in early December, we've been hard at work watching films, talking to filmmakers and distributors while getting everything in place for the 2007 Sarasota Film Festival (April 13th through 22nd, 2007). As we begin to finalize our program, I wanted to take a moment to remind all filmmakers that we are still open for submissions until January 19th. We look forward to receiving your films and considering them for our program.

For those not familiar with our festival, some thoughts from last year's event:

My own preview
Entertainment Weekly profiles our Best Narrative Feature Winner, Keely Reichardt's Old Joy
The Hollywood Reporter talks to our Tributees
Variety Unveils the Winners
indieWIRE Wraps Up
Local coverage from the Herald-Tribune

This year promises to be another year of growth and a wonderful opportunity for filmmakers to share their films with terrific audiences, the industry, and other artists. I hope you can join us, but first, I look forward to seeing your film.

We now return to regular blogging...

Dystopia is a mirage, hovering forever on the horizon, always just a bit further down the road, seemingly beyond our grasp. It sits both behind us, an interpretation of the horrors of the past, and in front of us, an imagined future where our worst actions bear terrible, unforeseen fruit. Our nightmares are the grist of every art form, from painting to music to literature to theater to film, and artists, often oracles with a profound cultural acuity, use the dystopian mirage as a mirror, reflecting the face of the present and showing us what we might become. Cinema, with its ability to utilize sound and the moving image, is most effective in conveying our fears about what was and what might be, but since the lessons of the past and the limits of the human imagination about what the future holds rarely transcend what we already know about ourselves, we rarely take their lessons seriously. Which is why, when films get it right by making the reflection in the mirage so sharp that we recognize our world in every frame, movies can shake us to our core.

I will admit, this doesn’t happen very often, at least not with the idea of our imagined future. In fact, once you begin to think of films that represent the future, science fiction immediately comes to mind; Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Solaris and A.I., with spacecraft, mysticism, and isolation taking human concern away from a recognizable planet earth and into the life and death stakes to be found adrift and alone in space. For me, most of these films get so lost in the game of predicting a futuristic but plausible technological world that often times, the image of the present is lost in the terrific web of a really good ghosts and gadgets story (and who doesn’t like that?) More interesting to me, however, are the films that show us the dystopian future as a simple reach from the world we already know, where the arc of technological progress feels as natural and evenly-paced as the inevitable decline in social relations. The film that leaps to mind is Michael Haneke’s Time of The Wolf, a future world gone mad with fear of an unnamed plague but where the petty intrigues of pride are as deadly as disease; As refugees gather in an anonymous train depot and await their salvation, the trivial distinctions of nationalism, prejudice and greed overwhelm the collective good. It all leads to a final image of pure ambiguity; We look out the door of a train, moving through the countryside, unsure if it has provided salvation or indifference or something far more sinister. Where are we headed?

The collective self-image found in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men cuts closer to the bone of present-day life than any film in recent memory. Set in 2027 London, the film tells the story of Theo (Clive Owen), a former activist turned drunk who walks away from the horror of a café bombing as if it were simply a not-unexpected inconvenience in his daily routine. After being recruited by his ex-wife, an active revolutionary named Julian (Julianne Moore), to help obtain transport papers for a young woman named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who is looking to leave England, Theo is thrust into the role of savior when Kee reveals she is pregnant. Of course, this is a miracle; No woman has given birth in over eighteen years. As the world seemingly disintegrates outside her borders, England remains true to her nationalistic heart; Immigrants are herded into cages, their suffering literally untranslated, while a fascist military patrols the streets in numbers that seem to exceed the civilian population. As Theo and Kee make their way to the sea and the sanctuary of another revolutionary group called The Human Project, they traverse the scorched landscape (if ever a film deserved an Oscar for location scouting, this is it), meeting up with Theo's old friend Jasper (a terrific Michael Caine) before evading the clutches of both The Fishes (Julian’s revolutionary group) and the fascists who seek them out.

Just Another Day: Theo (Clive Owen) in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men

The film is remarkable for several reasons, but primarily for its fidelity to what feels like the real-life escalation of indifference to the suffering of others; Children of Men is a direct descendant of the Al-Qaeda beheading videos, the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the lingering specter of Abu Ghraib prison. By using long, fluid (and seemingly impossible) shots with a hand held camera, Cuarón infuses the film with the same realism that was popularized in Paul Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday, and in many ways, the films feel like rhyming bookends to modern British imperial history. Two sequences stand out as absolute stunners; The attack on the car carrying Theo, Kee and Julain by a group of “woodsmen”, where Cuarón and his incredible cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Terrence Malick’s stunner The New World) redefine the car chase for all time, and a ferocious battle sequence in the streets of an immigrant concentration camp where the idealistic Fishes seek to foment revolution at the potential expense of human existence. Here, as British forces trap the uprising in an old hospital full of immigrant families caught in the crossfire, the film’s nail-biting depiction of urban guerilla warfare recalls everything from Baghdad and Kabul to Newark and Detroit in 1967. Bullets fly, people (almost all of them people of color) are gunned down indiscriminately, and the end feels palpably nigh.

What is most impressive about Cuarón’s vision of the future is how it mixes an analogous vision of ‘homeland security’ and the treatment of immigrants with fictional technologies and landscapes that are not only plausible but represent human regression; The film flatly rejects the idea of human history as progress, showing a future dark age predicated solely on our present day failures. Amazingly, even the technology on display in the film, from flat panel computer monitors delivering televisions signals in the workplace to a three dimensional video game so simple yet engrossing that it renders its player a zombie, seems like it is a baby step from our current environment. In this sense, Children of Men’s greater leaps (universal infertility, an otherwise impossible private art collection) seem contextualized. The world has become impotent and infertile, and ideas whose memetic utility has expired (politics, nationalism) seem to grow in importance as their meanings dissolve and everything falls apart. Sound familiar?

It is impossible to articulate everything the film gets right, which includes its recognition of the hypocrisy of European immigration quotas in a post-colonial world to the absolute decline in empathetic response in the new human relations to its images of indiscriminate individual suffering that seem ripped directly from the 24 hour news channels. The cumulative effect of the film’s vision of ‘stay the course’ is to leave the viewer breathless and awestruck with the pain of self-recognition. Make no mistake; This mirage is a mirror.