Sundance filmmakers weigh in on issues

Other Sundance films touching on gay issues include “All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise,” following former talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell as she leads 500 families on a gay and lesbian ocean voyage, and “Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner,” a portrait of the gay Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning writer of “Angels in America.”

Also at Sundance: “angry monk — reflections on tibet,” about an early 20th century Buddhist whose lusty life ran counter to Western concepts of his spiritual land; “5 Days,” a look at the removal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip last year; “Dear Pyongyang,” a filmmaker’s portrait of her father and his unfailing devotion to North Korean ideology; “Right at Your Door,” a drama about the panic that ensues over reports of bombs and toxic clouds unleashed in Los Angeles; and “An Unreasonable Man,” a documentary about consumer activist Ralph Nader, the former presidential candidate some people consider a spoiler who kept Al Gore from winning in 2000.

Gore also is represented at Sundance with “An Inconvenient Truth,” which chronicles the former vice president’s education campaign on global warming.

“I feel like there’s a growing discontent, and it’s not just the obvious political things,” said Davis Guggenheim, director of “An Inconvenient Truth.” “Even people who fall in the middle of the political spectrum I think are feeling sort of a gap between how they feel and how the news and movies portray the truth out there.”

Other environmental matters open for debate at Sundance include the clash of timber and anti-logging interests depicted in the documentary “Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon” and “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” which investigates why these nonpolluting vehicles never found a market.

Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) — who made the Sundance entry “Who Needs Sleep?” (a look at the hazards of sleep deprivation in overworked Hollywood and America at large) — said filmmakers are stepping up to tell stories the public is not getting from government and corporate media.

“I think people are beginning to understand the definition of an artist in times like these, in this time of deceit when even telling the truth can be a challenging act,” Wexler said. “There’s a spirit that’s not dead in America, even if you do look at all the TV channels seeming to say pretty much the same thing.

“There’s a spirit of obligation in a sense, people who want to reverse the flow toward repression of various kinds. What we can do is take up a camera and communicate to other people.”

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