One of the other great and unique aspects of Sundance is you get the opportunity to see Short Films. I think film festivals are the only place to see short films and it's too bad. This year there are seven shorts programs which consist of 7-10 mini films shown in succession. These programs include one dedicated to short documentaries and one dedicated to animated shorts. We have seen some truly bizarre short films (i.e. robot fornication) and some truly lovely short films (one called Water that was a brilliant metaphor for futility.)
One advantage to going to a shorts program, is we are the only people at Academy Award parties who may actually recognize a few of the nominees in the short film category. We also tend to do well in the foreign film category as many of those films get their U.S. start at Sundance. While we may have missed the "big picture" nominees, we have a small (and I do mean small) advantage at picking the winners in those ancillary categories.
This year there are two shorts programs in particular that caught my eye. One includes a film called Pencil Face and somehow involves a giant, creepy pencil the other includes a film called Acting for the Camera. (I always like it when the movie industry turns the camera back on itself -- aka The Player.) Both of them seem to have more humor than creepiness. Last year we heard the documentary shorts were excellent, so that might be worth looking into this year.
Tickets for Shorts Programs are typically not hard to get, so I have not put any of those programs on our list yet. They will be useful for filling-in holes later, so we may add a shorts program at the end of our ticket-buying adventure.
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