#eckerdcollege

It was such an honor and a privilege to attend the Sundance Film Festival this year! As its legacy in Park City, Utah comes to an end, you could truly feel the excitement for the festival's future and the early grief of it leaving its origin point.

Before this trip, we learned about indie film and what it means to the film world. Michael Newman's claim that indie film cannot be defined simply in economic, stylistic, or thematic terms, and needs to be understood culturally, was truly showcased at this year's festival. Each film was unique to itself, not being able to be grouped together with others based on those four attributes. Sundance in itself showcases these films with such honor and grace, allowing them to be fully enjoyed and watched to their full potential.

While there, I not only got closer to some of my classmates but also met some pretty awesome people. One of those people was a man named Noah, whom two of my classmates (Izzy and Jillian) and I talked to for some time. He shared his love for film and talked about some films he had seen and enjoyed. He ended up giving us his email to get a discount on that merch store, which was totally awesome! While talking with him, however, Chris Pine had walked right by us!

There were many pop-ups during the first weekend of the festival, one of those being the Little Miss Sunshine pop-up! This pop-up took place Friday-Sunday, where they had free merchandise, donuts, and hot chocolate! It was to celebrate the films 20 year anniversary of screening at Sundance. Unfortunately, they had run out of merchandise by the time I was able to go there, but I was informed that the merchandise is available online! The first time I watched Little Miss Sunshine was back at home (Long Island, New York) with my dad, where we still have cable. And only recently had found out it was shown at Sundance 20 years ago!

Out of all the films i had seen, heres my list (full feature and shorts) all together!

Tuner

Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!

Living with a Visionary (Short)

La Tierra del Valor (Home of the Brave) (Short)

American Doctor

Sauna Sickness (Short)

Candy Bar (Short)

The Huntress

The Oracle (Short)

The Disciple

Pankaja (Short)

Ive already posted about my top films from the festival, but I'll give a short summary of my top three again!

Tuner follows a piano tuner, Niki, with an auditory sensitivity, who works with Harry, an old piano player who now tunes pianos. Innocently, Harry forgets the new combo he made for his safe, so Niki learns how to crack the safe with his sensitive hearing. With the new skill, he runs into a man who is the head of a group that breaks into rich homes that use their security system and steal valuable items "they won't notice are gone". It quickly turns from a story of a hard worker who wants to help his boss, to a story of being stuck in the wrong, dangerous group. This film was engaging for its entirety. I would pay to see this film all over again at Sundance if I could!

Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty follows Haru, a dancer who is dealing with the grief from losing her husband just minutes into the film. It truly captures the struggle of moving on and letting go. But it was a mix of all the best things to feel while watching a film. Happiness, sadness, laughter, and cringe. It was an extremely enjoyable film, and very pleasing to the Eye!

Living with a Visionary follows a husband and wife, while the wife has Parkinson's, and due to her medication, she has hallucinations. While the husband takes care of her, he is also trying to take care of himself. All leading up to the COVID-19 epidemic. With its unique animation style, it truly was so beautiful to watch. I, as well as the rest of the audience, was in tears by the film's end. It truly tugged at everyones heart strings.

My least favorite film, Pankaja, was enjoyable, but it honestly just wasn't my cup of tea, and it was a bit hard to follow. It follows a mother and daughter in India trying to find the missing husband. It was beautifully shot, but in my opinion, didn't capture fully what it wanted.

Throughout the festival, there were multiple talks and panels; unfortunately, a lot of them were 21+, while I'm only 20. (There were some open to all, but they did not fit in with my schedule) . However, I did stay at multiple Q&A's. It was truly amazing to hear all the directors, producers, and even some actors talk about the films! Those included: The Short Film Program 1, The Huntress, The Disciple, Ha-chan, Shake your booty! and American Doctor. It was awesome to see the makers of the films I had just watched quite literally in front of me. I got some pretty cool pictures of some of them as well!

Attending Sundance truly cemented my dream of going into the film industry. The people are passionate and amazing. Not one day is ever the same. My future in the industry is something I will strive for until I am satisfied. Maybe one day I'll even have a screening at Sundance. While making new connections, I also made the ones I had even stronger. Being at this festival with my classmates was honestly such a treat! With friends I've had since freshman year, to new ones, it's truly been such an amazing trip full of connections.

Its been such a privilege to be a part of the Eckerd College Sundance 2026 Winter Term. I will forever cherish this trip and be forever thankful for it.

Thanks for reading!

Sundance 2022 has been a great experience.  I came into the semester hopeful that I would see some cool films and learn a little more about the festival, but now at this point I feel like I know way more than I thought I was going to learn.  I was blown away by the quality of the films I watched, and I wish I could keep going and watch the rest of them.  The quality of these films isn’t too surprising though, as out of almost fifteen thousand films, only eighty four feature films and fifty nine shorts were accepted.  I'm somewhat sad that this is going to be my last blogpost, and I'm really sad that there are no more feature films available to watch.

Although I had never attended Sundance before, I know that it has changed since the coronavirus.  Obviously, the largest difference being the films premiering remotely rather than in Parks city, Utah.  I think the people running the festival did a really good job converting the festival to online, personally my experience was incredible.  Our class had some readings by a man named Chuck Tryon who spoke of these differences in his book titled On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies.  In his book he spoke about the traditional practices of the Sundance festival, and how it is really supposed to be an exclusive event.  Now that the event is online though there is no physical hurdle to keep massive quantities of people from attending.  One quote from Tryon that emphasizes this point is “By allowing a global audience to “attend” the film’s premiere, the festival opened up what is traditionally considered an exclusive event, a move that potentially redefines the role of the festival in mediating our relationship to a wider film culture.” (Tryon, 157).  Basically, what he's saying here is that Sundance is no longer just an exclusive club for ultra-film buffs.  In the days of Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu everyone is excited for new films and videos, and “Indie” is no longer a word only used by hipsters.  He goes on to talk about how differently modern film is distributed today, and now Sundance is finally taking notice and catching up to the twenty first century way of doing things.  Tryon states “To begin, festivals have taken a more direct role in shaping the distribution patterns for independent films in particular, shifting from a model that emphasizes exclusive access to one that provides open—if temporary—access to movies playing at the festival.” (Tryon, 157). This quote emphasizes the point that exclusivity is no longer a major draw to the festival as the films are available to anyone who has an internet connection and twenty dollars.  That being said, Sundance is still trying to artificially create exclusivity through ticket sales caps and time limitations, but if you are in the know about the festival and prepare for it right, you should have no problems watching any of the movies you want.

Below is the list of the films I watched this year at Sundance ranked in order from my favorite to least favorite; separated into their corresponding categories.  Some of these films were better than others, but I would say none of the films I watched were bad.  I'm really sad the experience is over, but I know that it will be back with new films next year and using the skills I learned this year, I will be even more prepared for the next Sundance festival

FEATURE FILMS:

#1 - Piggy: Best overall film I watched this year, a well made thriller about a bullied girl forced into a tough situation.

#2 - Alice: close runner up to my favorite film of the year, great story concept about black empowerment

#3 - 892: another good film that I would recommend watching if you have the time, great acting and interesting character motivation.

#4 - 2nd chance: This was a really good documentary so if the subject matter sounds interesting, I would recommend watching it.  It's only this low on the list because I had to rate all the other films I watched higher

#5 - you wont be alone: this film isn't necessarily bad, but it couldn't keep my attention.  It was slow paced and not what I thought it was going to be.

SHORT FILMS:

#1 - BugCrush: a disturbing story of a young gay high school boy who has a crush on a drug addicted loner who uses bugs to get high.

#2 - Zoon: animated film featuring humanoid creatures eating glowing axolotls and floating into the air.  Very surrealist and there wasn't really a story, it was more of a visual experience than a film with a plot.

#3 - Bestia: I did not read the description for this one, I chose it purely because of the thumbnail.  Excellent animation and the director is really good at creating a sense of unease

#4 - You've never been completely honest: pretty good short about a Californian experiment which tortured people in an attempt to make them more honest, lots of cool shots and a mixture of film and animation

#5 - The Hork: a visually interesting animated short with great sound design and cool art style.

INDIE EPISODIC/NEW FRONTIER

-Culture Beat: I have no idea why this is in Sundance.  It is really funny, but it showed much greater resemblance to a YouTube video than a festival film

-This is not a ceremony: we watched this VR experience in class and it was interesting, but I've used VR machines before so the wonder of the experience felt a little lost on me.

TALK/ PANEL

-Film Talk: 892:  This talk was super interesting as it explained some backstory behind the film 892 and explained why it was named that.  The whole film’s plot took place because the protagonist was owed $892.

Tryon, Chuck. On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies. Rutgers University Press, 2013