First, my link lied. This isn’t a report on my time at Sundance, but rather on the whole Park City Festival circuit. Park City in January is a feast of Film Festivals, both big and small. Some use huge theaters, others bars, and one shows films out of the back of a truck. I’m not sure how many fests were running while I was in town; I was aware of six and would be shocked if there weren’t several more that dropped under my radar. I spent my time at the lord of all festivals, Sundance, its supposedly edgy little brother, Slamdance, and the truly edgy, TromaDance. A majority of the films at all of these fests lay somewhere between mediocre and horrendous. But I’m in an uplifting mood, so I will dwell on what was worthwhile. If I don’t mention it, assume either I didn’t see it, or that no one should see it.
Park City
I assume someone, somewhere, lives in Park City. I can’t imagine where. Park City makes Las Vegas look like settled suburbia. This is a place for tourists. I saw either film fanatics in search of a latté or ski bunnies heading up the slopes. I carried a latté. There are myriad rooms for rent for the ravenous film seeker, but most fill up long before the fests light their screens. I bunked in with a group of up-and-coming directors in a luxurious condo. It meant I could have food cooked in an actual kitchen instead of grabbing bites at the many coffee houses. As it turns out, I did little of the cooking, but that was probably in everyone’s best interest. Park City made it easy for me to travel from condo to theater by supplying a steady stream of free busses and shuttles; I never had to wait long for one whose route was limited to the Sundance theaters. This was just as convenient for the other festivals, although that wasn’t intended. Only Sundance is cuddled close by the town. It is illegal to hand out flyers for other festivals or to post signs for them. Of course that doesn’t stop anyone, but it does mean you can spot the occasional fleeing festival volunteer on the snowy streets.
TromaDance
This smallish film festival prides itself on being open to everyone and anything. It is put on by the good people at Troma Entertainment; you know, the guys who created such low budget icons of questionable sophistication as The Toxic Avenger and Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D. The fest is not for screenings of their own films, but for a wide variety of shorts submitted from all over the world. As TromaDance is the most extreme of the fests, it isn’t surprising that the the quality of the films is also extreme, in both good and bad ways. Not actually the most extreme, but I’ll get to that later.
I missed the first day which took place in Salt Lake City, but I was familiar with some of the films as I had previously screened several at the Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival. Two of them are on my Best Modern Short Films list: Devi Snively’s Teenage Bikini Vampire and Tom Hodges’ Stunt C*cks.
For the second day of screenings, now in Park City, I was asked to act as emcee, which demonstrates the Troma folks’ good taste. Obviously, my performance was breathtaking, but as it is possible that people didn’t show up for me, I’ll stick to the films. Three were standouts. One I knew well: CJ Roy’s Roadside Attractions. I’ve seen it at three festivals and it always entertains. I’ll See You In My Dreams is a 24-minute zombie film from Portugal that is what all of the big budget zombie features of the last few years should have been. Miguel Ángel Vivas dark tale is violent and cruel and a touch surrealistic. The plot follows a zombie hunter in an unspecified future where the world is infested by the undead. The story is surprising only because it actually does what other films avoid. The third film was the French dark comedy Le Manian. In it, a stray dog latches on to an unhelpful man. As he takes extreme actions to rid himself of the dog, he fails to ask why the dog is there. Director Frederic Jolfre has a tragic sense of humor.
Slamdance
I spent the least time at Slamdance, too little to make broad statements about the festival. I did take in their short films in what felt like a small storage room. In an uncomfortable chair, unable to see the bottom of the screen, I watched several of the worst sins ever recorded on celluloid as well as a couple of gems. Yes, this was the fest with the real extremes. Again, focusing on the good (as I should not be forced to relive the others), I was glad that Gabriel Hardman’s Wrong Way Up was in the fest; it is another film from 2004’s Dragon*Con Film Festival. New to me was Dylan Akio Smith’s Man Feel Pain, in which a depressed man nails his hand to his wall in a fit of anger. His neighbors, instead of freeing him and calling an ambulance, decide that he is their savior. Everyone at the screening jumped when nail entered flesh. The themes of religion and loyalty are laid on thick, but with humor and the short running time, that’s the way to do it. I could have used another twist or two, but as is, it’s a satisfying film. The diamond of Slamdance, and of all the fests’ shorts was Never eveN, an insightful, romantic, and humorous fantasy. In it, time runs in reverse except for one man who finds himself at odds with his world. Never eveN is not like any film I’ve seen before; that’s a phrase I don’t get to type often.
Sundance
Misery. Anguish. Melancholy. Welcome to Sundance, the festival of really depressing films. Film after film introduced new ways for humans to despair. Now, I like an occasional exercise in gloom, but these guys bathe in grief. I could have joined the Sundance staff, wallowing “happily” in the wretchedness of life if it had been shown with some artistry. But the films strived for mediocrity, and succeeded. Everything I saw was competently made (shouldn’t that be a given?), but few had anything new or interesting to say. This was film as a craft.
My interest was in the short films, but I did take in some features. The only one worth a mention was the Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman collaboration, Mirror Mask. As Gaiman pointed out at the screening, this is a family film (read “children’s film”). I’m sure that anyone under 12 will find the story engaging. I was captivated by the innovative effects by the Jim Henson company. This is a spectacular looking film and was rightly one of the hits of the festival.
For the shorts, most were forgettable. Only a few were worth the time: The Sailors Girl (a depressing film about expectations, false assumptions, and death), The Act (a depressing film about standup comedy and death), Tama Tu (a not that depressing film about a lull in battle), and Husk (a depressing and terrifying film about a corn field, demonic forces, and death). Husk is the one that made the greatest impression on me as it succeeds where most horror films fail, by actually being frightening. It is yet another film that was shown at the 2004 Dragon*Con Film Festival.
CondoDance
Film festivals have forgotten that films are supposed to be entertaining. With that thought in mind, director Devi Snively and her partner and producer, Agustin Fuentes, suggested, with all the pluck of Mickey Rooney in a ’40s musical announcing that “we should put on a show,” that…well…they suggested that we should put on a show. Teaming up with two other directors, Miguel Gallego and Eric Kurland, they put the word on the streets of Park City that a ski condo would become a film venue for the night. I too was a sponsor of this event, although I can’t say how I aided besides in moral support—I am a critic, and so had no films to show.
Kurland apparently travels everywhere with a projector and more miniaturized electrical equipment than I knew existed, and soon, with an improvised screen and infinite pasta from chefs Gallego and Fuentes, CondoDance was a reality. A serious film-going (and in many cases, film-making) crowd filed in, and the films began. The theme was “entertaining films” and so, one after another, they were. The highlights:
- Two short musicals from Devi Snively, Teenage Bikini Vampire and the earlier and less often seen Soap Opera.
- Miguel Gallego’s horror tale of teenage hazing gone terribly wrong, The Crypt Club.
- Eric Kurland’s hand puppet noir (yes, I said hand puppet noir), The Ends of the Alphabet.
- Pat Yaney’s mildly disturbed computer animation, Violin.
- Sean Olson’s thriller of an unpleasant child and a serial killer, Latchkey.
The quality of the films was higher, on average, than at any of the larger festivals, and the seats were far more comfortable. Apparently, sometimes, you have to do it yourself.
Final Thoughts
It was a far from overwhelming festival season in Park City. Are festival organizers choosing pompous films (or sometimes, just incompetent ones) when they have better options? Are filmmakers forgetting that film is an art form that is meant to entertain as well as inform? I’m betting it’s a bit of both, but I’m confident that I can find enough first class films out there for the Dragon*Con Film Fest in September. That means I blame the Park City fests’ organizers for the many slow moments onscreen. But they did make some excellent decisions, and brought some original, intelligent works to my attention, and those more than make up for the sea of mediocrity.
I have also decided that Agustin Fuentes is an alien as no human would happily run ten blocks in the snow, twice, to bring good coffee to those of us waiting in Sundance lines. Which reminds me, I still owe him for two caramel lattés.