Festival coverage sponsored by IndiePix.
Another Sundance Film Festival has come to a close for me and it was great to see so many friends and colleagues and meet so many new people.
Yesterday was the first day that I really took time out to go to a few parties, as the Sundance Channel, the International Documentary Association and Film Independent held their annual get-togethers. Ended the evening with an impromptu BritDocs condo party, blasting Anvil's "Metal on Metal" and toasting the soon-to-be-announced AMERICAN TEEN deal with Paramount Vantage.
Saw two films yesterday - Stacy Peralta's MADE IN AMERICA and Morgan Spurlock's WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN - and like the PATTI SMITH film I saw the night before, I felt the films had strong openings but then they began to lose me as they went along. MADE IN AMERICA has a particularly great start - introducing South Central LA with graphic maps and a nearly 30 minute history lesson that I really loved. Peralta is truly an expert chronicler of Southern California life.
Today, I saw what is, along with Margaret Brown's THE ORDER OF MYTHS, one of my favorite films of the festival - Christopher Bell's BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*. I was not at all prepared for how this film would start with a small, first-person family story of steroid use in one family of three boys and gradually expand into a comprehensive look at how performance-enhancing drugs fit squarely within the American cultural myths of the past few decades. It's exceptional.
More on all the films I saw at Sundance in the coming days. For more on THE ORDER OF MYTHS and ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL, check out the piece I wrote for indieWIRE.
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