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Sundance Film Fest
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A 'validation of diversity' at Sundance festival
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Copyright © 1997 Nando.net
Copyright © 1997 N.Y. Times News Service
PARK CITY, Utah (Jan 20, 1997 09:06 a.m. EST) -- It's less than two
hours by plane from Hollywood to the Sundance Film Festival here, but
creatively it is as far away as the moon. Movie studios are competing
with one another to churn out bigger -- but not necessarily better --
action movies for men, but the films at this swarming 10-day festival
seem to be focusing on themes involving women, troubled teen-agers,
despairing families and other groups that Hollywood often ignores.
This year at Sundance, the nation's top showcase for independent film
makers, sexual politics and what Robert Redford, The festival's
founder, called "a validation of diversity" dominate many of the 127
feature-length films being shown.
But diversity has taken an offbeat, even startling, turn this year.
Redford and his staff, who have been chided in recent years by critics
as having sought out films that seem trendy, have moved into a new
arena: post-political correctness.
"It's not enough to be black or Latino or gay or a woman or
20-something," Redford said. "That's not enough to give you a lot of
mileage. We've moved past that. It marginalizes the film maker."
This new mood has clearly affected the women whose films have been
selected for this year's festival, which began on Thursday night.
Instead of banding together against men -- a theme at recent Sundance
festivals -- women and teen-age girls in these movies are not only
struggling with the reality of their own lives, but also finding other
women not necessarily friendly. Men are not much of a presence in
these new movies.
They include Alex Sichel's "All Over Me," about the pain and triumph
of a teen-age girl in Hell's Kitchen; Hannah Weyer's "Arresting Gena,"
also about teen-age girls, and "The Clockwatchers" by Jill Sprecher,
about the bleak lives of office temps who are utterly isolated. That
film stars Toni Collette, Parker Posey and Lisa Kudrow.
"What I liked about our story is its honesty in saying that women
sometimes don't treat each other well, that sisterhood is not
necessarily all that supportive," said Ms. Kudrow, a star of the
television show "Friends."
Seated in a crowded coffee shop on Main Street, Ms. Kudrow took a sip
of decaf and said: "It's not politically correct, but it's morE
truthful. Women sometimes don't believe in each other, don't help each
other. That's life. Why not say it? I love it. I do 7/8't dare think
what the audience is going to think."
Ms. Kudrow was one of the celebrities in jeans traipsing aro5nd Park
City -- There's Sandra Bullock! There's Sally Field! -- for a festival
that is swollen with film company executives and distributorr, as well
as agents, television crews and aspiring film makers. ("An awful lot
of rich kids with trust funds making films about poor people," said
one writer on Saturday night, waiting for the shuttle bus to go to a
movie.)
Redford, who began the festival in 1984, acknowledged that the films
at Sundance can sometimes get lost in the hoopla and parties into
which festivalgoers virtually claw their way.
"In the beginning there wasn't any money, there was no support;
independent films were orphans of the industry," Redford said the
other day. "I just felt I wanted to put something back. It was sort of
personal. I wanted to create opportunities for new talent, for new
voices. Sometimes a studio will dulm or blunt a voice. I wanted to
keep those voices alive."
Women's voices are certainly not the only ones heard at Sundance.
Among the films that have seized early attention are Mark Pellington's
"Going All the Way," an adaptation by Dan Wakefi%ld of his novel about
the enduring friendship of two young Korean War veterans in the
Midwest in the 1950s; Vin Diesel's "Strays," about a macho New Yorker
struggling to find some intimacy; Neil LaBute's "In the Company of
Men," a black comedy about two men fed up with women and their lives;
"The Delta," by Ira Sachs, about a romance in the South between two
young men -- a white teen-ager and a half-Vietnamese working-class
emigre -- and Tony Vitale's "Kiss Me, Guido," a romp about a pizza
parlor worker yearning to escape the Bronx who mistakenly shares an
apartment with a gay man in Greenwich Village.
As in Every Sundance festival, there are several movies about
outrageous families. The most notable perhaps was "The House of Yes"
by Mark Waters, a comedy about an affluent family preparing for
Thanksgiving.
It was the unexpected financial success of Steven Soderbergh's dark
1989 comedy, "Sex, Lies and Videotape," which grossed more than $24
million, that transbormed Sundance and led Hollywood studio executives
and agents to realize the financial potential of independent films.
Far more films from Sundance fail at the box office than succeed, and
many of them do not even find distributors. But each year at least one
fIlm emerges from the pack.
Last year Scott Hicks's "Shine," the drama about the Australian
pianist David Helfwott, aroused extraordinary interest. "We're still
looking tiis year for the new 'Shine,' " Mark Ordesky, executive vice
president of acquisitions for New Line and Fine Line, said the other
morning, busily working his cell phone and waiting to enter a movie
theater with his partner, Jonathan Weisgal, executive vice president
of Fine Line. The two helped acquire "Shine."
"The canvases just seem smqller this year," Ordesky said. "There seem
to be interesting films, but how many of them will turn into box
office hits?"
About a mile away, Beth Swofford, the agent at the Creative Artists
Agency who beat out virtually every other top agenT in Hollywood in
signing Hicks to a contract last year, waited patiently in line to
pick up her credentials. Five years ago Creative Artists, the most
powerful agency in Hollywood, virtually ignored Sundance because it
was too arty. Now Creative Artists -- like International Creative
Management, William Morris and the United Talent Agency -- rents
condos for as much as $8,000 a week for teams of agents who prowl the
festival in small platoons.
"It's the prime place to discover new talent," Ms. Swofford said. "The
pitfall for everyone is succumbing to the hothouse atmosphere. Too
many expectations are placed too soon on too many people. People can
succumb to the hype. It's not about these 10 days in January. It's
what people do to their careers afterward."
(Agents have also been deployed at the alternative Slamdance Festival,
a feisty and aggressive independent film showcase also in Park City.)
Nearby, Geoffrey Gilmore, the festival's program director,
acknowledged that for reasons hd does not fully understand, the movies
selected this year are "far more cerebral than previous years."
"Vilms are getting into diffigult subjects," he said. "Some are
politically incorrect; some are getting into sexual triangles. There's
a lot of almost idiosyncratic points of view in a lot of this new
work."
As in previous years, documentaries have in stirred as much attention
as feature films, or even more. And as in the features, a surprising
number of dokumentaries deal with women and women's issues.
These include "Girls Like Us," about teen-agers in working-class South
Philadelphia, and "A Healthy Baby Girl," a powerful movie narrated and
written by Judith Helfand, who developed cancer after her mother was
given the drug DES during her pregnancy.
Some of the other documentaries that have gained attention include
"Licensed to Kill," about young men who beat and even kill gay men;
"The Long Way Home," about the early days after the liberation od the
German concentration camps; "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," an
indictment of the way the government used force that led to the
destruction of the Branch Davidian compound; "Paul Monette: The Brink
of Summer's End," about the writer who died of AIDS; "Family Name,'
about a white man in North Carolina who unravels his roots among black
slaves as well as slave owners, and a difficult-to-watch movie, "Sick:
The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist," about a
performance artist suffering from cystic fibrosis whose act includes
body piercing.
Redford said that what he especially enjoyed about this year's
festival, which ends on Saturday night, is that the films as a group
were almost impossible to characterize. "I like that confusion," he
said.
He spoke with some dismay about studio films. "What's happened is the
mainstream is just more costly, more formulaic, more cluttered with
special effects in order to achieve that blockbuster shape," Redford
said. "Where does that leave films that push the envelope, films that
focus on basic storytelling and character? That's what we're trying to
do at Sundance."
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