Sundance Rundown
columbia's presence in park city
I’m at the Columbia University reception at the Sundance Film Festival, and a handsome, scruffy-looking fellow in a Ramones-worthy leather jacket asks me to help him get a drink. When I oblige, he lets me in on a secret—he’s crashing Columbia’s party. A self-proclaimed free-loader (though also an actor, as if that’s surprising), he boasts that he also crashed NYU/Tisch’s reception earlier today—but he thinks that Columbia’s party has a much better ambience, crowd, and cocktails. His comment could be seen as a gauge of Columbia’s presence at Sundance this year—the achievements of students, alumni, and faculty have gained recognition beyond the academic arts community. The University has found a place at the mecca of independent cinema.
Every winter, thousands of people—filmmakers, actors, journalists, publicists, executives, bloggers, celebrities, and movie fans—invade Park City, Utah. Some come for the films, some for the overcrowded exclusive parties, and some for the swag-gifting boutiques. From Jan. 17 to Jan. 27, more than 120 feature films were screened at the festival, with 58 first-time directors appearing this year. The work of 44 students, alumni, and faculty of Columbia was represented, and 24 films were written, produced, edited, or directed by Columbia affiliates, putting the University in eye of independent filmmaking.
“You think you know so much when you go there [graduate school], like, ‘What are they going to teach me?’ But you learn so much about drama and about story, and it’s all the foundation stuff,” one former graduate of the School of the Arts said.
Columbia garnered top prizes in three out of the four categories for feature films—dramatic, documentary, and world documentary. Columbia’s success at Sundance 2008 is not an anomaly—previous Columbia-affiliated films include Padre Nuestro, Little Miss Sunshine, and Half Nelson.
Many of the 2008 festival filmmakers joined film division Chair Jamal Joseph and the new dean of the School of the Arts, Carol Becker, at a Columbia Alumni Association and School of the Arts reception in their honor during the first weekend of Sundance. As the reception commenced at the swank 350 Main Brasserie, Joseph gave a speech that commended Columbia’s achievement and the artists in attendance.
“We are here because we are a Columbia family who nurtures talent, develops talent, then our network moves this talent forth into the industry. That is what we are celebrating, what the Columbia network is doing in this industry, here at Sundance and around the world.” An estimated 300 people in attendance—the head of the Sundance Institute, New York state commissioners, heads of other arts schools, journalists, and alumni from Columbia’s various schools—mingled over hors d’oeuvres and an open bar.
Ed McGinty, who graduated from the School of the Arts in 2006, spoke at the reception about Columbia University Entertainment, a network for alumni in the entertainment industry that was started last year. Currently, the Los Angeles-based group has a mailing list of 300 people, but is looking to expand to include alumni from all of Columbia’s schools. “I love seeing all these people from different schools getting involved, when they realize the success graduates are having in the cultural arena. An enormous amount of energy is directed at Columbia this year, and I’m proud of that,” Becker said.
In Sundance’s short film program, three Columbia-affiliated shorts caught the attention of viewers. First-year School of the Arts’ film student Jed Cowley brought a short that he wrote and directed while an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. Although the short—The Loss of a Wrestling Match—was rejected for a senior-level class at Brigham Young, Cowley said, “I finally got to a point where I decided that I am going to be a director, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” This attitude is mirrored in his short, which Cowley describes as semi-autobiographical. He said that “as a high school wrestler, I was always obsessed about winning and losing, and my win-loss record. I was obsessed with rankings and what the paper said about me and stuff like that, and that experience influenced my film. This film is about doing your best without worrying about winning or losing.”
Myna Joseph, who graduated from the School of the Arts in 2006, attended the festival with her short film Man, a coming-of-age story about two sisters who form an unusual bond during a sexual encounter with a young man who the elder sister met on the Internet. In an interview with the Sundance Daily Insider, Joseph explained, “I wanted to make a film that I thought rang true to the adolescent experience, that really tumultuous time.” The recent Columbia graduate says that the two sisters in Man actually originated in a feature screenplay she wrote at school. A former biology major, Joseph explained: “I went to film school to develop material, but also to meet people. And we’ve been very lucky to have a close-knit group of people to work together.”
The third film, The Second Line, is set in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. MacArthur and Natt, two young men on the edge of adulthood, are forced to take work gutting a house owned by a middle-aged white couple when MacArthur’s savings are stolen from his FEMA trailer. A senior thesis project, it was shot by cinematographer Chris Teague and co-produced by Jessica Daniels and Geoff Quan, all graduates of the School of the Arts.
In his first year at Sundance, Quan confided that the festival at first glance can be overwhelming. “It’s as if you compressed New York and L.A.—particularly the independent piece of it—and threw everyone you would want to meet here,” Quan said. He believes that “the ability to meet so many amazing, interested, compassionate people, and that you can just bump into them on the street, is fantastic.”
Morning Fall, a short film about a man who wakes up on the side of the road with amnesia, by McGinty, was featured at the Delta-sponsored sidebar at the Sundance Gen Art competition. About the impact attending Columbia has had on his approach to filmmaking, McGinty said that at Columbia, “the producers and the directors all have to write, so you are learning about story, and you’re working with actors the whole way through film school.” When asked about the reasons for Columbia’s strong presence at Sundance this year, McGinty theorized that “it’s just those building blocks [of plot and character]. The technical stuff they don’t pay that much attention to because you can go hire someone from NYU to do it.”
A portion of the films at Sundance will be bought and distributed to audiences across the country and beyond to leave an artistic imprint on the mainstream media, advancing filmmaking and the socio-cultural value of cinema. It also opens the door for an inherently commercial relationship between these independent filmmakers and the entertainment industry, creating a market for eager motion picture executives to take hold of independent gems.
“I’ve been lucky that films I have worked on have gotten into Telluride, San Sebastian, and London, and all these different places—they really have their own personalities. And I think this one is a fascinating mix of independent filmmaking and also a real corporate spine. It’s interesting to see how that all plays together,” said producer Maureen Ryan, who graduated from the School of the Arts in 1992.
Sundance is situated in the festival circuit middle ground—it’s not considered an arthouse fest like Telluride and Rotterdam but also not a megaplex fest like Tribeca. The potential transference of new independent films, filmmakers, and actors into the mainstream market relies on the commercial aspects of the festival, thus Sundance’s spirit of independence in filmmaking carries seemingly adverse yet necessary ties to corporate America. Despite enthusiastic audiences and encouragement from the independent film community, over half of the films at Sundance will fail to be sold for distribution. Sugar writer and director Anna Boden, CC ‘02, pointed out, “there’s a lot of pressure to get good reviews here—Sundance is the first place people are going to see your movie and decide how they want to promote it.”
Whether networking to make a film or to sell a film, the festival can be stressful. A festival expert advised me to take flu prevention seriously, warning: “I have found that my friends in New York who all had colds, brought their germs to Sundance and have made all the L.A. industry people sick. When at Sundance, use the hand sanitizer, take the free vitamin drink packets, pop NyQuil, DayQuil, whatever you can get your hands on, because the schedule at Sundance with screenings in the day and parties that last all night will wear you down.” Yet the grueling schedule of most attendees does pay off. Daniels said: “I’ve been back for a week, and I’m still getting e-mails from people that I either met there or saw their film there and want to get in touch. So it’s like summer camp, you create this instant network just by being included in it.”
The Hollywood swag that comes hand in hand with the necessary relationship between independent filmmakers and corporate conglomerates can be somewhat unsavory to your neighborhood cinephile. With a picturesque horizon of snowy mountains overhead, the historic western facades of Main Street storefronts are effectively taken over by sponsored lounges and gifting suites during the 10 days of the festival. I was pushed into the street by photographers trying to capture Katherine Heigl’s ascent into a black Escalade. As I walked up Main Street in an attempt to get into the legendary Harry O’s nightclub to see the Bravery and Velvet Revolver (by the way, Scott Weiland was a no-show), I encountered a herd of Hummers trawling up Main Street, bearing advertisements—a stark contrast to The Fields of Fuel flyers plastered outside of the nightclub.
Paparazzi and fans crowd outside theaters, restaurants, and stores in hopes of sighting celebrities. Signposts and community message boards shape-shift daily as colorful movie posters envelop public structures. Every party has multiple sponsors—energy drinks, Web sites, clothing brands, and cell phone companies all make use of the Sundance party scene to market their products. An online search for the phrase “Sundance 2008” conjures up articles that describe in meticulous detail the swag that prominent celebrities procure from the various gifting boutiques. The celeb-following, TMZ-reading, gossip-consuming sort of festival-goer actually exists, and the rubbernecking nature of the festival takes on a new meta level when even celebrity gossip bloggers are beatified. When Perez Hilton and Matthew Perry left the Fred Segal gifting boutique at the same time, it wasn’t surprising to see them mobbed by autograph-seekers. That half of them were clamoring for the blogger’s attention, not the actor’s, was unexpected.
The “industry” attitude that some people display can diminish the independent spirit for which Sundance is known. While the shuttle bus typically is a place where passengers extol their cinema finds, concoct film reviews on the fly, and barter for tickets, I witnessed in close proximity a middle-aged exec having a tantrum that easily topped that of any child because his Blackberry had cracked, disconnecting him from the handheld world. This is the true meaning of tragedy at Sundance.
However, it is not the celebrities or the high-powered industry buzz that is responsible for the effervescent energy that permeates the festival. An undeniable contagious excitement emanates in screening lines, festival shuttles, and dark screening rooms, where movie-goers anxiously await films, as well as the filmmaker panels, receptions, and parties where attendees discuss films and art as they meet like-minded cinephiles. The jovial camaraderie apparent in conversation struck up between strangers, enthused about their latest screening or panel, proves that Sundance is a haven for film-lovers and a goldmine for moving stories.
Several alumni argue that Columbia’s success at Sundance stems from the well-rounded education students receive, which enables them to understand and appreciate the value of a good story. Producer Carly Hugo, CC ‘06, said: “When I was at orientation, Annette Insdorf said something that has stuck with me throughout the whole time—she said, ‘NYU teaches you how to make films, but Columbia teaches you why you make films.’ And I always keep that in the back of my mind. I really like that idea.”