Sundance ’07 touts ‘sense of optimism’

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The process of paring the staggering and record-breaking 3,287 submissions down to the 122 features showcased at the festival wasn’t an easy one for the programming staff. Aside from the arduous process of getting through all of them, the festival strives to achieve what Gilmore calls “about 20 different issues of (what constitutes) balance,” from diversity of style and subject matter to numerous perspectives on the world. Gilmore and Cooper have hired a staff that they stress not only knows film but knows how to program a festival with a strong sense of the overall picture.

“Most of us don’t find 125 films a year that we really love,” Cooper says. “So for us, we have to keep an openness to the material. When you whittle things down, you usually end up with 20 more films than you need in each section, and that’s when we start to look at them more closely and enter into a process where we just start talking.”

“We don’t have set criteria,” Gilmore adds. “What we try to do is to be open about how the films work, as opposed to trying to force them into categories. And you try to be open to the range of different filmmaking going on, particularly work that’s fresh and new, or you end up being dismissive of things.”

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Sundance ’07 will ask viewers to be open-minded too, because the fest is set to feature a host of potentially controversial films in its competition section. Chief among them is “Hounddog,” writer-director Deborah Kampmeier’s provocative follow-up to 2003’s “Virgin.” The film, set in the American South in the ’60s, stars Dakota Fanning as a deeply troubled 12-year-old who seeks solace from abuse through the blues. The screenplay raised eyebrows with an explicit rape scene, which the filmmakers insist was done tastefully and with the actress’ mother present. But it’s still shocking as Fanning switches to a role that recalls child stars Brooke Shields in 1978’s “Pretty Baby” and Jodie Foster in 1976’s “Taxi Driver.”

But “Hounddog” isn’t alone in drawing pre-festival gossip for its sexual aberrance. Robinson Devor, who’s appeared in the festival with his acclaimed fiction films, 2000’s “The Woman Chaser” and 2006’s “Police Beat,” returns with the competition documentary “Zoo.” It concerns the real-life case of a Washington farmer who died from a ruptured anus after being violated by a horse. (Don't worry; the offending footage is not included in the film.)

Then there’s the odd case of “Teeth,” a dramatic competition entry about a virginal Christian teen who discovers during a moment of unwilling violation that her body has an unusual defense mechanism.

Gilmore defends the festival’s commitment to backing provocative material. “If you show films that are melodramatically mainstream and speak to people’s hearts, you should also show films that are cerebrally challenging and explore moral and value issues,” Gilmore says. “I don’t find it difficult to engage people with movies that are challenging. I know we get attacked for it sometimes, but oftentimes those attacks underscore what the importance of a film festival or any kind of artistic representation should be, which is to challenge the values and ideas that people have.”

He adds: “A film like ‘Teeth’ is going to surprise people because it’s fun, not just edgy. And ‘Zoo’ is almost an experimental work. It’s a challenging film to think about, but it’s also a jaw-dropping, are-you-kidding-me kind of story.”

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