The 27th Sundance Film Festival opens this week aiming to defy the economic slowdown by screening a bigger than ever selection of independent movies from the US and around the world.
Founded by Robert Redford as a mecca for independent film and an alternative to the Hollywood machine, the festival ironically now attracts huge interest from the commercial industry's scouts, looking for new talent and ideas.
This year's 10-day festival, which opens Thursday in Park City, Utah, will show nearly 120 films from 29 countries -- including 40 first films and 95 world premieres.
A record number of films were submitted for Sundance, which has become the biggest movie festival in the United States.
"We hit the 10,000 mark for the first time this year in overall submissions. This is good news about the health of the independent film community, said festival director John Cooper.
"In programming the festival this year we traveled more than we have in the past. We were looking to beef up international relationships and increase the quality of world cinema program," he added.
The vast majority of films at Sundance -- which hosts one of the world's biggest movie markets -- do not yet have distributors and Cooper said: "From what I gather talking to buyers, they are excited about many of the films and gearing up for a very active marketplace."
Sundance hopes to maintain its reputation for screening the best new documentaries.
Notable factual films this year including the latest film by Briton James Marsh, who won an Oscar for 2008's "Man on Wire" about Frenchman Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers in New York.
In "Project Nim," he tells the tale of the chimpanzee Nim, brought up as a child by researchers in the 1970s to study communication between humans and their closest evolutionary cousin.
Broaching more recent events, "Hell and back again" by Danfung Dennis follows a soldier in Afghanistan, while the collapse of the global economy in 2008 is the subject of David Sington's "The Flaw."
On a lighter there is "Being Elmo," about the puppeteer who made the red monster in the TV series "Sesame Street," and "Bengali Detective," which follows an Indian private detective passionate about dance and murky tales.
On the fiction front there are many first-time film makers, as well as movies by actors-turned-directors such as "Higher Ground" by Vera Farmiga (who joined George Clooney in Jason Reitman's "Up In the Air").
Independent cinema stalwart Tom McCarthy, director of "The Station agent" and "The Visitor," will present his new film "Win Win" at the festival.
Sundance is also presenting its "Next" section, launched last year devoted to low-budget films.
And for festival-goers with energy left for late-night thrills there will be the midnight screenings of horror films and B Movies, in a section where "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) and "Saw" (2004) were first screened in public.
Cooper said the festival was above all about quality.
"We made hard decisions like we did last year, which raised the quality of the festival overall. In general the films we chose are authentic and original, both in story and structure," he said.
"The new wave of independent filmmakers is worrying less about commercial gains and holding to their own passion -- making the films they want to make," he added.
source:by Agence France-Presse/msn.com
