MAKING LIGHT OF IT: Sundance 2010

(Pt. One): A Note To Sundance Promoters

“BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND”

“A CINEMATIC REBELLION”

“NEW VISIONS, NEW TERRITORIES”

If you would like to shove these completely vacuous statements composed in some godforsaken marketing room down your audience’s throat without their gag reflex contracting so hard it bursts a cranial nerve then I suggest you don’t follow it immediately with a laundry list of your corporate sponsors.

Furthermore, last I checked that cordoned off carpet lined with countless flashing bulbs did not lead to any hitherto unknown form of cinematic expression, but rather straight back to the tedium that you insist on labeling as ‘independent’.

I’m sure a great deal of dedication, hard work, and artistic sensibility has gone into many of these films, and that SHOULD be recognized and appreciated, but allow them to stand on their own terms and not under the suffocating weight of your confused and misguided rhetoric.

As for me, I’ll just return to the darkened half empty theaters of the section you quietly bastardize, concocting a quixotic stratagem to shine a little light onto your self-imposed ignorance…

----

(Pt. Two): Concocting a QUIXOTIC Stratagem

Step One- Obtain a film print of a visionary artist

Step Two- Sign up for a volunteer position with the Sundance Film Festival

Step Three- Study handling procedures of various selected film prints

Step Four- Carefully choose a sold-out premiere

Step Five- Inconspicuously approach reels awaiting projection

Step Six- Switch one of the reels with aforementioned print

Step Seven- Wait patiently while the announced audience grows increasingly restless with the same old formula

Step Eight- Suddenly witness the LIGHT of a true artist sear through the glaze formed on their eyes

Step Nine- Watch as crew desperately tries to rid the screen of this truth-bearing intrusion

Step Ten- But it will have been too late, they will already have been privy to the wonders that had previously been kept out of reach, and then they will... wait... what was that word you have grown so fond of? I believe it started with an R…

MAKING LIGHT OF IT

Sans Soleil