Sundance Film Festival

From the twenty-eighth of January to the third of February was the virtual Sundance Film Festival of 2021. The day before the last of this festival held the student section, where normally, if COVID wasn’t a situation, Mr. Joshua Hall would take a few students up to watch the festival in Park City, Utah. This year, Mr. Hall and the few students watched virtually in the choir room of MVHS.

This festival is all about the “adventurous audiences and indie film lovers everywhere that will come together to be the first to discover and celebrate the bold, creative visions and exciting new talent that people will be talking about all year.” The student section showcased Marvelous and the Blackhole, “A teenage delinquent teams up with a surly children’s party magician to navigate her dysfunctional family and inner demons.” IMDb summarized.

After the movie, the students were able to meet the main actors Miya Cech and Rhea Perlman, and the director/writer Kate Tsang (pronounced sang). Miss Tsang created the award-winning shorts So You’ve Grown Attached, Welcome to Doozy and has written for the fantastic shows, Adventure Time: Distant Lands, and Steven UniverseFuture.

In retrospect of the COVID outbreak last March, organizers of the festival were forced to break down the purpose and goals of Sundance and needed to come up with a way to translate or enforce them into the virtual form. Around 251,331 attended online; watching 73 feature films, 50 short films and 4 independent television series, this was a lot more than last year which only had 116,800 people. This may not have counted the twenty or so that watched online at their schools. There were more if you include the students who were watching.