We are waiting in line to see “Laurel Canyon.” We got up this morning and tried to wait for “Masked and Anonymous,” but only the first twenty people from the wait list got in. All around us we know there are celebrity parties in fancy houses on the hillside, but we only see people in jeans and ski parkas camped out in queues trying to snag tickets to the films with the hottest buzz. Today we are going to stand in line four times to see if we get into anything, because everything we wanted to see was sold out by the time we bought our packages. $650 for twenty films, and we still can’t choose what we see. The industry folks have this festival all tied up.
But the independents are fighting back. A subset of Sundance is Slamdance, where more experimental films are shown. And there’s even a new piece of software “Without a Box” (www.withoutabox.com) that allows filmmakers to submit their work to festivals all over the world electronically. If you log on to the web site, there’s a standard application, and once you send your film, the software can enter it for you anywhere you wish.
