Here’s something that isn’t said much amidst the Sundance scramble: many reported sales numbers at this festival are bullshit. The physical and emotional ways in which one can be tethered. It’s just a snapshot.Ībout halfway through the film I start to consider it primarily as a reflection on gravity.
Abbasi makes the decision to shoot in 4:3, a tactic that creates distance between the viewer and the screen, and reminds us that we are outsiders to this world. We pause to listen to crickets, to watch water drift in the wind. It’s a beautiful, lyrical work, opting for naturalism over sculpted drama. Towards the end of the festival, one publicist labels a mass email about an added documentary screening as “URGENT.”Īmman Abbasi’s Davyeon follows a 13-year-old African American boy growing up in an economically depressed, gang-ridden, rural Alabama town. In this Sundance inbox, every third subject line is cap-locked. When you attend Sundance as press and opt to include your email address in the festival’s contact sheet, your inbox is flooded with hundreds of mass email press releases, announcements, and media “opportunities” offered by publicists, brands, and corporate entities who are paid to rise their narrative above the fray of competing voices. Hype meant to prime a film for a big sale, which then in turn builds more hype. This manufacturing of reality then wills itself into actual reality. Of breakout performances and buzzy sales titles. Films with money and power at their disposal hire publicists and sales agents to flood the internet, to manufacture hype by laying the seeds of expectation. Ĭomplicating the picture are the external forces of commerce and business competing for control of the narrative. But approximately nobody has the time to view and take in that complete picture so alternative narratives are constructed in what each attendee chooses to focus on. In 2017, that program features 121 feature films, 68 short films, 17 VR pieces, 11 art exhibits, and 24 assorted special events. The first narrative occurs when Sundance locks its program. Sundance is a festival of narratives piled up on top of one another.
Sundance 2017 is Disneyland for film nerds. Sundance 2017 is a distraction from the real world. Sundance 2017 is a sanctuary of art, thought, expression, empowerment. This is a sentiment I hear expressed throughout the week. I do the same, pivoting my body and adjusting my eyeline so as to avoid catching a glimpse of our new President’s grinning face.īy being here, by participating in this festival, I’m aware that I’m hiding from reality. Someone makes a joke about how he’s doing everything he can to avoid looking up at the screen.
#FAT JEWFRO EXTRA MOVIES TV#
There’s a TV mounted on the wall behind me live broadcasting Trump’s inaugural address. I’m making small talk with some friends about the festival and the election and the films we’re excited to see. It’s the first Friday of the Sundance Film Festival and I’m sitting in the lobby of the Park City Marriott.