Can You Believe The Sundance Release Lag?

I saw eight films at Sundance in January 2008 (including the depressingly prescient I.O.U.S.A, which presaged our current state of economic collapse by a whopping six months). I'd attempted to see twelve. That represents a 2:3 success ratio; I'll take it.

Sundancing without the benefit of an expensive ticket package or industry ties goes like this: You scan the daily schedule and find films you're interested in seeing, prioritizing as follows:

1. Documentaries (relatively easy to get into, no matter how small the theatre)
2. Foreign films (next-easy to get into, no matter the size of the venue)
3. Whatever-Is-Playing-At-The-Largest-Venues (because at least 150-200 seats are generally up for grabs at any given screening)
4. Whatever-Is-Playing-In-Salt-Lake-City (because most everybody else stays in Park City, and SLC citizens don't seem to be all that caught up in the frenzy)

I used the Largest-Venues methodology to select Sugar,  and the Salt Lake City method to select Sleep Dealer.

Having determined which films you will attempt to see, you must arrive at the designated venue 3 hours ahead of time. (Waitlist numbers are distributed precisely 2 hours prior to the show; there's an informal line to receive a number for the formal line.) Then you're free to go do whatever you want to do for 90 minutes, returning to take your numbered place in line no later than 30 minutes before the screening begins.

^{Mr. Remedy finds the waiting line nap-inducing.}

^{Strangers become friends after a few hours.}

Now, the fact that I have become a bit of a Sundance soldier in the past fiew years is a strange thing indeed, because I am not the sort of girl who has any business being at Sundance. 

I grew up on the poor side of the tracks in a dying factory town. There wasn't much call for artsy-fartsy films in a town built on brick and coal and glass. Smoky and the Bandit (and all its sequels) and Every Which Way But Loose (and all its sequels) played for months on end at the two local theatres. The nearest Woody Allen screenings (that was as highbrow as anybody wanted to go) were at least 65 miles away. The beginning of the videotape era coincided with my arrival in High School, though, and that first Beta machine opened up new vistas for me.

I love film. I flirted briefly with majoring in theatre (acting) before coming to my senses. Somewhere in Atlanta, Georgia, there are damning silent Super-8 reels of me running around wearing shockingly little, playing cops-and-robbers or hookers-and-tricks or whatever it was that our director and friend, Steve, thought we should be playing. (Steve was the true film afficionado among us, hands down. He introduced me to The Producers, for which I am eternally thankful. Yes, the original. As if.)

All that said, I'm about as far removed from Hollywood's bright shiny snowglobe full of actors and directors and publicists and writers as any other civilian. Nonetheless, I have managed to end up with a friend who has a house overlooking Park City, and she's been kind enough to offer me a base of operations from which to observe and participate in "Sundancing" for several years running.

On the surface, Sleep Dealer and Sugar wouldn't appear to have much in common. A Mexican sci-fi film about a world in which American assembly jobs can be outsourced to bodies across the border, and a small, reflective film about a young Dominican baseball players? Sounds like a natural double-feature.

Sleep Dealer, like every good dystopian vision of humanity's future, gathers the least attractive threads of our current reality, weaves them tightly together with explosive advancements in technology and flat-lined stasis in geopolitical empathy, and presents the resulting tapestry --a visually stunning exploration of poverty, desperation, exploitation, economic imbalance, and environmental ruin.

Although there are moments of sardonic humor, in theme and tone the film is finally a remarkable close cousin to Blade Runner and Brave New World--comparisons I do not make lightly. Dizzyingly beautiful, impeccably shot, and deeply troubling, this Spanish-language gem is by turns moving, infuriating, and terrifying. Highly, highly recommended. [Enters limited release April 13.]

 Sugar is a magnificent coming-of-age story wrapped in a baseball film. We travel with the eponymous main character on a dizzying journey from the dirt-poor streets of the Dominican Republic (and the baseball training camp he has attended since the age of 10) to the American minor leagues. When he is "sent up" to develop with an Iowa farm league (a state which, it turns out, he has never heard of), we cannot help but squirm (sometimes through a smile) as we watch him struggle to find a place in a world that is utterly foreign to him.

Placed with a middle-aged couple who serially "adopt" foreign-born players for a season, he grapples with everything that sets him apart from the Great American Game: food, customs, language. The film follows typical sports-movie formula for a good long while...until it veers off into territory far, far away from "If you build it, they will come." [Sugar is currently showing in LA and New York, with additional limited release pending.] UPDATED: Find a much fuller review by Andrew O'Hehir over at Big Salon (he dubs it the best baseball movie ever made, and I tend to concur) including a dialogue with the filmmakers.

^{The star: Algenis Perez Soto, a former ballplayer who has never acted before. I think the kid may have a future...}

Both Sugar and Sleep Dealer are films that challenge us, within the constraints of their respective genres, to confront the ways in which consumerism in the First World affects the faceless hordes of producers in the developing world.

The two films focus our attention on young men (and women) whose flesh, blood, and bone we must source, modify, use, and ultimately replace as we continue ramping up production meet our ravenous demand.

When we demand cheap consumer goods or even just  the "simple" entertainment of a professional baseball "game," we are ultimately consuming--devouring--human lives. By pointing out this uncomfortable truth, both Sugar and Sleep Dealer ask us to examine the human implications of a global economy built on a model of endless production and consumption.

I skipped Sundance in 2009. For economic reasons.