I came to Sundance Film Festival this year for the first time and fell in love with the festival and Park City. When there were no great documentaries to see, I went snowboarding. (Sadly this scenario never really occurred so I convinced myself the doc slate wasn't so great the two days I went snowboarding when in the back of my head I knew I was lying to myself). When the snow wasn't so great, I watched documentaries. (This scenario did occur). For a doc film addict and competitive sports junkie and agnostic nature lover rolled into one, this is as close to heaven as it gets.
Yes, that is Hipstamatic and yes I am happy
As far as docs go, I went hunting for my usual fare: a hearty mouthful of gut wrenching, fever inducing, life altering, political, environmental, and social documentaries to send me on another drugless acid trip through a dimension of reality I never thought existed.
Disclaimer: If you've come here to learn about the celebs who made it out to Sundance this year, you're on the wrong blog.
Here you will read about the films I believe make Sundance truly special, the independent docs that first introduce the most important, untold stories to the world.
I was really glad to see no red carpets, publicists, or paparazzi at my first Sundance event, a panel sponsored by the Skoll Foundation called Stories of Social Change. As I made my way into the Egyptian Theater and saw the etchings of the Pharaohs, I realized that I had come full circle: Exactly a year ago I was in the state of Egypt witnessing and documenting the beginning of a revolution in Tahrir Square.
As a human it is only natural that I look for the connection between these two seemingly disparate life experiences, separated by a continent of space and a year of time. Tahrir Square 2011 and Sundance 2012. What's the connection?
In my view, the best docs do more than just tell a story that's never been told before. A well made doc, like a revolution, has the ability to lift masses of people from a state of inertia. Once you see it and experience it you are forever changed. You are, internally, a different person. Just as a nation in revolt is forever a different nation.
Unlike dramatic films, which have its roots in theater, documentary's roots lie in journalism. But with 90 minutes of running time on one issue, docs can get deeper than any news piece. They can explore issues conventional news bureaus wouldn't dare cover. Long, complicated stories are not conducive to a 24 hour news cycle, and often these stories are the most captivating. Docs appeal not just to the lizard brain, but to the limbic brain. Moving pictures and sound are the keys to unlocking a deeper, more emotional truth than black and white print on a page.
Think of Bowling for Columbine, Paradise Lost, The Cove, Food Inc. All of these films not only entertained and educated, they MOVED people. They inspired a new way of thinking about guns, revoked a Death Sentence, pressured the whaling industry, and made people more conscious about the food they ate. It's not far fetched to imagine a well made and poignant documentary one day causing a Revolution. A great doc screams out to the world something that people desperately need to hear but were previously deaf to. Often the result is "people power." And just like a Revolution, that call for change can fall onto deaf ears, lose steam, or, profoundly triumph.
My next few blog posts will talk about the docs I saw at Sundance that I believe are stories worth spreading.
