Sundance, Slamdance, & the Freedom Cinema Festival (Part One)

Sunday morning. Everything is a bit of a blur. Even though I've spent most of my life in Salt Lake City, I've never been any kind of a Sundance festival attendee. I've only been to one screening at Sundance. It was the U.S. premier of Jackie Chan's "Rumble In The Bronx". That was in 1996. Liz was about 6 months pregnant with Elise at the time and we stood out in the cold for something like two hours in order to get standby tickets for the sold out show. Jackie came to the screening to introduce the film which made the effort we put in getting to the screening more worth it considering that "Rumble In The Bronx" is not really his best work. Technically, that is still the only Sundance screening I've been to. I saw two films in Park City this weekend, but one of them was a Slamdance screening and the other one was a Freedom Cinema Festival screening.

I wasn't intending to spend 3 days in Park City during the Sundance festival. I only meant to see the Michael Franti concert that Liz got free tickets to. I knew it would be a late night, so I arranged to take a vacation day on Friday. The Michael Franti show was really good if a bit too loud and about an hour too long considering that I'd gone to work an hour and a half early that morning so that I could get off early and get to Park City well in advance of the gig. At that show, I ran into a new friend from church and she hooked me up with two tickets to another Michael Franti show the next day. This first show was sponsored by Slamdance and the tickets she got me were for another performance for the Freedom Cinema Festival.

Even though Liz is the bigger Franti fan, she couldn't really attend the Friday afternoon show due to the fact that she does childcare on Friday afternoons for some friends of ours who are teachers. (The kids in our school district get out early on Fridays, but most teachers have to work Friday afternoons.) So, I found a friend to head back up for the next Franti gig. If Thursday night's Slamdance performance was good/great then this show was amazing. There were only about 50 or 60 people in this really small room that looked out onto the Park City main street. We sat on the floor (at Michael's request) and he and his friend Jay played a really great sounding, quiet, yet energetic set. They sat on stools in front of the wall of windows that looked out onto the January afternoon sunlight and clouds. They played for just over an hour. The best part for me, both nights, but particularly for the Friday afternoon show, was a cover of New Order's "Age of Consent". When Michael asked if there were any New Order fans present, nobody spoke up. I meant to, but my throat wasn't working at that point. But, I did my best to sing along.

So, after the gig, my friend and I wanted to get into Michael's film about his trip to Baghdad, Palestine, & Israel in June of 2004. It's called "I Know I'm Not Alone". So, we headed out of the mall and across main street and down the hill a bit to the Slamdance box office. Of course, the film was sold out. So, we decided to buy tickets to the last Slamdance screening of the festival for a Belgian film called "Ellektra". "Ellektra" was pretty good up until the too happy ending. I was even working up the courage to tell the director what my thoughts on this until he basically intimated to the audience that he had had to lighten up his script in order to get financing for his film.

Now, we were in the mood to try and catch more films. A quick trip up to the Egyptian theatre, and we were informed that all Sundance screenings were sold out. We didn't investigate the option to purchase standby tickets. I only stood in line for 2 hours in 1996 because I really wanted to see Jackie's U.S. premier. I have no idea what played at Sundance this year and being that uninformed wasn't going to motivate me to stand in line like that again.

We headed back to the Freedom Cinema Festival. The only other film they had that evening that we could still get into was about victims of sexual abuse. It's that I'm not interested, or that I don't care, I just wasn't in the mood for something that heavy right then. But, lo and behold, they just announced that they're gonna screen "I Know I'm Not Alone" on Saturday at 3:00 pm. I called Liz to see if I should buy tickets right then and there, and while I was on the phone with her, a woman, who I believe is the director, gave me tickets to her film "I Pledge Allegiance". A few more phone calls to see if mom & dad will take the kids another night, a crazy trip to somehow get some cash out of my overdrawn checking account, and I had tickets to the 3:00 PM "I Know I'm Not Alone" and the 9:30 PM "I Pledge Allegiance" for the next day.

With no more films to see for the evening, Sam and I decided to head to Wild Oats for some food that is more reasonably priced that what you can get on main street during Sundance in Park City. We got to Sundance about 5 minutes before they closed so, since I had been talking up the black bean veggie burger at the Desert Edge Pub & Brewery we decided to just high tail it back down to the valley and get some of those.

Yesterday. Liz made us pancakes. Yay! I coerced Elise and Ian into helping clear the breakfast dishes. All four of us folded the clean clothes in the house and put them away. The kids "cleaned" their rooms. And then, we took them to grandma & grandpa's to spend the night. And, I have to go pick them up in 30 minutes, so this is gonna have to be a two parter...