After the First Virtual Sundance, Four Writers Compare Notes
What worked online? What didn’t? And which films stood out? When you’re watching from home, feel-good movies don’t always have the same effect.
Oscar the Grouch and his pal Caroll Spinney in the Sundance documentary, “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street.”Credit.Luke Geissbühler
Feb. 5, 2021
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, there were the usual premieres and Q. and A. sessions, breakouts and crowd-pleasers but no actual crowd. Because of the pandemic, the Park City, Utah, event was pared back and conducted largely online. None of the attendees could, say, meet by chance and talk movies, and it was hard to get a sense of the festival overall. To rectify that, we asked the co-chief film critic A.O. Scott, the critic Devika Girish, and the reporters Kyle Buchanan and Nicole Sperling to compare notes. Here are excerpts from their conversation:
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V s Guide To Sundance 2021
V s Guide To Sundance 2021
In case you run out of films to watch in quarantine.
In case you run out of films to watch in quarantine.
February 3, 2021
Like everything else this year, the Sundance Film Festival was held virtually. Luckily, all film-goers needed was a screen to enjoy the largest celebration of indie movies Sundance previously launched the careers of household names like Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, Rami Malek, and Tessa Thompson. Here s our guide to all the can t-miss moments of this year s festival.
Best Period Piece - Passing
As it sometimes goes in a pandemic, for this year’s Sundance Film Festival, something lost meant something gained. What was lost was obvious: The ability to be in Park City, Utah, in person; the parties; the vibe; the communal audience experience. What was gained was glorious: The ability to watch a highly curated selection of world-premiere movies from the comfort of one’s home, as the festival moved to its own temporary streaming platform. I watched about a dozen of Sundance movies from my bed this year and I loved it. No lines. No anxiety about proper scheduling. No walkout shame if I realized a movie wasn’t for me and decided to stop watching. I loved it.
Film News: That’s a Wrap! 2021 Sundance Film Festival Top Five
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CHICAGO – It was one week of 73 feature films and 50 shorts, and it was shared with a virtual and online audience. The 2021 Sundance Film Festival will be remembered as within the pandemic sphere, but it also was notable for the depth and breadth of their film offerings, and how it reached a larger cinema universe.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual event organized by the Sundance Institute – an organization founded by actor Robert Redford in 1980 – and dedicated to the growth of independent artists. It usually takes place each January in Park City, Utah, and other locations, and is the largest independent film festival in the United States. It includes competitive categories in documentary and dramatic films, both feature length and short works, as well as out-of-competition categories for showcasing new films.
Walks a wobbly fine line.
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Sofia Kappel stars as a young Swedish woman keen to break into the adult film industry in L.A. in Ninja Thyberg s feature debut.
A young woman arrives from a distant land in the capital of a certain entertainment industry and ascends the ladder of success, only to lose a bit of her soul on each rung of the climb. That, of course, is the plot of
Showgirls, but it s not like Paul Verhoeven, or anyone who s written a version of
Faust, ever patented the concept. This means Swedish writer-director Ninja Thyberg has room to put her own stamp on this classic rags-to-riches-to-nihilism-and-disillusion narrative arc with