Sundance Fest may not be about sales this year

Back to a classic indie model
What these breakouts show is that the fest’s main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent and little is earned. The payoff comes in the form of critical cachet and awards, not in a “Little Miss Sunshine”-style plug-and-play blockbuster. It’s a switch that takes the fest back to its emergence two decades ago, when movies like “sex, lies & videotape” were championed not as possible crossover hits but as giving rise to directorial talent and even a new style of filmmaking.

Such a shift would dovetail, in a sense, with the festival’s own ambitions. While organizers haven’t voiced outright opposition to the sales market as they have with swag and ambush marketing, they have had an ambivalent relationship with it: Organizers like the heat and industry attendance it brings but privately worry that it puts the emphasis on the big sale instead of the great film.

If Sundance were to return to its roots, documentaries could be the canary in this coal mine. Gone is the market of even two years ago, when compelling nonfiction stories like “My Kid Could Paint That” or “In the Shadow of the Moon” drew bidders who readily paid $1.5 million or $2 million for the right to release them. (Last year’s lone big documentary sale, the $700,000-priced “American Teen,” sank at the box office for Paramount Vantage, which could further cool this year’s market.)

Still, Sundance offers plenty of movies that could get small distributors and cinephiles excited, from Tom DiCillo’s documentary on the Doors (“When You’re Strange”) to the Fisher Stevens-produced environmental mystery “The Cove.” They probably won’t sell for a lot, but they might be the titles that this year’s fest is remembered for.

Changes are afoot all over Park City. Just ask Jeffrey Best, who for years operated swag suites at the centrally located Town Lift but who this year will run a toned-down site in official conjunction with the festival there instead.

“It’s necessary to change the model to stand out in a cluttered environment,” says Best, a man who once helped cultivate the corporate and celebrity sides of Sundance. This year, Best is offering less flash and more substance. Outside the Lift, expect the same.

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