Better to ask this question late than never:
Everywhere you go at the Sundance Film Festival in its 26th year, you’re smacked in the face with the admonition to “rebel.”
Rebel (…not really)
Running before every screening are arty little animated trailers encouraging the idea of rebellious ideas percolating up from underground. The program booklet is graced with a cover announcing, “This Is Your Guide to Cinematic Rebellion.” In his catalogue welcoming note, new festival director John Cooper calls out, “Let’s rebel,” in the same enthusiastic tone that, at a different time, he might have said, “Let’s party.” The festival literature discusses the conceptual nature of “rebel branding,” and that this year’s edition represents “the renewed rebellion. This is the recharged fight against the establishment of the expected.”
Still, I must hasten to point out that, given the dogmatic leftism/tree-hugging/granola-chewing/global warming alarmism, et al., the festival has always embraced, the only real act of rebellion within a Sundance context would be to present a smart film that questioned any of these positions. I honestly cannot remember ever seeing what could remotely be described as a conservative documentary at Sundance. Granted, not many are made, and I would frankly be amazed if any would be accepted if submitted. But I, for one, would love to see a genuinely critical examination of the many blunders and chicken-hearted actions of the United Nations; a documentary holding up for scrutiny the many wild prophecies of the esteemed Paul Ehrlich, whose doom-ridden predictions about population growth were the first words I heard out of any professor’s mouth as a university freshman, or a film that looked with unbiased clear eyes into the extent of Soviet communist infiltration and financing of American unions, academia, social organizations and other institutions from the 1930s onward. There are many potent unmade films.
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