Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is a reputation for schmooz bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is Paris Hilton (and the like) bad for the Sundance Film Festival?

We could all go on and on, right? However you choose to phrase it, the heart of the question is the same: Has the “true meaning” of Sundance become lost in the party madness?

The first wording of the question–Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?–came from Robert Butler in a piece he wrote for PopWire on PopMatters. He doesn’t actually answer his own question, but he does raise some interesting points:

…with success has come second-guessing. Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly’s chief movie critic, has said that increasingly Sundance is showcasing films with such big names and solid financial backing that the word “independent” doesn’t apply.

Gleiberman has also written about the Sundance “bubble effect,” in which certain films generated a frenzy among festival goers and were fought over by competing distributors. The problem, Gleiberman writes, is that many of these festival favorites become real-world flops. They are “bubbles, destined to burst.”

Starting the Slamdance festival 13 years ago was obviously a way to counter the growing glitz of Sundance and the scores of people who go each year motivated by attractions other than movies.

But many people still don’t think Sundance has issues that need to be countered. Again, from Butler’s article:

Kevin Willmott, the Lawrence, Kan., filmmaker who took his mini-budgeted film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America to Sundance in 2004, said the fest is invaluable in getting a low-budget film in front of a large audience.

“For a genuine independent filmmaker Sundance is a huge deal. The day they announced that C.S.A. had been accepted by Sundance I got about 100 phone calls from agents and other folks.”

It all comes back around to that big, hairy distribution monster, doesn’t it?

I talked to Judy Irola today at the Denver Film Festival about her new documentary Cine Manifest. Some of the things we talked about included the political nature of filmmaking, the proliferation of small film festivals, the current political climate, and her favorite political films.

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Starz Denver Film Festival, Spout podcast, Cine Manifest, Judy Irola

We spent our last morning in Portland wandering around the “largest independent new and used book store in the world,” Powell’s. I’ve been before, but it never ceases to amaze me. Three rambling floors of books covering an entire city block. Probably my favorite thing about the store, besides the ability to browse shelves upon shelves of books on even the most obscure topics, is the unorthodox practice Powell’s is famous for: shelving new and used books side-by-side. It’s so brilliant (and they’ve been doing it this way since 1979).

But what I was thinking about after this book-lovers orgy (while eating brunch at the very delicious Genie’s) is how Powell’s is such an anomaly in the word of on-line versus off-line retailers and independents versus big chains. Powell’s has a very successful dot com (started before Amazon, incidentally) but I want to set that aside for a moment and just look at the Burnside Street store. We’ve been conditioned to go on line if we want inventory and selection, and go to a real-life store if we want an “experience” within a community. Powell’s manages to do both at once (and I’m still trying to get my head around how the Long Tail theory fits into all of this). It’s so successful, even amidst the chains, because of its huge selection, knowledgeable and friendly staffers ready to share everything they know, and plenty of in-store events that make you feel a part of a crazy-book-lovin’ community. You leave with your books, and a story to tell–an experience.

Are there any parallels in the world of film and DVDs? A way to get the films you really want–to not be limited–yet to have an experience within a community? What’s the ideal model for theaters or DVD rental stores? Can an “experience” be created for on line consumers? (Obviously Spout thinks so…)