KEY POINTS:
When the curtain goes up at the Sundance Film Festival today, the organisers of the top US event for films made outside Hollywood are promising an element rarely associated with independent film - maturity.
That doesn't mean age, necessarily. But as the US indie film movement and Sundance have grown together over the past 25 years, writers and directors have begun focusing on a wider range of subjects than the more introspective stories for which they were known, and they are looking beyond US borders in the process.
The festival, backed by actor Robert Redford's Sundance Institute for film-making, has in recent years expanded to include foreign films in competition.
Of the 123 movies at this year's festival, 25 are from outside the US - including New Zealand director Taika Waititi's Eagle vs Shark, which is having its world premiere in the world cinema section on Tuesday.
Moreover, film-makers are mixing movie styles and genres, which is typified by this year's opening night film, Chicago 10, a documentary that blends historical film footage with animation to tell a story about the 1960s Chicago Seven trial.
"What seems really clear is that the indie movement is maturing and evolving." said festival director Geoff Gilmore. "There's a global vision to this. There is an outside gaze as opposed to the inner gaze,"
Each year, some of the movies debuting at Sundance become the most buzzed about films in art houses.
Little Miss Sunshine was a hit at Sundance last year. It has gone on to earn US$86 million ($124 million) at worldwide box offices and is also in the hunt for Oscars.
Stars ranging from Lindsay Lohan to Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins are expected to attend, and between 50,000 and 60,000 moviegoers will invade Park City, Utah, just east of Salt Lake City, where Sundance takes place.
But beyond all the hype, product promotion and parties, the heart of the festival is about discovering new films and film-makers with fresh voices waiting to be heard. "There's always the little sleeper that everybody latches on to," said Ruth Vitale, president of First Look Pictures.
Several executives of major distributors said they had yet to see a movie with the potential of a Sunshine or the 2004 hit Napoleon Dynamite in this year's lineup, but several dramas with stellar casts are causing an early stir.
One of those, Hounddog, stars 12-year-old Dakota Fanning as an abused girl. A second, Grace is Gone, stars John Cusack as a father whose wife is killed in Iraq.
Resurrecting the Champ has a well-known cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett and Teri Hatcher, and Clubland with Brenda Blethyn is a quirky comedy with some early buzz.
"One of the great things about Sundance is the unexpected films that emerge from the pack," said Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films for Lionsgate.
Nobody knows what those titles are until Sundance winds down on January 28 after giving out awards among film-makers of 64 movies in narrative drama and documentary competitions from the US and international arenas.
Even as the festival has grown and moviemaker perspectives have changed, one thing has remained constant about Sundance over the years: the first-time writers and directors who are looking to make their mark in the world of film.
In 1992, Gregg Araki was just such a first-timer when he showed up with gay relationship film The Living End. He has made several movies since, including last year's critically acclaimed Mysterious Skin.
Now, at age 47, he is back with pot-smoker flick Smiley Face. Yet, when it comes to being the hot director at a festival as big as Sundance, Araki offered this advice to the younger hopefuls: "It's not a panacea. Everybody has their own journey to make."
It is wise advice from a film-maker who has matured.
High praise for Waititi's 'deadpan debut'
The Sundance programme describes Taika Waititi's Eagle vs. Shark as a "deliciously tangy, deadpan debut about two colourful misfits thrown into each other's orbit".
It's the first feature from the actor-director, who was Oscar-nominated for his short film Two Cars, One Night. Waititi has been a Sundance regular - Two Cars, One Night screened in the festival's shorts programme, as did his Tama Tu, and in 2005, he attended the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs to workshop the feature project Choice and was again selected in July 2005 to fine-tune Eagle vs. Shark.
The feature stars Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords) and Loren Horsley as a couple drawn together over role-playing videogames, and comes with a soundtrack by the Phoenix Foundation. It is due for release in New Zealand in April.
- REUTERS
