Judy Laster, Founder and Executive Director of the Woods Hole Film Festival

For the past few years, I have attended the Sundance Film Festival in my capacity as the director of the Woods Hole Film Festival. I go in part to find potential films for the WHFF and for the opportunity to be around a huge community of people who are at the forefront of the independent film world. Each day at Sundance is packed with screenings, panels, presentations, parties, networking, music, oh, and did I mention parties? Last year, Sundance reported that they sold tickets to 40,000 distinct purchasers, so navigating the Festival can be a bit daunting initially. After a few years of attending though, Sundance begins to feel more like a great place to get together with friends from around the world and to eat, sleep and breathe indie film for a few days in the mountains.

Recently, the Festival has taken on more of a Hollywood flair, with more and more films both premiering and in competition with big-name actors and directors. This is due in part to the commercial success of the indie films over the past few years and the cross-over of a number of more mainstream actors and filmmakers into the indie world. The convergence means that the competition for slots in the Festival is stiffer than ever. 

This year, as every year, there was a huge selection of films to see and it’s hard to pick your tickets without knowing much about the films. Sundance added a new competition section for international films which added a new dimension to the screening selections. GRIZZLY MAN, Werner Herzog’s compelling documentary will give people a new perspective on what it means to be committed to a cause as they come to know Timothy Treadwell and his passion for saving the grizzly bears. The writing and acting in Craig Lucas’ intense psychological thriller DYING GAUL with Campbell Scott and Patricia Clarkson was outstanding and a testament to the filmmaker’s vision and fortitude. 

Next year, I hope that there will be a larger number of films with a New England connection at Sundance representing our filmmaking community. 

Gabrielle Savage, Filmmaker, Director and Co-writer MISSING IN AMERICA

Sundance said they wanted to push the envelope, and they did -- by testing the limits of poor taste and moral depravity. Pedophilia, young teens having sex and doing drugs, you name it. Not that I’m a prude, mind you. I’d just rather not have more films made that normalize (and thus proliferate) this behavior, and give other countries more reasons to hate our culture (or what they think our culture is, based on what they see on screen).
 
But there were some films that were very good. I loved THE MATADOR, with Pierce Brosnan as a despicable lowlife hit-man who manages to have us rooting for him by the end, as he strikes up an unlikely friendship with straitlaced businessman, Greg Kinnear. THE EMPEROR’S JOURNEY was a beautiful, fascinating doc about the heroic lives of penguins. But my favorite film was the audience award winning (and biggest selling -- $9M!) HUSTLE & FLOW. This started out seeming like another gritty urban film about prostitutes and pimps, but it turned out to be about the American dream in a way never seen before, with rich characters, great performances, and a terrific soundtrack.

There seemed to be more parties than ever, from Main Street to mountain mansions with indoor basketball courts and private ski lifts. Between songs at the Music Café, Suzanne Vega quoted lines from “Napoleon Dynamite: I Can Play What I Want”…Gosh! Lower Main Street had a new addition of Turning Leaf Lounge that had complimentary wine every day, adding a new and pleasant place to gather with friends and meet new ones.
 
More volunteers and more organization than in years past made things run very smoothly. Oh, except for the drunken girl who passed out and then threw up on the shuttle bus. It’s no wonder the locals bristle at the industry descending on Utah!
 
People can have wildly different views of Sundance, depending on which films they saw, which they missed, which parties they attended. But overall I think most would agree: you just can’t beat Sundance as a gathering place for the independent film world.

Dave Lewis, Real Estate Executive turned Filmmaker, Director/Writer MATSO BALLS

This year was my fourth consecutive trip to Sundance and the first time I stayed the entire 10-days. It was different this time because I experienced the flow of the first 5 days and the ebb of the last 5 days after a lot of the industry dealmakers, the packed -don't even bother to try to get in if you're not on the list - parties and the Time Square type New Years Eve wall to wall crowds have come and gone.

I Iiked both halves for different reasons. There's an undeniable sense of excitement in the air in the beginning. Though I hate to admit it since I'm a bit of an Indie filmmaker snob, I always enjoy the little bit of discreet celebrity gazing, more frequently experienced in the first few days. This year I got to try on fleece jackets next to an old personal favorite, James Woods. I kept getting the feeling he wanted to say hello to me but I guess he was too shy. Doing the Main Street crawl, I bumped shoulders with  a beefy Tom Arnold, no doubt fresh from a workout with his old pal, “governator” Arnold. I can finally say that I actually saw Robert Redford up close (first time in 4 years!) after I snuck into  the Sundance filmmakers lodge where he just happened to be giving an intimate talk. You know he's definitely not as tall as he looks on screen - I'd estimate about 5'8". (I felt good about the fact that I tower over him by about 2.5 inches!). This year I even got to see 2 Redford's as I witnessed a rather heated "discussion" at the CVS between his daughter Amy Redford, and her boyfriend over which medication her doctor recommended she buy…a real slice of Americana in action.

Yet, what I like most about coming out here every year is the amazing "regular" industry people you meet anywhere and everywhere. This is made easy by the simple fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, is friendly and open to conversation. Here's a sample. In line to a screening for a group of shorts I met the screenwriter of the recent Adam Sandler comedy 50 FIRST DATES who is originally from Brookline MA. He told me his script was dramatically altered once Sandler let him go and had some of his friends do some re-writing. At that same screening I sat next to a documentary producer who's last job was as an astrophysicist for NASA. One of the people who shared our condo at the base of Main Street, Michael Carp, is partner in a small boutique special effects company (called Lunarfish) that did the groundbreaking visual effects for the "proof of concept"  that helped sell the original Matrix Movie to the studio (and he showed it to me right on his pc). It took 30 camera's shooting simultaneously to capture Neo bending out of the way of an oncoming bullet- amazing stuff! Hopefully one day I'll be making movie's with big enough budgets to afford his services. 

At Sundance you never know where you're going to pick up some insider information. While I was lucky to get in a couple of ski days to break up my trip, I had a rather enlightening conversation with an old studio executive on the chair lift who told me the old days when deals were cut in the first days of the fest are over as a high percentage of films are sold before Sundance even starts but are not formally announced until during the fest to maximize media exposure. 

On my last day in Utah, while sitting quietly and  reading  in the book store on Main St., I met two of the  kindest, most interesting  young  LA based filmmakers and we subsequently spend a couple of hilarious hours trading war stories about production nightmares and festival submissions politics.

When it comes to films, Sundance is no longer just Sundance. It seems every year there's a handful of new film festivals fighting for attention in this quaint mountainside town. I saw a wonderful documentary on Reggae Music and attended a great party at the Freedom Film Festival, which I might add was run this year by Kim Jackson who used to run the Boston Film and Video Foundation. Speaking of political films, Sundance winner for best Documentary WHY WE FIGHT was an extremely credible look at the growth of the American Military Industrial complex. In my opinion it was the Movie FAHRENHEIT 911 should have been. Probably the best feature I saw was a Wonderful British film at Slamdance called FROZEN about a young women's struggle to reconcile the disappearance of her Sister. The most notable feature I attended at Sundance was an HBO adaptation of a play called LAKAWANA BLUES, a segregation era story filled with amazing singing and dancing. It also received the only standing ovation I saw all week.

So if you like the cold, like film - no matter what shape or form, like skiing in steep and deep white stuff and like meeting film people, Park City in late January is hard to beat! I'll certainly be back next year.