LAist @ Sundance 2011: Festival Recap In Ten Words Or Less

Sundance is nerds vs sluts in the World Series of Hollywood. There. There it is. What Sundance is, in ten words or less. Imagine summer camp (in Siberia), and for every activity, there is a list. Wanna go canoeing? Invite only. But I RSVP'd for this archery tournament. Sorry, these campers have been waiting for three hours and you've only been waiting two. But I have this badge that says I get access to the arts & crafts barn all weekend; I really wanna use the kiln. Not right now, this is a closed period. Hmmm.

At home in Los Angeles, the size, depth and dimension of the city makes it possible to isolate avenues, cultivate paths and curate individualized activities that appeal to one's hyper niche of preferences. Now, imagine slicing a dense cross-section of industry folks and celebrities and distilling them in the deep freeze for ten days. What you get is a much higher concentration of what people generally think "Hollywood" is, but not very close to what an average person, press or not, might actually encounter in real Hollywood on any given day. Sundance actually is as star-littered and miniskirts-and-heels as the reports suggest. But then, it's also an epic, mega, super, turbo, nerd fest. Double win.

Ever talk to a film school graduate with a press credential and an inflated sense of his or her own context? It's a remarkable thing. It's like talking to an actor. And yet, despite the film-talk that speaks to the original nature of the festival and the advertised reason for being there, it seems in the middle of the melee, to be just another piece of the Sundance puzzle, rather than the puzzle itself; no more or less important that getting into the Kari Feinstein Style Lounge or having Cee-Lo Green sweat on your face at the Bing Bar.

However its simply not true. The films of the Sundance Film Festival are the sun, and everything else exists in orbit around them. With so many strata of activities playing out simultaneously over a small town campus, the festival is overwhelming in terms of attempting efficiency. You can go for partying, socializing, networking and gifting, or you can go to watch movies. Doing both in any comprehensive manner is a near impossibility without a trained team on the ground and a dangerous supply of drugs to keep you all awake for ten days, but locking into one route limits the scope of the muti-faceted festival. Most people seem unphased by this chaos, however. Perhaps they've accepted the limitations of their human body and the amount of coverage one is physically able to experience and cover.

WIth competition for screenings as fierce as competition for parties, what LAist did was steer the ship toward arguably the most critical part of setting the tone for any film, the music. We focused on music in films, films about music, live shows, and the dude playing piano on the street in the snow. The music of Sundance was a remarkably keen way to gauge the pulse of the festival.

That's not to say we didn't try everything else. Driven by fear of frostbite and fueled by Patron LAist set out on a quest to taste as many different types of activities offered at this exceptional festival in addition to the actual programming. At the SWAGG lounge at the Samsung Galaxy Tab Lift we were gifted a piece of runway-ready piece of Lia Sophia jewelry and a pair of Marc Jacobs shades from Solstice. Upstairs at the Stella Café we were treated to a Twitten (that's right, a mitten for couples.. awww) and a beer. And we did even manage to catch a hearty sample of cinema including Mark Pellington's controversial I MELT WITH YOU that was in part a soundtrack, disguised as a film, disguised as Rob Lowe's bare ass in the ocean.

A complete list of 2011 winners and awards available on the official Sundance Film Festival website.

PREVIOUSLY:
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Red Shirley aka The Lou Reed Movie
LAist @ Sundance 2011: 'Troubadours' Sings For Taylor & King
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Cee-Lo Green At SPiN Galactic Lounge At Bing Bar, 01/23/11
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Lou Reed, 01/23/11
LAist @ Sundance 2011: New Frontier w/ Digital Bugs, Wilderness Downtown, Johnny Cash, Pandemic, Three's Company (The Drama)
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Florence + The Machine At Bing Bar, 01/22/11
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Janelle Monae At Bing Bar, 01/21/11
LAist @ Sundance 2011: It Begins With A Spin
LAist @ Sundance 2011: Snoop Dogg, 01/20/11