2000
Sundance Film Festival Prize Winners
(major categories):
Dramatic Grand Jury Prize: (tie) Girlfight; You Can Count
on Me
Documentary Grand Jury Prize: Long Night's Journey into
Day
Dramatic Audience Award: Two Family House
Documentary Audience Award: Dark Days
World Cinema Audience Award: Saving Grace
See the complete
list on the Sundance website.
The Blair Witch has cursed the Sundance Film Festival.
Inspired by last year's cheap indie horror hit, 20,000
people descend on Park City, looking for film's Next Big
Thing. I can't get into restaurants, I can't get into public
screenings. Publicists who called me daily for weeks leading
up to the festival won't return my phone calls. Luna, Beck
and Air are all in town--but to look at the lines outside
their shows, you'd think the Beatles had gotten back together.
Only filmmakers enjoy this rabid madhouse. While waiting
in line for a midnight screening of the Japanese sci-fi
porn epic I.K.U., I saw a man spring onto his balcony.
"I just sold my script!" he bellowed to everyone and no
one in particular. People below looked up briefly before
resuming their conversations. So many deals have gone down
in the last couple of days, Park City resembles Wall Street.
Desperate to equal Artisan's Blair Witch success
last year, studios arrived with checkbooks wide open. Bidding
wars erupt everywhere--and honestly, it simply doesn't matter
whether films are any good or not. If a studio doesn't come
home with something, the trip's considered a failure.
Take Shadow Hours, a dull neo-noir starring Balthazar
Getty and Peter Weller. Audiences uniformly hated the film,
yet it was picked up for foreign distribution for $2 million.
Likewise, Girlfight is this year's Slam. This
tale of an adolescent girl who learns to channel her anger
through boxing tied for the Grand Jury prize. Screen Gems
paid $2.5 million for distribution rights, and audiences
gave it standing ovations. But when it ventures beyond the
festival's fevered atmosphere, it will be bashed for its
contrived grittiness and predictable, mainstream storyline.
Still, I must admit that if it weren't for Sundance, there's
no way a film like Chuck & Buck would screen
in Portland. This unsettling black comedy explores the twisted
relationship between two former childhood "best friends."
Miguel Arteta's (Star Maps) study of abandoned innocence
and painful nostalgia is a risky film full of unlikable
characters, but Artisan bought it, and it should arrive
here in the summer.
I saw 27 movies at Sundance, which makes it impossible
to discuss them all. Here are a few that made an impression:
Legacy and Scottsboro: An American Tragedy.
Neither of these docs won awards, but they were the
most poignant films I saw at the festival--impressively
researched, heartfelt and centered on African-American history.
Legacy charts the rise of four generations of women
lifting themselves out of the Chicago ghettos. Scottsboro
isn't as hopeful, as it chronicles nine black men falsely
accused of rape in Alabama in the '30s. Both should play
PBS in the future.
My Generation and The Filth and the Fury.
Barbara Kopple (American Dream, Harlan County
USA) spent six years on My Generation, a look
at all three of the Woodstock music festivals; it appeared
at Sundance as a work in progress. It definitely needs tightening
and balance (it doesn't spend enough time charting the frat
debacle of the '99 festival), but it has the makings of
a great film. The Filth and the Fury gives us a second
Julien Temple documentary on the legendary Sex Pistols.
If you can handle John Lydon rhapsodizing about how brilliant
he and his mates are, you'll love it. Apart from terrific
live footage, this self-glamorization conveniently ignores
the equally seminal Ramones and the Pistols' ignominious
1997 comeback tour.
Groove. This one-night insiders' look at San Francisco
rave culture is so astonishingly accurate it sometimes feels
like a Rave 101 class. The depth of its characters recalls
Thank God It's Friday. Then again, raves aren't about
depth. They're about having a good time, an ethos Groove
captures.
The Virgin Suicides. After Sophia Coppola's filmmaking
debut, an audience member asked her what acting in Godfather
3 brought to her first directing assignment. Coppola
answered, "I'm less afraid of the critics." Good news. Her
messy coming-of-age mood piece looks like it got made only
because of her last name.
Dark Days. Marc Singer's documentary about a lively
shantytown in New York's Amtrak tunnels earned three Sundance
awards (Audience Award, Freedom of Expression Award and
Cinematography). This is an engrossing portrait and truly
an "underground" feature.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 2,
2000
|
