On the way to seeing Dreaming Of Lucid Living I arrived at the New Frontier Theater a lot earlier than I anticipated so I took a look around. I had never been to New Frontier before but I had been to other venues such as the Library Theater and Prospector Square Theater so I was expecting something similar to those—it is nothing like that. New Frontier consists of three buildings, the main red one in the center and a blue one and a green one off to each side. The Blue House was where I had to go to see Dreaming of Lucid Living, but due to the amount of time I had to wait I decided to explore. I found my way over to the Green House where there was some event going on, all I heard was they were having some Q&A about something, I had no idea what for or who was talking. It was cold though so I went in to see what was going on. Apparently you had to have an invitation to be at the event, but I sat in and wasn’t asked to leave. (more…)

The last film, if you want to call it that, that I saw at Sundance was sadly disappointing. It was a New Frontier entry called The Works of Maria Marshall. This category is supposed to be about what’s next in stretching the boundaries of film. So watching what Marshall repeatedly said was meant for art museum installations in a theater just didn’t capture my attention.

The description of her work made it sound like it would embody the unflinching nature of independent film. She uses herself and her children in short films that are provocative and possibly disturbing. Her teenage son is seen shooting a gun and the first film she made is the son as a baby smoking a cigarette. I bought a ticket for it because I wanted to get that range of emotion that’s far from mainstream film.   (more…)

The New Frontier movies aren’t supposed to be your conventional films; they even claim to be “the next.” I don’t think I could disagree more, or else I am frightened for the future of film making and watching. I wanted to expand my horizons and try something new, take in the whole Sundance experience. I have enjoyed the New Frontier art installations, so I decided to see a screening of Lunch Break. 

The introduction, given by a programmer, spoke about taking your idea of what a film is and forgetting it. I proved that I am not able to do this; I guess I don’t have an open mind. This “film” was eighty minutes of one shot. A long hallway at a factory passing people eat their lunch in slow motion. I can say one positive thing: the slow motion of these workers movements looked beautiful. However, ten minutes of this would have made a lot more sense. I am sure that there is something I am missing, some artistic feature that I wasn’t able to connect with. Had I stayed for the second feature, I would have liked to hear the director explain, but I couldn’t convince myself that my time was worth it. 

I saw more people leave during this one screening than all of the films I have seen combined. The only sound coming from the film was that of factory machines. I started to open my ears to the sounds emanating from the audience. The opening of sodas, the gulping of drinks, the crunching of popcorn and other snacks, the whispers of confusion between peers, the squeaking of chairs; all of these sounds were more interesting than the film. It started to become entertaining to guess how many people were going to make it through the entire feature. I almost regret not staying to see how close my number was, but I prefer keeping some of my intellect.