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Features
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Sundance Slags the Swag
This year, the notion of those glad-handing companies that leech onto the Sundance Film Festival is most definitely a hot button topic.
Monday, January 22, 2007 at 10:35 AM
By J. Sperling Reich
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Jemal Countess/WireImage.com
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This year's Sundance Store
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The people who run the Sundance Film Festival are this year taking anything but an ambivalent stance towards the slew of non-affiliated corporate interests that descend each January on Park City, Utah. Their disdain is expressed somewhat subtly via their slogan for the 2007 edition: 'Focus on Film.'
In other words, boys and girls, don’t focus on the free cell phones, the free flat-screen TVs, the free facials and other high-priced goodies handed out for the most part to folks who could otherwise probably afford such items. Instead, if you haven't already, pick up one of the event's large circular buttons emblazoned with the aforementioned mantra 'Focus on Film' and repeat after me:
- I want to see films that I know I’ll never see anywhere else.
- My idea of “celebrity” is the filmmaker who directed my favorite film at the festival.
- I’m willing to wait in the cold for two hours to see a hot documentary.
- I love that for 10 days I have something in common with 50,000 people in a small ski town.
- I understand that without the support of the official sponsor community, I would not have the opportunity to 'Focus on Film' at the Sundance Film Festival.
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George Pimentel/WireImage.com
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There can never be enough Red Bull
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These are the dystopian declarations that the festival hands out with the 'Focus on Film' button. But for Part City veterans, some of the statements have an entirely different meaning. As in, ‘A few of these films are so bad, they shouldn’t be seen anywhere else.’ Or, ‘I wouldn’t have to wait in the cold for two hours to see this movie if they’d hold this festival in the spring.’
Then there were those surprised that the festival would hint that Sundance was still synonymous with a ‘small’ ski town, since organizers have been faulted by the entertainment industry and the media for not realizing their event has outgrown the confines of Park City. Of course, none could – or would - disagree with the overall sentiment of the postcards: that it is the support of the official sponsors of the Sundance Film Festival that ultimately makes it all possible each January.
This year, that group of companies includes AOL, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, Blockbuster, Sony and DirecTV. Intriguingly, when festival founder Robert Redford was asked at this year's kick off press conference about the swag suites of intruding companies, he shrugged and said that ambush marketers have become a part of the event and that, these days, it just comes with the territory.
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