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The big Sundance Film Festival gets bigger

By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times

Posted: January 21, 2005

Fest adds international contests and a unique screening room

It's big and it's getting bigger. It's powerful and it's looking to expand its reach. The Sundance Film Festival has been accused of many things, but resting comfortably on its accomplishments is not one of them.

With the latest edition of this burgeoning enterprise opening Thursday night with Don Roos' tart "Happy Endings," Sundance shows no sign of getting less popular, of being any less of what the Hollywood Reporter calls "a must for media, celebrities, corporate entities and voyeurs," with the occasional filmmaker thrown into the mix.


Elena Grothe, AA-S Austinites Kyle Henry, left, and Luke Savisky have films screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

The fest's 120 features, more than two-thirds of them world premieres, were chosen from 2,613 submissions, almost double the 1,325 that applied but six years ago. And a whopping 761 features fought to be one of the 16 selected for Sundance's signature section, the dramatic competition.

Austin filmmakers again have a presence at the festival. Kyle Henry's experimental feature "Room" screens today and Saturday in the Frontier experimental-film program, and Luke Savisky will present film installations Saturday and Sunday.

Austin newcomer John Pierson and his family star in the documentary "Reel Paradise," which follows Pierson operating a ramshackle movie theater in Fiji. The film is directed by Steve James ("Hoop Dreams") and premieres Saturday.

Several University of Texas graduates have short films screening, including David and Nathan Zellner's "Flotsam/Jetsam," Jay and Mark Duplass' "The Puffy Chair" and John Bryant's "Oh My God."

With the competitive model clearly working so well, Sundance has decided to expand on it. This year will mark the debut of world cinema dramatic and world cinema documentary contests to parallel the categories on the domestic front.

Sundance also added two new kinds of events to the schedule. Savisky will use nontraditional film projection to transform a room into "a completely immersive cinematic experience." And visiting speakers such as writer Rebecca Solnit, critic Elvis Mitchell and distribution guru Pierson will be giving lectures in something called Film Church.

The festival has divided its riches into the usual categories, including Frontiers for experimental films, such as William Greaves' "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2," and Park City at Midnight for provocative items, such as Michael Winterbottom's hard-core "9 Songs."

Sundance takes pride in keeping its dramatic competition focused on films from youthful directors, so these films are often the hardest to handicap.

Looking potentially promising are "Forty Shades of Blue," with the veteran Rip Torn as a Sam Phillips-type music producer, and "The Squid and the Whale," the latest film by Noah Baumbach, whose debut, "Kicking and Screaming," is still fondly remembered.

In the documentary competition, special mention has to go to Dan Klores and Ron Berger's compelling "Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story," which uses potent interviews and a strong sense of drama to tell the back story of one of the most indelible moments in modern sports history, the 1962 boxing death at Griffith's hands of Benny "Kid" Paret.

One of the best documentaries in Park City will not be at the Sundance festival but rather will serve as the opening-night film for longtime rival Slamdance. The irresistible "Mad Hot Ballroom," a kind of "Spellbound" crossed with "Strictly Ballroom," follows several groups of New York 11-year-olds as they learn the ins and outs of fancy stepping.

The Zellners have a short at Sundance, as do UT grads Melissa Henry Pratt and Courtney Davis. Aside from Slamdance, at least two other Park City festivals, both of which started last year, will provide Sundance alternatives. The Freedom Cinema Festival, set across from the Egyptian Theater, will showcase political documentaries. And the Park City Film Music Festival claims to be "the first film festival in the world singularly recognizing the contributions of composers and their music to film." A little hyperbole never hurt anyone. Especially not in Park City. American-Statesman film writer Chris Garcia contributed to this report.