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Sifting for gold at Sundance Film Festival

AFP, PARK CITY, UTAH
Saturday, Jan 24, 2004, Page 12

PHOTO: AP

More than a century ago, hordes of dreamers descended on the snow-capped mountains of Utah in search of gold and silver and a taste of the good life.

Today the treasure hunters are back, but this time they come from Hollywood as the Sundance Film Festival brings out the glow of celebrity and cinematic treasure.

"I had Billy Bob Thornton right here on my bus," a smiling bus driver said.

Star-gazers this year have not been disappointed as Sundance, the world's foremost independent film festival, brings in scores of big names.

"I sat right behind [former] vice-president Al Gore while he watched the same movie with everyone else," an unidentified festival attendee from California said.

As the famous take in small-budget movies that could be major hits this time next year, Tinseltown titans negotiate in coffee shops and bars to buy up films between attending a whirl glamorous parties.

Screen icon Robert Redford's Sundance has a two-decade and exciting history of churning out wonderful movies that first premiered in this usually bucolic ski resort community.

Last year's hits The Station Agent, "American Splendor, Whale Rider,"and older films such as Sex Lies and Videotape, Paris Is Burning, The Blair Witch Project, Reservoir Dogs, debuted here long before being embraced by the world.

Having a movie selected for Sundance is as good as it gets but it is hard getting screen space.

Sundance's success has spawned several smaller film festivals that feed off the celebrity glow and worldwide attention each year.

Sold-out Sundance theaters often send movie goers to nearby parallel festivals showing an endless stream of dramas, comedies and documentaries made by passionate filmmakers seeking an audience.

The Puppeteer is just such a film by producer-cinematographer Gary Henoch who has traveled the world working a wide range of subjects for television companies.

Henoch's documentary, one of several making a splash here this year, deftly captures the pupeteering art of Igor Fokin, a Russian immigrant to the US who worked on a street corner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"I saw this guy and said, `now there's a story,'" Henoch said. "I think you'll like it."

He worked on the documentary for nearly a decade, following Fokin's open-air performances and detailing the story of the man who was formally trained by the last surviving master of the pre-revolutionary Russian Marionette Theater in St. Petersburg.

Though Henoch's powerful documentary was not showing at Sundance itself but at one of the adjacent film festivals here, he is happy to have got close to the center of the action.

Henoch and his crew were meeting with other filmmakers and producers showcasing their work all under the glow of the Sundance light.

Henoch and most other filmmakers know very well that some movies that have played at the little known festivals here have made it to the Sundance.

The Sundance scene has evolved and grown since its 1981 debut and has become a very influential player in the mainstream film industry.

Organizers agonize over paring down the films to showcase from thousands of entries from around the world.

While not everyone at Sundance is going to strike gold, the festival experience seems every bit worth attending to ambitious movie makers with a dream.

Sundance ends today, while the smaller parallel festivals running until the movie powerbrokers and stars have fled the snowy slopes around Park City mountains for sunny Hollywood.
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