Sundance Happenings

Thankfully we all got a good night's sleep tonight and Kathy is feeling better, so we're all ready for the craziness of Sundance. This morning Kathy and I dropped off Ryan K., Brad, Brent, and Jonathan off at their film, Wasteland. Then we ventured off to Main Street of Park City to find the box office. We needed to exchange a few of our tickets. Here's what the box office looks like.

Kathy and I picked up the rest of our tickets and attempted to exchange or sell 4 of them. We asked everyone we came across who might be at Sundance and want them. We exchanged two and sold two. It was a little bit of an adventure as we drove around trying to get rid of them. We stopped at a bus stop with a crowd and got rid of the other two.

We also walked around Main Street and saw lots of people wandering around. We talked to a group of filmmakers that made The Imperialists Are Still Alive!. That was kind of cool. They were trying to get us to go to their film, but we had to get going so we declined. We also saw a large group of paparazzi hanging around a building waiting for someone to come out. We never found out who, but it must have been someone pretty important. I know Ryan Gosling was around there at some point so it might have been him. Here's a picture of someone being interviewed. Maybe it was someone famous, but I was too far away to tell.


2 of the 4 of us who were supposed to watch the Shorts Program IV opted out of it because of what the others had said about it, so we had a pretty chill afternoon. We had lunch at Pizza and Noodles. It was a good place to eat and we met up with another portion of our group. The rest of the afternoon a group of 4 of us walked around Main Street. We saw a couple groups of paparazzi throughout the day. In the afternoon we saw a rapper walk by and the paparazzi take a bunch of pictures, so we assumed it was someone famous. We also saw Kerry Washington who we didn't really know who she was until I looked it up when we got back. We encountered a few other directors and actors of short films throughout the rest of the day.

After lunch we went to the filmmaker lodge, sat, and watched the live feed of a discussion about war from the filmmakers Restrepo, which we will be seeing soon. After sitting around for a while trying to find something to do, we went to the Sundance House and there were a bunch of different vendors there such as Honda and HP as well as a few others. We walked through the HP center and saw a massive all touch screen. It was about 5 feet by 3 feet. It was awesome. We also took some pictures on the Sundance backdrop, which made us look really official and important. I'll post those pictures later.

When we were finished getting our pictures taken and walking through the Sundance House (pictured on right), we ventured to the Music Cafe where they only let a few people in at a time. It was nothing to really get excited about, but I guess it was a good experience. I got a free cd of theirs, so that was pretty cool. On our way back to the church on the bus, we got in a hit and run. The bus driver thought the car in front of was moving, but that was not the case and hit him. The driver of the car apparently didn't feel it or didn't want to stop so they drove off while we sat in our position for about 15 minutes so we could wait for the authorities.

At the church we ate dinner with a large group of people from Fuller Theological Seminary and Biola University. The table I was at met and talked to Father Willie Raymond, who works for the Family Theater Production company on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He told us his company coined the phrase "The family that prays together, stays together." Cool little fact. After dinner we watched 4 short films from the Angelus Student Film Festival. It is considered the best student film festival.

The first film we watched was called On the Road to Tel Aviv which is about someone who profiled an Arab in a bus, causing the rest of the passengers to get out. They insist the bus driver search the suspicious woman, but he refuses because he is Arab as well and hates it when people profile. It was a good film. It's still a sensitive topic so I felt the room was a little tense, but it is still a good issue to bring up. The second is called Kavi and it's a story about slavery, which was very powerful. The third is called Desert Wedding and it's about one incident that drastically changed a bride's view of love. It brought up a couple good questions, but I didn't feel it had adequate character development and transformation. The last film is called Waiting for a Train and that is a documentary about a Japanese guitar player who sings American bluegrass. It was a funny film, mostly because of the main subject.

I still haven't seen a film yet, but we did lots of fun things today. 3 films will come tomorrow!