Thank you's

Well the trip is done and I would like to write to a few people who really deserve some thanks.

First thank you Dr. Andersen for setting up this trip, I had a great time. Thanks for showing me how to use the buses it saved me a lot of time. Thanks for taking us all out tubing, that was a lot of fun, and for taking us out for Train Burgers afterwards, I'm glad you and Ryan enjoyed those burgers so much. Thanks for giving me that ticket to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it was hysterical. Thanks for the sushi, I'm sorry I was to sick to come with you guys. Finally, thanks for being a really great professor and teaching a cool class.

Thank you Ryan, you were a good helper monkey for Nate (Thank YOU, PAt. -Ed.), if there were a monkey of the year award you would get my vote. Thanks for keeping a great website. Thanks for saving me tickets and places in line and all that, and thanks for being a chill roommate, even when I woke you up with my hacking at 4 A.M.

Thank you Dr. Andersen, the younger, for the prescriptions that got me through the festival. I was really dying and you got me what I needed to continue.

Thank you classmates I'm very glad you were all really nice and no one hurt themselves or anyone else. I liked all the people on this trip and I'm glad to meet all of you. Have a great year and I hope you all had a good time.

A Final Thought by James (Words of advice)

There are several words of advice that I would like to share to all those who would like to do the Sundance winter term. Number one: bring lots and lots of socks. There is no need to bring 10 changes of clothes (that's way too many), but bringing lots of socks is a must. My feet were constantly cold unless I would wear 2 pairs, and then I ran out. Wearing socks 2 days in a row is pretty gross, and they aren't as warm the second day for some reason.

The second thing I would like to add is look for the free stuff during the afternoon. There was a lot of free stuff to get (although you needed to be 21 for all the good stuff), and the best time was to go around noon to main street and look around for people carrying cheap looking stuff. Follow the trail of people and you'll find the free stuff.

See lots of movies. This seems like a given, but the more you see the more likely you are to find a good one. Not all independent movies are good, and as a matter of fact most are pretty bad. The only way to find a good one is to go to tons and tons of movies. Do not believe the hype on most of the movies, because the ones that I did hear that were good ended up being pretty bad. Pretty much a person has to go to the movies themselves to find a good one. And do not choose a movie just because it has some stars in it. I saw 20 movies, and I only liked 2 of the movies that had any Hollywood star in it.

I also wish I would have brought more to do in the lines. On any given day I spent 5-8 hours in line, which was spent doing little to nothing. I read two 400 page books, and played cards, which seems like a lot, but I needed more. Bringing 4 books would have been better, and I should have brought my laptop or a portable DVD player. The lines got pretty repetitive, but when I had something to do they really seemed to go further.

And as for my personal experience this is my conclusion: It was awesome! I got to see lots of celebrities (which another word of advice if you want a picture or autograph take a seat near the isle), and I even got to talk to a few of them. The food was pretty bad, and the waiters were the worst I have ever encountered in any given town. I should have just bought lots of food at Albertsons and took that around in a backpack, but I did not. The hotel was pretty bad because the walls were really thin so sound traveled very well, and the maids did not clean up or replace your towels unless you somehow ran into the maids. I had a good overall impression of the movies, and I only wish I could have bought more tickets (online). The people who went were all really cool, and it was just an amazing experience.

Bleak view... but hopeful?

Having now seen an entire Sundance Film Festival, I think I can say that unfortunately the soulless minions of commercialism have won out. I hoped to find that underneath the celebrities and the flashy graphics and sponsors the festival was still about a love of films, and the freedom of independent films. Unfortunately I don't really think that's the way it is any more. Time and again I would tell people I didn't have anything to do with the film industry, and time and again they would respond, oh my goodness, are you just here because you love movies? They themselves were of course there to network. Sundance is as if the entire greater Los Angeles area has gone on vacation together, and brought some friends from New York along for the ride. When you walk down Main Street your bound to pass at least ten clubs, many set up by the festival it's self, which are sure to have signs up telling you you're not nearly rich or famous enough to enter. Thankfully it's still possible to talk to some people who really do enjoy films and are there for the movies; however, there are a great deal of people in attendance for less noble reasons. There are the rich kids who get mommy and daddy to send them along to Sundance so they can ski with their rich friends and buy their way into their rich parties. Also there are journalists, who rather than show the world all of the wonderful movies, instead talk about the antics of the celebrities and the idle rich. You can recognize these people by their incredible haircuts that move not an inch in the wind and the boom mike and camera that follow in their wake. The people to talk to are the ones that wait with you in line for three hours. Those surprisingly few fans that can be found paging through the Sundance guide continually with a grin on their faces. These are my favorite people, and these are the people that Sundance should really be for.

The Talented Neil Young finally done filmic justice

This documentary surprised me mainly because I anticipated that it would be a record of Neil Young's life and career. Instead this documentary proved to be a concert with some of the most amazing songs. Neil Young appeared just before the film started and as he walked to the microphone I shouted, "Go Neil!" He looked at me with a bewildered look on his face, but at least I was able to get his attention.

Anyhow, the documentary did capture the level of emotion that Neil instills in his songs. Each word that comes from his mouth is infused with a memory or feeling so strong that it registers on Neil's face. Neil's facial expressions proved that some part of him was going back in time when he first wrote the lyrics, he was remembering those experiences.

Neil is so talented, he can play the harmonica, the banjo, the guitar and the piano; the man mine as well be a god!

Frontier Shorts

"Uten Tittel" is both beautifully stylized and filmically unique employing a smooth montage style which lets the film flow, its story unfolding gracefully. The shots are very creative. Though they are stills, the shots are not static or one-dimensional. For example, in one shot, a few isolated elements faintly drift through curtains in the background while the rest of the frame is still. The next shot is of the same scene viewed from a different angle creating spatial dimensions and allowing the same elements to convey a bit more seen in a different way. Breien also conveys movement through still-frame shots. The camera scans a line of people in different stages of the same activity - some turning to leave, some facing the camera, some walking away, etc.

Breien creates an air of suspense from the beginning, opening with shots of people who have gotten out of their cars in the middle of the street to stare confusedly at the sky. The phenomenon is finally revealed to be hundreds of black balloons floating ominously over the city. The image creates an unsettling tone as it offers no explanation for why this is happening. The balloons eventually deflate and fall to ground, each, upon inspection, bearing a name attached to it. Spectators of the event begin to examine each balloon and decide to bury each one in the snow.

Breien explained after the film that had been of an existent person who died innocently as victims of war and hate crimes across the globe. That the the circumstances of each death were completely unrelated to another serves to highlight Breien's point. It's about the senselessness of people killing people in general, not localized to one event.

By leaving out the particulars of each death and representing all the victims uniformly as black balloons, Breien removes prejudices which some would want to use to justify as a death. This compels one to examine the situation as simply life, and ending of life.

Breien displays a mastery of filmic aesthetics while delvering a powerful message with a social conscience.

Experimental Shorts challenge viewer's expectations

"Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine", Austria, 2005, Directed by Peter Tscherkassky

I was not too impressed with this film. The beginning was somewhat intriguing mostly because I wasn't sure what was going on. An overexposed shot shows an old man drawing what looks to be some sort of looking glass up to his eye and peers through. Words like "head", "tail" and "survive" are spliced between the scenes upside-down and at odd angles. The film was really audio-visually abrasive and dragged on for way too long. I didn't detect any meaning really. It seemed just like some kids messing around in an AV lab.

"High Plains Winter", U.S.A., 2005, Directed by Cindy Stillwell

The film centers around ski-joring competitions in Montana and Idaho, showing the good and bad aspects of the sport. However, the real substance of it, I think, is the shots of desolate unpopulated tundra, stoic and snow-covered ountain ranges and herds of cattle marching across barren snow-deserts. Stillwells shots mirror each other, communicating a feeling of sameness and isolation. Some of my favorite shots were of electrical towers, their angular geometric shapes and enormous stature contrasting sharply with the flat Idaho and Montana landscapes. Stillwell pairs these with images of electrocuted birds hanging from the wires connecting steel giants. This film seems to say a lot through what it leaves out (there's no dialogue, and no commentary on the images). I liked her technique of placing two separate frames of similar images next to each other and scanning the shots so that they seem to approach a common point from opposite directions. This creates the effect of mountains being swallowed up into each other at the place where the frames meet.

"Quimera", Brazil, 2005, Directed by Eryk Rocha

Sequences of jump shot show cats walking down a street, close-ups of their eyes as a car approaches, a man shaving himself and shaving a cat, and blurry headlights drawing nearer. There is a sort of menacing tone and it's sort of implied that someone is perhaps mistreating the cats or that they are about to get run over in some shots. Still, you don't really know what's going on - it's like fragments of a story but you don't have enough to make it complete. Nonetheless it makes more sense than "Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine". It also had more of an artistic feel.

"Viscera", U.S.A., 2005, Leighton Peirce

Memories translate into blurry and disjointed images. Sounds are in disconnected clips. Very artsy but somewhat unremarkable. An examination of how sensory perceptions become ingrained in our memories.

"True North", United Kingdom, 2005, Directed by Isaac Julien

This was the only one with an actual plot. The film's story is based loosely upon the experience of Matthew Henson, who traveled to the Arctic with Robert E. Peary in 1909. He is supposed to have been the first man to reach the North Pole, but this was disputed at the time because he was African American.

Voiceovers from "The Negro Who Traveled to the Pole with Peary" are inserted throughout; the sincere tone of the text complements the intensity of the film. Julien uses a handheld camera to create an uneasy and slightly threatening feeling at times. Out of focus shots convey a cloudy-headedness, as if the cold, undernourishment, and weariness of the traveler were getting to her head. Shots jump from the protagonist to what looks to be thousands of pounds of falling ice-water illustrate the frailty of human life and the odds that one is up against in the icy abyss. It's man pitched against nature at its most extreme.

The text adds a morbid beauty, discussing the glory of death in a place like this and examining what it means to commune with or be part of something greater than oneself and how one defines their orientation to the world, the universe, God.

Though Julien uses varied mediums, every aspect of this film blends well together.

"Las Vegas", Italy, 2005, Directed by Olivo Barbieri

The director used a tilt-and-slide lens effect to make real images of Las Vegas look like a model. He said this was to mimic the skewed and superficial perceptions of the place (its backwards morals and representations of monuments in places half-way around the world, deifying celebrity and wealth, etc.). It seemed a lot more interesting when he explained but pretty much failed to communicate a lot of this as a film and was really boring to watch.

"Son of Man" sticks to tradition

I thought "Son of Man" was a tremendous movie and as a South African myself I was able to notice a lot of things that made it stand out all the more. The language of the film was Xhosa, one of eleven languages officially spoken in South Africa. I was amazed at how they used authentic Xhosa rituals and songs in the film; for instance, at one point they showed Jesus covered in white mud, there is a Xhosa ritual where young men cover themselves in that white mud and build a hut. They stay in that hut alone together for some weeks undergoing rituals and trials and when they come out they are men. This was contrasted with Jesus' tribulations in the desert.

One of the most memorable parts of the movie for me was when Mary Magdalene was about to be set on fire. I remember the person sitting next to me seemed shocked, but if all they were going to do to her was set her on fire she would have been lucky. South Africa at that time, in the townships was an insanely violent place. The political violence was unbelievable and it did not recognize neutrality. For instance, Rastafarians represented a peaceful subgroup in South Africa that stayed out of politics; however, when one of the two parties, for there were two political parties that the white government would play off each other to keep black South Africa under control, would catch a Rastafarian they would make him eat the necklace he wore.

The film is very much an authentic record of South Africa, as well as a retelling of the gospel. As a South African I'm truly glad to get this chance to see the country again and to hear the story of its people.

"Ground Truth" exposes uncomfortable truths

This film blew me away. I had goose-bumps the entire movie. This is a documentary which exposes what American news sources have not been able to show their public. This film shows innocent Iraqi citizens being slaughtered at the hands of American troops. The problem, according to the soldiers interviewed, is that there is little to differentiate a civilian from an armed enemy.

In addition to the problems in Iraq, the soldiers bring problems home with them. Many veterans are suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). This is a serious psychological disorder that if untreated can permanently alter brain function and structure, which results in severe psychological problems.

This film convinced me that war is not the way to settle an economic need for oil. Innocent lives are being lost and this message needs to get out to the American public. I think this film does an excellent job of expressing some of the most pressing issues with the war in Iraq.