The Sundance Film Festival is the premier showcase for U.S and international films and one of the most high profile festivals on the circuit.
Set up by Robert Redford the festival shows around eighty movies every year ranging from drama to documentaries in a series of categories which include the competition sections.The festival gives new directors and independent films a chance to be seen by a larger audience and has been responsible for bringing wider attention to films such as Reservoir Dogs, The Blair Witch Project and El Mariachi
Documentary Competition
This year there are sixteen entries to the documentary competition that range from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the life of Patti Smith to the American policy issues including the war on terror.Here are just a few to watch out for
An American Soldier
An American Soldier, which is directed by Edet Belzbern, follows Sergeant First Class Clay Usie, one of America’s most successful army recruiters, over a nine month period.Usie believes in his mission to find the best of America’s young men to join the United States military forces and after their training fight for their country and the war against terror.
The film focuses, in particular, on for of Usie’s new recruits. These young men, who want to fight for their country, Usie is the ultimate role model becoming their motivator, personal trainer and shrink before they are sent off to their basic training.
Flow: For Love of Water
Flow: For Love of Water is directed by Irena Sallna and is a documentary that highlights the need for water and how this natural resource is rapidly depleting due to our treatment of the planet.
Sallna’s powerful documentary shows shanty town’s water pipes reconnected to ensure the survival of the community as well as looking at the ‘water business’ in America as a water company CEO argues for privatisation.
This is the latest in a long line of documentaries that, like A Crude Awakening, educates the public of the harsh reality.
But like A Crude Awakening Sallna has done it without the endorsement from a major celebrity or public figure like an Inconvenient truth with Al Gore and The 11th Hour with Leonardo DiCaprio.
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo is directed by Lisa F. Jackson and highlights the horrors the people of the Congo have faced since 1998.
The civil war has left four million dead and the raping of women is happening on a huge and alarming scale.
Jackson’s films talks to the peacekeepers, activists and doctors about the escalating situation.
She also talks to rape victims who give emotional and harrowing accounts of their ordeals which left many mutilated and all filled with shame.
Jackson also shares her own gang rape story.
I.O.U.S.A
I.O.U.S.A, which is directed by Patrick Creadon, brings to the forefront America’s mass spending and how changes must be made or face an economic disaster.
Creadon looks at America’s financial policies and practices with an ever expanding government and military and debts to other countries all pulling on the purse strings.
As well as using facts and figures the director also uses archival footage to highlight that this is not a recent problem.
But instead of ending on a note of disaster Creadon’s film does offer potential financial scenarios that could act as solutions to this ever growing and very disturbing problem that raging within the world’s greatest super power.
Trouble the Water
Trouble the Water, which is directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, is a film that depicts the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a community who are still trying to rebuild their lives, many of whom have become refugees in their own country.
Trouble the Water highlights the amount of work that still needs to be done to get this stricken community back on it’s feet.
Lessin and Deal worked with New Orleans filmmaker Kimberly Rives who provided home footage of before, during and after the storm, footage that re-writes and contradicts most of the media coverage.
This film shows the neglect that has been shown to this once thriving city and they people who inhabit it by their own government.
Other films in this category include:
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
Slingshot Hip Hop
Secrecy
Roman Polanski: Dream of Life
Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)
The Order of Myths
Gonzo: The Life and Works of Dr Hunter S. Thompson
American Teen
Bigger, Faster, Stronger
Fields of Fuel
Sundance Film Festival begins 17th January
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw