My Sundance Film Festival 2008 Wrap

Sorry it's been nearly a week since my last post, but forgiving readers will remember I had some dedicated avocational time starting mid-last-week through today.

I attended the final few days of the Sundance Film Festival, purely as a fan of independent film and NOT as a printing and imaging industry observer! However, to give a little tie-in to this blog, and before providing a few of my film-going highlights, I will offer my personal thanks to HP (NYSE HPQ) (see "HP Sponsors Sundance Film Festival, again"), and also Adobe Systems (NASDAQ ADBE), both major Sundance Film Festival sponsors.

I was fortunate to view some of the best films I've ever seen in my personal tenth-anniversary annual trek to the festival (headquartered in Park City, UT), and I'm highlighting the best here "for your consideration" -- in other words, my advice is to definitely see these films when they come to your neighborhood movie theater (or home set-top box)!

I'll let the Boston Globe's Ty Burr provide details from his excellent summary in the following excerpt:

PARK CITY, Utah - Realistic, hard-hitting movies about marginal Americans in dire straits won major awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's closing ceremonies Saturday night. "Trouble the Water," Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's film about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, won the grand jury prize for documentary, in no small part due to disaster footage shot by Kimberly Rivers, one of the film's subjects. Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River," about a desperately poor single mom (Melissa Leo) and a Mohawk girl (Misty Upham) who smuggle immigrants from Canada, was the surprise winner of the grand jury prize for dramatic film; the movie had flown under the radar during the festival itself...

The documentary film directing award went to another festival favorite, Nanette Burstein's "American Teen," which follows four Indiana high school students through their senior year. "Sleep Dealer," a cyberpunk drama set in the near-future, won both the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for outstanding film focusing on science or technology.

Don't miss these four films when you get the chance to see them!

And now on to Live Blogging the Lyra Imaging Symposium 2008!