By Christine Westwood
The Sundance film festival , held every January in the snowy mountain landscape of Park City, Utah is just the tip of the iceberg of a year round series of events, residency labs and touring international festivals. Founded over thirty years ago by Robert Redford, the Sundance Institute’s purpose was to create community and nurture storytelling. Judging by comments from Redford and his key staff, that aim is still at the core of Sundance and what makes it an inspiring and important event for independent filmmakers and audiences alike.
Festival Director John Cooper describes this year’s schedule as showing “…the human sides of issues, people and places we don’t often see. Independent filmmakers, with their fearless, bold perspectives, are challenging us to witness our world’s whole story.”
For the 2017 Festival, 32 countries are represented by 113 feature-length films, 98 as world premieres. Australia has The Killing Ground from director/writer Damien Power, starring Aaron Pedersen, The Berlin Syndrome by Cate Shortland, starring Theresa Palmer, short film Slapper, and Red Dog: True Blue, already in Australian cinemas but being launched on the global market at the festival.
66 competition entries in feature, short film and documentary categories will be assessed by judges from a broad range of backgrounds, including actors Peter Dinklage, Gael Garcia Bernal and Sonia Braga.
Previous years have showcased standout original independent movies, including Beasts of the Southern Wild; Swiss Army Man; Margin Call; Marcy, Marcy, May, Marlene; and Whiplash.
This year, apart from the Australian entries, movies include Rebel in the Rye, with Nicholas Hoult as the young JD Salinger; Jack Black and Jacki Weaver in The Polka King, about a Polish immigrant following the American dream; and noir mystery Rememory, starring Peter Dinklage. Documentaries include Rumble, about the significant Native American influence on modern music, and Take Every Wave, about American surfing pioneer Laird Hamilton.
Generally, the Festival isn’t focused around a specific theme but this year’s schedule seeks to draw attention to climate change and environmental preservation with the New Climate program. The program includes Chasing Coral, on the world’s disappearing coral reefs; Trophy, an investigation of the big-game hunting industry; and Plastic China, on employee life at a Chinese recycling plant.
In the press release for New Climate, Redford said, “My own engagement on climate change began more than 40 years ago, and the urgency I felt then has only grown stronger given its very real and increasingly severe consequences.”
The Festival also features an expo of cutting edge digital storytelling projects, including Orbital Vanitas, a virtual reality journey by Australian artist Shaun Gladwell. There will be performances at the Music Cafe, and panels on everything from storytelling to animation and politics.
Redford used the forum to remind the press that the origin of Sundance over thirty years ago was the story telling lab designed to nurture unique voices in film.
“There was the mainstream and that was all there was. There were other stories and points of view, they were out there, I could sense that.” The Sundance Institute received a starter grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the labs began
“I asked people in the industry, actors, directors, cinematographers, would you be willing to give of your time and work with these up and coming filmmakers? The idea was it would be a kind of boot camp, we would be pushing them to tell their stories, question them, What is the story you want to tell? A lot of young filmmakers at that time were focusing on special effects to tell a story but what was missing was the story.”
Redford explained why the labs hold to a golden rule ‘what happens at Sundance stays in Sundance,’ i.e. attendees aren’t allowed to keep any footage. “It’s to avoid people being over-ambitious about their projects and think about things they shouldn’t be thinking about, like I’m doing this work and I’m thinking of where it’s going to go and what studio it’s going to. We took away that possibility so they could focus on the work they’re doing at the time.”
Emmy-nominated Native American Sydney Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest and this year’s festival entry, Diedra and Laney Rob a Train) was one of two alumni to join Redford on stage at the press conference. Freeland attended two labs after growing up on a Navajo reservation where she says, “Filmmaking didn’t exist.
“The individual filmmakers have their comfort zone and the lab tries to push you out of that,” she explains. “When I went to my first lab I would storyboard everything. I was setting up one scene in the lab and was preoccupied with following my storyboard, it was like my security blanket. My mentor on the lab took the storyboard away from me. She said, look at the scene in front of you, there’s two actors and so much going on. It shifted my entire approach to filmmaking.”
Writer/director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints? Pete’s Dragon, and, in competition at the festival, A Ghost Story) was another alumni of the Sundance labs to join Redford on stage. He remembers many pieces of invaluable advice, but one practical note stood out.
“I thought that what I hadn’t quite worked out in the script could be worked out on set and my mentor said, ‘you think you’ll work it out on set but you won’t, there just won’t be time’ and I quickly learned that’s was true. You definitely have to have the script in a place where even if you want to elaborate on it or improvise, the base needs to be solid, because nine times out of ten you won’t get time to try things out when filming.”
With the huge changes in American politics and likely cuts to art budgets, the importance of individual stories may be even more crucial. Lowery commented, “It’s something I’m still processing, but you realise that as a filmmaker you have a podium. I don’t want to turn that into a soapbox but I remember reading in Filmmaker magazine that every film is a political film no matter what it is. I think it’s important to think about things that matter to you in light of current events and just make sure you’re saying something worth saying.”
The Sundance Film Festival runs until January 29, 2017.
