Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

Our friend at IndieWire, Eugene Hernandez has a good summary by Sundance’s Geoff Gilmore and John Cooper about the changes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. As the Festival Director and Senior Programmer, they talk about their goals and decisions programming the 2006 festival.

According to Eugene’s story (follow the link for the full write-up), “Among the biggest changes this year is the Sundance decision to change the American Spectrum section into simply, ‘Spectrum’ and a move to cut the number of films screening in the Premieres section. Gilmore explained that they wanted to find a place for promising films that might not necessarily work as a premiere in a larger festival theater venue. Further, the Sundance competition seems to have an even higher profile among organizers and they were clear to focus on those four sections as the heart of the event. The competition really goes back to what the core of Sundance’s values are: originality, risk-taking, looking for discovery, really trying to push that aesthetic edge, to have the whole spectrum of work that we are really talking about in the independent world.”