Sundance Festival sets stage for indie filmmakers

The Sundance Film Festival kicks off tomorrow with a slate of 120 movies that highlight independent filmmaking and seek to distance the festival from the commercialism that has surrounded it in recent years.

Sundance, backed by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute for film, has become the top event for US independent filmmakers and last year, it expanded the show to international movies.

Along with its rise to festival fame in the 1990s, came the stars in movies being shown, celebrities like Paris Hilton for the nightlife, companies ranging from Sony Corp to Stella Artois beer seeking publicity for their products and a rush of media attention.

This year, the 10-day-long celebrity and commercial carnival will again be in Park City, Utah, the mountain town east of Salt Lake City where the festival is held. But the movies, led by opening night's Friends with Money from director Nicole Holofcener, will not reflect the circus of life, so much as they will everyday life.

"Sundance is very much about a spectrum of work. ... This year, it's a festival that feels more independent, that feels less mainstream," said festival director Geoffrey Gilmore.

Hollywood stars, including Jennifer Aniston and Justin Timberlake, will, of course, be in many of the films being shown because that has been a big part of the rise of the indies - big-name talent dressing up the low-budget and human dramas that Sundance champions.

Some dramatic works winning early buzz are Forgiven, a story of a small-town politician embroiled in a scandal, and Stephanie Daley, about a woman who denies killing her child and the psychologist hired to judge her legal competency.

This year, several stars have backed, or in the case of Rosie O'Donnell and All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, been profiled in message-driven documentaries. "All Aboard!" tells of a gay family cruise she and her partner, Kelli O'Donnell, organised.

"I hope it just opens people's hearts," Rosie told Reuters. "You know, the way to get to people is through their hearts."

Brad Pitt executive-produced and Nicole Kidman narrated director Christopher Quinn's God Grew Tired of Us, which chronicles three young Sudanese refugees in the United States.

Director Kevin Smith, known for making movies like Chasing Amy, executive produced Malcolm Ingram's "small town gay bar." Former Vice President Al Gore's crusade against global warming is profiled in An Inconvenient Truth, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader is revealed to audiences in An Unreasonable Man.

Musicians are grabbing the spotlight with films that offer insight into their lives and music. Director Jonathan Demme has made Neil Young: Heart of Gold, and Police drummer Stewart Copeland uses his own film footage to chart the band's rise.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, profiles the iconoclastic singer/songwriter who has inspired musicians including U2's The Edge, and The Beastie Boys' Nathaniel Hornblower made "Awesome: I (expletive) Shot That," in which the band gave 50 video cameras to concertgoers to shoot The Beastie's show.

Park City has become a marketplace where filmmakers sell movies, and many films shown here will become highlights on the art cinema circuite in 2006. Napoleon Dynamite, for example, was a Sundance premiere.

Bob Yari, whose Yari Film Group is at Sundance with romantic thriller The Illusionist, said he expects the market to be good despite the festival's slant toward less commercial fare - a move he called "taking a step back to its roots."

Finally, while much is made about the crass commericalism around Sundance, a few companies show up that actually make products low-budget filmmakers use. Sony Corp is one.

Sony will demonstrate a new digital camera that records images directly onto a computer disk Sony said reduces editing time and productions costs.

"Out of the 20 or so guys who'll show up at our booth, maybe two could be the next Steven Spielberg," said Bob Ott, a Sony vice president of marketing.

- REUTERS