Sundance is in a bubble
In this guest post, the host of of BBC World News’ Talking Movies, Tom Brooks, discusses the relevance of Sundance Film Festival.
What makes Sundance unique is that it takes place in this enclosed bubble up in the mountains in a ski resort in Utah. It’s like being locked inside a world. As a film reporter here you see so many films. You don’t have an enormous red carpet, like some of the other more glamorous festivals, but on the other hand you do get to see a lot of well known actors and directors – and in unguarded moments.
It was about 10 years ago when we first came to Sundance with Talking Movies. Since then I’ve interviewed [actor, director and founding father of the festival] Robert Redford about five or six times and he’s always a key interview to get because he is hugely committed to what the festival is all about which is serving as the showcase for independent cinema.
Redford’s had a distinguished career as an actor and a director but I think his greatest career achievement now is Sundance. He’s fostered this film festival for so many years, giving a platform to so many talented people who have gone on to do some great things for international world cinema. Each year he’s moving the festival forward which he hopes will maintain the currency of independent cinema.
Earlier this week we were at one of the hotels where the festival headquarters are and we suddenly bumped into Danny Glover in the corridor. He seemed to be wandering around rather aimlessly inspecting the hotel – he went into one of the gymnasiums, took a look at that, then took a look around the corridors – that’s something you don’t normally see. Here you see stars wandering around Main Street and there is good access to a lot of well respected people in the film industry.
The other special thing about the festival is that there is a great sense of camaraderie between the filmmakers, the directors, the producers, the actors and also the journalists. There are a lot of journalists here and for me it was very rewarding when I first came here because I realised a lot of people watched Talking Movies in the business.
Sundance nearly always yields winners. It’s helped to launch the careers of some of the biggest names in cinema, from directors like Steven Soderbergh – his film Sex, Lies and Videotape really put the festival on the map – and Quentin Tarantino who launched Reservoir Dogs here – to actresses like Britain’s Carey Mulligan. The film An Education, which saw her catapulted into stardom, was shown here in 2009.
The Blair Witch Project, Little Miss Sunshine and more recently the films Precious and former US vice–president Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth were also unveiled here.
But the festival’s cheerleaders cannot ignore the sobering underlying realities. These are still extremely tough times for independent cinema. The recession has hit the industry hard, there is still no solid business model independent film-makers can embrace and the vast majority of films screened at Sundance will leave the festival without a distribution deal.
Sundance is in a bubble so a buzz will emerge about a film at the festival but that buzz often doesn’t follow through into the outside world. There was a film called The Pool, a film made in India, about three years ago, which I thought was quite striking and beautiful but it went nowhere in the outside world.
I think Sundance is very important for a lot of people who work in Hollywood as they can make films in a way that they don’t normally make them. They’re not making films with the prime aim of generating a lot of cash but rather making passion projects so they can renew and refresh themselves creatively. Then maybe they go back into the mainstream industry and you get the better overall product from Hollywood.
As a creative force for people who make really heartfelt films here, that don’t subscribe to a Hollywood formula, Sundance is very vital, very refreshing and much needed. Hollywood is so engaged in making what they call big event or tentpole movies to get a broad audience that it’s important to have something vital, fresh and different in the culture and I think Sundance provides that.
Talking Movies will air on:
Full version
11:30 AET Sun 30 Jan
18:30 Sun 30 Jan
7.30 Mon 31 Jan
Short Version – just the Robert Redford interview:
21:10 AET Sat 29 Jan
22:10 Sun 30 Jan
11.10 Mon 31 Jan
