By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Leave in Silence, Flee in Terror: Sundance 2006 Calls it a Festival
From the back seat of a car on the way to the Salt Lake City Airport, I am picking up the pieces of my severe Sundance Day 10 wall-smack and placing them in the only context my devastated mind will allow: It is over. Saturday’s awards ceremony lasted a relatively quick 90 minutes, mostly painless with the exception of a world cinema juror falling off the stage and Alexander Payne’s Barbarino haircut.
In fact, several New York filmmakers (all covered over the last few weeks by The Reeler, not quite coincidentally) enjoyed an impressive showing in the final tallies, with Hilary Brougher claiming the festival’s screenwriting prize for her Stephanie Daley; Dito Montiel taking home a directing and ensemble cast award for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (“I’m taking it back to New York for all of the kids,” he told The Reeler after the awards, “But I’m still gonna keep it.”); So Yong Kim winning the Independent Vision Award for her brilliant In Between Days (“Yeah, New Yorkers were great tonight,” she told me, pumping her fist. “We rocked.”); Carter Smith receiving the Shorts Jury Prize for Bugcrush; and, of course, Chris Quinn accepting both the Audience Award and Special Jury Prizes for his Sudanese Lost Boys documentary, God Grew Tired of Us. Along with dramatic competition winner Quinceanera, the two films were the first in festival history to win both top prizes in the same year.
Then Half Nelson got picked up by ThinkFilm, some asshole stole my scarf at last night’s awards after-party and I decided that does it: I need a couple of days off. So congrats to all the New York filmmakers, crew and actors who crashed the Sundance party in 2006; after a month or eight of therapy, I should be ready to tackle the Class of 2007. Much sooner–say, Feb. 1–I will be back at Reeler HQ with an attempt to reclaim a working knowledge of what’s happening around this city of ours. As always, thanks for reading, and I will catch you in a couple of days.