Or so they all seemed. Now, Sundance is bigger than ever, maybe better than ever, though that is a matter of some debate. What is not is that Sundance has been driven by the disciplined programming genius of former UCLA Film Archives programmer Geoff Gilmore, celebrating his 11th year along with Nicole Guillaumet, at the helm of perhaps the most confounding, stimulating, difficult to pigeonhole, runaway success in the film festival world. And to do this in the snow in a town that over the years has mostly resented the invasion of hiptitude. Often, one doesn't.
Movies succeed when the audience and the film resonate.
That's hopefully what you get out of Sundance. Steven Soderbergh's Sex lies and videotape put Sundance on the map in 1989. Soderbergh hasn't been back to Park City since his experimental failure, Schizopolis , was turned down by the festival in'96 and instead played SlamDance, the impish startup up Main Street. It didn't seem threatening at all, nor overly important. It had meaning but not too much, because you didn't feel that the stakes were too high and that your career was in the balance.