Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 22nd to February 3rd.
T-2 days until festival begins
On the flight down last night, to get in the Sundance mood, I watched two films from last year’s festival. Three Identical Strangers is a documentary that starts with an unbelievable but happy premise (triplets who were separated at birth and adopted find each other) but grows darker and more disturbing. Worth a watch. And, although Hearts Beat Loud was a rewatch, I still got embarrassingly emotional. A crowd-pleaser with great music. A few days before, I’d also caught up with Blindspotting, a fresh and thought-provoking look at racism, gentrification, PTSD, and a whole host of other issues, while still being hysterically funny in places. Seeing these Sundance selections has put me in the right frame of mind to tackle this year’s lineup.
This morning, Shuttle Queen™ Susan collected me from my AirBnB at 10:30am and we picked up about six more people, including Super Volunteer™ Harvey Lalonde and another volunteer from Toronto named Michelle. There was also a guy from Lethbridge named Graydon. We were at HQ in Park City by just after noon and checkin was easy. We had a lot of time to kill before being allowed to pick up the keys to our lodging at 4pm so I took Harvey and Michelle to my perennial favourite lunch spot, Este Pizza. Then we just hung around HQ until it was time to get our keys. Susan had kindly offered to drop us all off at our lodgings for no extra charge, which was a huge help. I’m staying in a condo that’s part of the Park City Mountain Resort, and it has a whole bunch of shops and restaurants also, though it’s a fair hike from the main shuttle routes on Park Avenue.
I’m sharing with two other guys: Bryan is a first-year volunteer from Queens, New York, and he’ll be working alongside me in Artist Relations. Chad is a veteran from Indiana who is part of the works crew, so he knows Justus and Joe and Eric, my roommates from 2016 and 2018. They went off to see the 7:30pm volunteer screening of Apollo 11 while I decided to go to Fresh Market for a few supplies. I got fruit and cheese and peanut butter and croissants and potato chips. You know, the essentials. There was also a 9:30pm volunteer film (Knocking Down the House) but I’m now cosy and would rather get settled in. Training starts at 10am tomorrow and I’m eager to get started. I stopped briefly by the Artist Relations department to see if I could introduce myself to Bobby, but he was out. Got a nice hug from senior manager Kir, though. And bumped into some volunteers from last year (Gray and Marci) and spotted a few others. Will catch up with everyone and meet the new ones in the morning. Last night I slept terribly so hoping for better luck tonight.