While attending a variety of films at Sundance I couldn’t help but notice how different each theatre was from one another. The first theater I attended was Prospector theater, which was located in prospector square. This theater had a makeshift concession stand with over priced food and unorganized staff but it came in handy to get a bit of food while rushing around between films. The theatre was a decent size it would compare to a smaller screen at a mainstream movie theater. What I really enjoyed about prospector was the leg room between seats and overall comfort of the chairs. It was also the only theater that I can recall that allowed people to bring their food into the theater.

The second theater I attended was Eccles theater. This was the largest of the theaters which was set up in the auditorium of the Eccles park city high school. This theater always had the longest lines because it played the some of the most popular films at the festival including many world premiers. I found it difficult to find a seat if you didn’t arrive at least an hour ahead of time even though they had an upstairs balcony. Overall the seats were pretty cramped an uncomfortable, which is a sacrifice that you have to make in order to view the premiers.

The raquet club theater was another one of my favorite theaters was set up at the park city raquet club. The seats were comfortable and it was easy to get a seat close to the front for Q and A. While screening Big Fan I sat two rows behind the star of the film Patton Oswalt and two rows behind me was Michael Cera. This theater had very comfortable and personal atmosphere.

The last theater that I went to is probably the most well known of the sundance theaters. The Egyptian theater off of main street was a very cool theater. Seating just under three hundred people this was the smallest theater I had the pleasure to visit. Part of it’s charm was it’s small size and as you might have guessed the theater had an egyptian theme to it with fake hieroglyphs and foam statues of egyptian artifacts made the egyptian the most unique of all the theaters I attended. 

There were two theaters that I did not have the pleasure to visit. One was the holiday theater, which had multiple screens set up inside a holiday inn hotel. I heard that because they set up som many screening areas that there was not much room inside each screening room. 

The temple theater was the furthest from the down town area of park city making it the most difficult to go to. The theater is actually set up in a synagogue and apparently the seating arrangement is somewhat uncomfortable as they use the benches that are normally set up for the people who attend temple.

Overall it was really cool to go to theaters, they were all special because most of them were makeshift theaters were set up exclusively for the festival. They all had a lot of character because they were all so different from one another along with being much different from the mainstream theaters that we are all used to.

Tags: Jack Browning

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