It’s a Wrap: Returning Home From Sundance

Lois Vossen, vice president and series producer, catches up with colleagues and friends while at the Sundance Film Festival, including Lauren Prestileo of WGBH-Boston.

After six days in Park City it is time to head home. This year marked my 18th consecutive Sundance and in many ways it was my best Sundance experience in years. The warm weather certainly helped––I only wore my gloves twice, my hat once and never even used my scarf!

The smaller crowds made catching the endless round of shuttle buses more enjoyable. As a proponent of mass-transit, I kind of enjoyed riding the shuttles and eavesdropping on all the conversations. While some of the comments were pretty wild, I also (over)heard some of the most intelligent discussions about film as the shuttles lumbered from the Transit Center and Main Street to the library, to the Yarrow/Holiday Cinemas and onto the Eccles.

But appropriately, the best thing about this year’s Sundance was the films. I saw 15 films and really liked many of them and loved a few of them. The bounty of environmental films could have made for a very depressing Sundance––especially since I screened The Cove, The End of the Line, Crude, No Impact Man and Dirt! The Movie within three days. But even the most dire of these films tried to offer the audience a ray of hope if we are willing to change our ways. Like the call from President Obama, we’ll have to make some sacrifices like giving up blue fin tuna so it doesn’t go extinct. But before I can taste some dirt in my own Oakland backyard like they did in Dirt! The Movie, I’ll have to remove the lead.

One of the fun things about Sundance are the chance encounters: running into former colleagues I see once a year or every few years at Sundance, meeting filmmakers whose work I’ve admired and being able to tell them that in person, going to a pub for lunch and getting seated down the table from the five documentary competition jurors so you can say hi to all of them at once, and of course meeting new filmmakers.

On Tuesday morning I participated in the “Meet the Commissioning Editors” pitch meetings at the Sundance House. One person who joined my table is a Sundance Fellow this year. His earlier short was featured as part of the Independent Lens Shorts Festival. He pitched his new project along with about 30 other filmmakers looking for funding, broadcast and other support.

A notable difference from earlier years at Sundance is whose sitting in the theater with me watching documentaries. This year I sat behind, next to, in front of or across the aisle from Sting, Trudie Styler, Chris Rock, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Bacon, Ben Affleck, Nia Long, etc. And of course Mr. Redford, but he’s been doing it for 25 years.

- Lois Vossen, vice president and Independent Lens series producer

Tags: film festival, independent film, Sundance