Sundance 2024 Leaves College Students Embracing Their Inner Film Geeks

As professor Geri Ulrey prepared to board a plane to Utah last week, joined by a small cohort from Glendale Community College, she gave each of the students traveling with her a small notebook.

Inside, students found Ulrey had written “Sundance 2024” on the first page, a memento of the momentous trip they were about to take.

Each notebook also offered a quote from a celebrated filmmaker:

“We only have two hours to change people's lives.” —John Cassavetes

“A film you can explain in words is not a real film.” — Michelangelo Antonioni

“Being an artist means not having to avert one’s eyes.” — Akira Kurosawa

And so on.

Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the country. The annual event features world premieres and screenings in every genre. Its panels offer access to some of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the world.

Tickets also cost hundreds of dollars, on top of travel and lodging, a prohibitive expense for most any college student. But Ulrey, who chairs Glendale’s media arts department, covered the cost of the trip through a grant.

She instructed her students to jot down their “thoughts, feelings, [and] reflections” — anything they found inspiring. For the next five days, they’d be surrounded by filmmakers, actors, and cinephiles. Ulrey wanted her students to be ready to take it all in.

Art that leads to art

Park City was a lot of things: A charming town decked in holiday lights. Morning waffles topped with whipped cream and berries. Chatting with Sundance programmer John Nein at a local café about what makes a successful film submission. Getting dragged into a snowball fight waiting for the bus. A Napoleon Dynamite flash mob. The painful realization that you should have worn more layers.

Throughout their time at the festival, the Glendale students watched several films every day, sometimes well past midnight.

The students met with Sundance programmer John Nein at Java Cow, a café on Main Street.

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Courtesy of Geri Ulrey

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For CandyJoe Dahlstrom, Sugarcane made clear the path she wants to take. The documentary details the family separation, language loss, and all manners of abuse that Indigenous children endured at a residential school in Canada.

“I want to do that [type of] work,” Dahlstrom said, in reference to the film. “I want to help in any way that I can, to bring more light to the experience that Indigenous people in the U.S. have had and are continuing to experience, so they can get the justice they deserve.”

Her classmate, John Edward, spent time studying audience reactions, not just during the screenings, but also after the credits rolled. He reveled in hearing multiple takes on the same movie. He found it interesting that some people changed their minds about a film after they had time to discuss and process it.

“I’m going to remember the conversations I had with fellow filmmakers for a really long time,” he said.

Student Malena Wilson was struck by Nocturnes, a documentary that follows the work of moth researchers in India, and that's "absolutely gorgeous to watch.”

One scene is now a core memory: “It was during a thunderstorm, so it had the audience sit in darkness, in the darkness of the forest. And every once in a while, there’d be a flash of lightning on the screen.”

In that moment, “the only thing you could see was the outline of foliage and trees against the night sky, but only when lightning flashed,” Wilson added. The film made her realize that “you don’t have to constantly bombard the audience with visuals and lights. There’s ways to build tension, to share emotion, to tell a story with minimal visuals,” she said.

The students saw a number of films at the Egyptian Theatre, the largest in Park City.

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Courtesy of CandyJoe Dahlstrom

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Learning about process

Tati Golykh, who hails from Siberia, said she made an effort to approach the festival with the unbridled “curiosity of a child.” She attended workshops to learn about new techniques, and now she’s excited about editing with the help of AI. “I can’t wait to try [it] on my own,” she said.

Sharukh Khan is a UCLA grad who enrolled at Glendale to learn a new craft. A panel he attended on independent filmmaking now serves as a touchstone. During the presentation, director Richard Linklater shared that he attributes his success not just to the films he’s made, but also to the community of filmmakers he cultivated in Texas.

“Filmmaking, more than anything, is a collaborative medium,” Khan said. Linklater helped him see that as he makes his way in the industry, “it’s also important to be part of other people’s journeys and to support them and help them out when you can.”

Khan also has new thoughts on movie budgets. “You don’t need a whole lot of money to tell a good story. You just need to learn to work with your constraints ... That’s where the creativity comes.”

Greenough was inspired by this panel, featuring Toby Brooks, who runs the Sundance Ignite fellowship, along with directors Jazmin Jones and River Gallo.

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Courtesy of Tati Golykh

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Like Khan, Thomas Greenough signed up for a midnight screening. They went to see the horror film I Saw the TV Glow — alone.

“I was on the edge of my seat the whole time,” said Greenough. “And then I stepped out, and it was snowing, and it was late at night. And everything just felt really magical and special.”

Greenough’s Sundance experience was also buoyed by a brunch for emerging filmmakers, featuring a panel with directors River Gallo and Jazmin Jones.

While it was helpful to hear from people with established careers, said Greenough, Gallo and Jones — “roughly my age” and “a couple of steps further along [than me] in their journey” — made the prospect of becoming a professional filmmaker seem more attainable.

“I could really feel and hear what my path could look like,” Greenough said. “It made me want to do more work.”