1. Highlighted Works from
Sundance Film Festivals in
Years Past

2. The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place
annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest
independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in
January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at
the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new work
from American and international independent filmmakers.
The festival comprises competitive sections for American and
international dramatic and documentary films, both featurelength films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition
sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, and Park
City At Midnight.
~wikipedia.org

3. The Sundance Channel, a TV network which highlights
independent films and releases coverage of the
Sundance Film Festival, has an archive of ‘Top 10’ lists
which cover some of the best films featured at the
Sundance Film Festival over the years.
Website:
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/
Check out some of those ‘Top 10’ films, which we have
here at the Sinclair Wong Audiovisual Center!

4. Top 10 Influential Sundance Films
“Every festival is accompanied by the rush
to proclaim new and important
trendsetters. Most of them fade from
memory soon enough, but a handful of
movies enter the cultural consciousness,
and — for better or worse — go on to
reshape the film landscape.”
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/mostinfluential-sundance-films/

5. 10. The Usual Suspects (1996)
CALL #: DVD 7492
SYNOPSIS: Police investigating an exploded
boat on a San Pedro pier discover 27 bodies
and $91 million worth of drug money. The only
survivors are a severely burned Hungarian
terrorist and Roger Kint, a crippled con-man.
Reluctantly, Kint is pressured into explaining
what happened on the boat. His story begins six
weeks earlier with five criminals being dragged
in by New York police desperate for suspects in
a truck hijacking, and ends with the possible
identification of a criminal mastermind. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Bryan Singer's convoluted neonoir certainly didn't invent narrative
gamesmanship, but with its big gotcha ending,
it made twisty puzzle movies (PI, THE SIXTH
SENSE, MEMENTO) fashionable for the next few

6. 9. Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
CALL #: DVD 6611
SYNOPSIS: Eleven-year-old Dawn "Wienerdog"
Wiener is a junior high geek who just wants to
be popular. Teased by her classmates and
tormented by the school bully, Dawn develops
an improbable plan to seduce the star of a
high-school garage band. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: This depiction of junior high as
hell on earth introduced viewers to the pitiless
universe of Todd Solondz, where some see
candor and others cruelty. Thanks to Solondz
and fellow mid-'90s festival alumni Neil LaBute
and Terry Zwigoff, psychological violence soon
became as popular as physical violence among
American indies.

7. 8. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
CALL #: DVD 4317
SYNOPSIS: The Friedman's seem to be a typical
family from affluent Great Neck, Long Island. One
Thanksgiving, as the family gathers for a quiet
holiday dinner, a police battering ram splinters the
front door and officers rush inside. The police
charge Arnold and his son Jesse with hundreds of
shocking crimes. As police investigate, and the
community reacts, the fabric of the family begins
to disintegrate, revealing questions about justice,
family and finally the truth. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Andrew Jarecki's riveting portrait of a
Long Island family with dark secrets and a
penchant for self-documentation must have
tipped off countless filmmakers to the potential of
home movies (their own and others') as source
material.

8. 7. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
CALL #: DVD 4726
SYNOPSIS: Former Vice President Al Gore
explains the facts of global warming, presents
arguments that the dangers of global warning
have reached the level of crisis, and addresses
the efforts of certain interests to discredit the
anti-global warming cause. Between lecture
segments, Gore discusses his personal
commitment to the environment, sharing
anecdotes from his experiences. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: The rare eco-activist doc to reach
a wide audience (and presumably make a realworld difference), Davis Guggenheim and Al
Gore's documentary lecture also paved the way
for a continuing wave of celebrity-endorsed and
-narrated eco-activist docs.

9. 6. Sherman’s March (1986)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 7040
SYNOPSIS: Ross McElwee's quest for true
romance takes him along General Sherman's
Civil War march with laughable results. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Ross McElwee's journey through
Civil War history and his own romantic past is
expansive and digressive (it's subtitled A
MEDITATION TO THE POSSIBILITY OF
ROMANTIC LOVE IN THE SOUTH DURING AN
ERA OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION).
An instant benchmark for the tricky form of the
autobiographical documentary, it has rarely
been equaled, though many have tried.

10. 5. Clerks (1994)
CALL #: DVD 3059
SYNOPSIS: A deadpan comedy about a day in
the life of two nowhere-bound convenience and
video store clerks and the two eccentric drug
dealers who constantly loiter outside the stores.
(UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: The myth of the credit-card indie
is a powerful one. Before CLERKS there was
Richard Linklater's SLACKER, made on a
comparable shoestring, and after it, there was
TARNATION, cobbled together on iMovie for
$200. But it was Kevin Smith's potty-mouthed
gabfest, with its crude, no-frills aesthetic, that
did the most to promote the idea that anyone
could make a movie.

11. 4. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 18060
SYNOPSIS: Three student filmmakers set out
into the forest to film a documentary on a legend
known as The Blair Witch. As they become lost in
the woods, an unseen evil begins to stalk and
harass them. They soon realize that what they
are filming is not a legend, but their own descent
into a horrifying encounter with the supernatural.
(UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo
Sanchez's landmark stunt is a scary and
suggestive experiment in first-person verité and
offscreen space. It took a while to incubate, but
the shaky-camcorder perspective has become as
ubiquitous as video cameras in recent years, in
movies like CLOVERFIELD, RES, REDACTED, and
DIARY OF THE DEAD.

12. 3. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
CALL #: DVD 0038
SYNOPSIS: They were strangers, together to
pull off the perfect jewel heist. Their simple
robbery turns into a bloody ambush when they
realize one of them is a police informant. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Not least because the hallmarks
of a Quentin Tarantino film are so readily
identifiable — stylized ultra-violence, retro
soundtrack, characters who love pop-culture
references and the sound of their own voices —
this iconic debut spawned a litter of copycat
productions, almost all of which matched QT's
self-regard but not his talent.

13. 2. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 3899
SYNOPSIS: Eddie and Willie's inert lifestyle is
suddenly intruded upon by Willie's Hungarian
cousin. At first she's a drag, but the cousin has
a few surprises for her American friends. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Jim Jarmusch's breakthrough film
had already won a prize at Cannes and played
the New York Film Festival by the time it got to
Park City, and the movie itself is too eccentric
to have inspired many outright imitators. But its
quirky characters, ironic tone, and selfconscious hipness add up to a working
definition of indie as we know it.

14. Top 10 Sundance Performances
“Over the years Sundance has developed
its own star system, launching the careers
of actors who in turn become regulars
(Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Sam
Rockwell, Ryan Gosling, Vera Farmiga,
Zooey Deschanel, et al). Here are 10 of the
greatest performances in festival history.”
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/bestsundance-performances/

15. 8. Steve Buscemi in
Parting Glances (1986)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 10726
SYNOPSIS: As Michael and Robert, a gay
couple in New York, prepare for Robert's
departure for a two-year work assignment in
Africa, Michael must face Robert's true motives
for leaving while dealing with their circle of
eccentric friends, including Nick, who is living
with AIDS. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Bill Sherwood's only feature (he
died in 1990), one of the first AIDS dramas,
gave Sundance stalwart Buscemi his first big
role, and he steals the film with his nimble,
moving, utterly unsentimental turn as an HIVpositive downtown rocker.

16. 7. Vincent Gallo in
Buffalo ’66 (1998)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 18103
SYNOPSIS: Billy is released after five years in
prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage
student Layla and visits his parents with her,
pretending she is his girlfriend and they will
soon marry (and forcing her to say the same).
(IMDB)
THEY SAID: Gallo co-wrote, directed, and
composed and performed the score for his
singular directorial debut. Crucially, he also
appears in almost every scene. No one else
could have played the hectoring, paranoid, fully
self-absorbed Billy Brown, and no one else
could have turned his narcissism into such a
riveting and even touching spectacle.

17. 6. Danny Glover in
To Sleep With Anger (1990)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 6960
SYNOPSIS: A visitor from the Deep South
brings superstition into a divided black
household in central Los Angeles, which
percolates a pungent, stimulating brew. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Gifted with a richly fascinating
character by writer-director Charles Burnett — a
mysterious, possibly diabolical Southern
gentleman who wreaks havoc on the California
family he's visiting — Glover delivers the
performance of his career, a marvel of sly ease
and wicked humor.

18. 5. Lili Taylor in
I Shot Andy Warhol (1995)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 13352
SYNOPSIS: Based on the true story of Valerie
Solanas who was a 60s radical preaching
hatred toward men in her "Scum" manifesto.
She wrote a screenplay for a film that she
wanted Andy Warhol to produce, but he
continued to ignore her. So she shot him. This
is Valerie's story. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: As would-be assassin Valerie
Solanas, the always surprising Taylor is noteperfect, both weirdly adorable and a little
scary, playing up the comedy of the sorethumb outsider but also tapping into her
desperate need to belong.

19. 3. James Spader in
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
CALL #: DVD 1656
SYNOPSIS: Erotic comedy about a long lost
college friend who drifts back into town and
into the lives of a self-involved philanderer, his
angelic wife, and her saucy sister. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Capping his terrific '80s run of
Brat Pack villains and sleazeballs, Spader
brings both pathos and wit to his portrayal of an
emotionally blocked voyeur who compensates
for his impotence with his trusty camcorder and
a passive-aggressive interview technique. (It's
not hard to imagine Spader's kinky lawyer in
2002's s&m office romance SECRETARY as his
SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE character, all grown
up.)

20. 1. Julianne Moore in
Safe (1995)
CALL #: DVD 1832
SYNOPSIS: Drama about a suburban
housewife whose affluent environment turns
against her, causing environmentally-induced
disease. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: In Todd Haynes's harrowing
existential horror movie, one of the very best
American films of the past few decades, Moore
plays a blank-slate Southern California
housewife who becomes allergic to her own life.
In a performance of exquisite restraint, she
does the seemingly impossible: she tunnels
into the inner existence of a woman who may
not have one.

21. Top 10 Sundance Provocations
and Controversies
“Real, enduring scandals are few and far
between at Sundance. But storms in teacups are
abundant in such a hothouse atmosphere — and,
for most attendees, part of the fun of the festival
experience. Here are 10 films that made news
beyond Park City, or at least dominated
conversations on the festival shuttle buses for a
few days.”
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/ten-provocations-andcontroversies/

22. 5. Kurt and Courtney (1998)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 19039
SYNOPSIS: "Kurt & Courtney" delves into the
rock star couple's past and uncovers secrets
concerning the untimely death of Kurt Cobain.
(UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Nick Broomfield's documentary
on Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, in which
various less-than-reliable subjects tenuously
implicate the widow in the death of the grunge
martyr, was one of the most anticipated films at
Sundance '08. But the festival, under pressure
from Love, who threatened to sue over music
rights, pulled it at the last minute. An unofficial
screening was held for a select group of
invitees.

23. 2. Poison (1991)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 11676
SYNOPSIS: Part horror film, part drama, part
expose, with an offbeat morality Poison examines
́
the motives behind a seven-year-old boy's
murder of his father, relates the story of a
scientist who isolates the sex drive in liquid form,
and graphically explores the sexually obsessive
relationship between two prison inmates.(UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: The National Endowment for the
Arts grant that was a tiny fraction of its small
budget made Todd Haynes's film a lightning rod
in the raging culture wars of the early '90s.
Homophobic right-wingers (including Senator
Jesse Helms and conservative minister Donald
Wildmon) called for the resignation of NEA head
John Frohnmayer, who briefly stood his ground
before stepping down in 1992.

24. 1. Kids (1995)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 12331
SYNOPSIS: An amoral, HIV-positive skateboarder
sets out to deflower as many virgins as possible
while a local girl who contracted his disease tries
to save his next target from her same fate. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Directed by veteran photographer
Larry Clark and written by newcomer Harmony
Korine, here was an in-your-face portrayal of the
one thing guaranteed to freak out the right wing
even more than gay sex: adolescent sex. The
controversy only picked up after Sundance.
Politicians (including Elizabeth Dole) weighed in
with dutiful condemnations. Critics dropped
disapproving phrases like "jail bait" and "kiddie
porn." The film was slapped with an NC-17 rating.
Unable to release it through Disney subsidiary
Miramax, the Weinstien brothers bought the film
back from their corporate bosses and formed an
independent company for the express purpose of
releasing KIDS.

25. Top 10 Sundance Documentaries
of the Decade
“The documentaries did justice to this downer of a
decade. You could put together a reasonably good
outline of the Iraq occupation or the war on terror or
the environmental crisis or the financial bubble just by
surveying the festival's nonfiction offerings. The good
news? Many of the decade's best Sundance docs filled
the gaps left by mainstream journalism; all of them
told important stories with sophistication and
intelligence.”
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/bestdocumentaries/

26. 10. Biggie and Tupac (2002)
CALL #: DVD 2115
SYNOPSIS: Documentary on the deaths of
Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls and the East
Coast/West Coast, hip-hop/rap rivalry that
culminated in late 1996 and early 1997.
(IMDB)
THEY SAID: Nick Broomfield investigates the
murders of the titular rappers (and hip-hop's
East Coast-West Coast rivalry) in his patented
mode, somewhere between stalking and
performance art. Along the way he scores an
unforgettable prison-yard interview with Death
Row honcho Suge Knight and finds a
surprisingly heartfelt tone — embodied by
Biggie's redoubtable mom, Voletta Wallace,
who welcomes the filmmaker into her home
and offers him interviewing tips.

27. 9. Control Room (2004)
CALL #: DVD 2510
SYNOPSIS: A chronicle providing a rare
window into international perception of the Iraq
War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab World's
most popular news outlet. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Covering Al-Jazeera's coverage of
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Jehane Noujaim offers
a mirror-image view of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and debunks the myth of journalistic objectivity,
an illusion that all but evaporates during
wartime.

28. 7. No End in Sight (2007)
CALL #: DVD 6135
SYNOPSIS: A comprehensive look at the Bush
Administration's conduct of the Iraq war and its
occupation of the country. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Charles Ferguson's scrupulous
overview of the Iraq-war debacle runs through a
litany of horrors so relentless it borders on
farce. The facts speak for themselves in this
sober yet enraging documentary, which traces
the fateful decisions to a small circle of hawks
acting on behalf of a president who was a
clueless outsider in his own administration.

29. 6. Grizzly Man (2005)
CALL #: DVD 3290
SYNOPSIS: A devastating and heartrending
take on grizzly bear activists Timothy
Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were
killed in October of 2003 while living among
grizzlies in Alaska. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Werner Herzog found perhaps
his ultimate subject in Timothy Treadwell, the
bear-loving zoologist who was eaten by a
grizzly and left behind ample documentation
of his fatal obsession.

30. 4. The Weather Underground (2003)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 21268
SYNOPSIS: The remarkable story of The
Weather Underground, radical activists of the
1970s, and of radical politics at its best and
most disastrous. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Sam Green and Bill Siegel's
engrossing portrait of the Weathermen, the
antiwar militants who sought to overthrow the
U.S. government, powerfully captures the
circumstances that bred a revolutionary
mindset as well as the factors that led to its
demise.

31. 3. Iraq in Fragments (2006)
CALL #: DVD 6325
SYNOPSIS: Stories from modern day Iraq as
told by Iraqis living in a time of war,
occupation and ethnic tension. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: James Longley's three-part
chronicle of life after the fall of Saddam,
assembled from two years of guerrilla
reporting, is the most memorable of the
decade's endless stream of Iraq docs — not
just for its street-level vantage but also for its
poetic stylization, its refusal to portray a war
zone in the numbing verite language of news
reports.

32. 2. The Order of Myths (2008)
CALL #: DVD 7457
SYNOPSIS: In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi
Gras is celebrated... and complicated.
Following a cast of characters, parades, and
parties across an enduring color line, we see
that beneath the surface of pageantry lies
something else altogether. (IMDB)
THEY SAID : Margaret Brown's wry, keenly
observant exploration of the still segregated
Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama,
expands almost imperceptibly into a rich and
complicated story about race and class and
the curious power of tradition. More than
contemplating the history of racism in
America, the film does something altogether
trickier: it shows why it persists.

33. 1. The Unforeseen (2007)
CALL #: DVD 7926
SYNOPSIS: A documentary about the
development around Barton Springs in Austin,
Texas, and nature's unexpected response to
being threatened by human interference.
(IMDB)
THEY SAID: While most issue-based docs
tend to simplify the issues, Laura Dunn's
mesmerizing account of the long-running
battle between growth and preservation in
Austin, Texas, never stops looking for shades
of gray. This beautiful, meditative film
embraces a philosophical perspective so vast
you might call it cosmic.

34. Top 10 Overlooked Sundance Films
“In theory the juries, critics and distributors are
there to ensure that the best movies at any
given festival make their way into the
marketplace. But films inevitably get lost in the
shuffle, and besides, there's no accounting for
taste. Here are 10 movies I'd install in the
Sundance canon that were unfairly dismissed or
ignored or that simply slipped into obscurity.”
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/most-overlookedsundance-films/

35. 7. Sure Fire (1990)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 18454
SYNOPSIS: Wes, a hard-driving, egocentric
entrepreneur, is determined to put his corner
of Utah on the map-- regardless of the cost to
himself, his family and his friends. On a
hunting trip with his son, Wes realizes that
he's losing control of things and takes charge
in a swift, stunning moment of violence. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: A Utah land developer becomes
consumed by his get-rich scheme in this
bleak, troubling drama, a typically
uncompromising depiction of the curdled
American dream from longtime indie agitator
Jon Jost.

36. 6. Trans (1998)
CALL #: DVD 0949
SYNOPSIS: The story of 15-year-old Ryan,
who dreams his days away in Florida's
juvenile detention system. Ryan escapes
when a riot between inmates and guards
erupts. He hitches a ride back home where he
reckons with police, hostile thugs, fraternal
ties and the desire to find his estranged
mother. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID : After breaking out of a juvenile
detention center, a teenager goes on the lam
in the strip-mall dead zone of southwest
Florida. With its woozy rhythms and tranceinducing sound design, Julian Goldberger's
impressive debut worms its way into the
fractured psyche of its protagonist.

37. 4. The Slaughter Rule (2002)
CALL #: DVD 1574
SYNOPSIS: A high school football player is
faced with losses, both on the field and off.
Roy is a defeated hero whose only chance of
saving his dignity is "the slaughter rule", a
forced end to the game before the point of
humiliation. Roy becomes lost in a world with
rules, but a renegade coach and a new
romance give him the strength for one last
play. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Anchored by David Morse and
Ryan Gosling's rock-solid performances, Alex
and Andrew Smith's feature debut is a highplains tone poem about the bonds and
frictions between sons and father figures.
Shot in majestic CinemaScope by Eric
Edwards, it barely sneaked into theaters.

38. 2. Chameleon Street (1990)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 19369
SYNOPSIS: Dramatizes the true story of
William Douglas "Chameleon" Street, a quickwitted, self-tutored young man from Detroit
who barely managed to earn a high school
diploma, yet in the 70's pulled off a series of
high-profile hoaxes. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID : Actor-writer-director Wendell B.
Harris Jr. won the Grand Jury prize (from a jury
that included Steven Soderbergh) for this
sharply funny, furiously inventive take on an
actual Detroit con artist whose adopted
personas include Time reporter, French Yale
student and surgeon. Despite raves, this
breathtakingly bold film got only the tiniest of
releases and became a cult footnote (it finally
came out on DVD in 2008). Harris has not
directed since.

39. Top 10 Most Daring Experiments
At any given festival the so-called discoveries
tend to be flavors of the week more than genuine
groundbreakers. Still, Sundance has seen its
share of bold aesthetic innovations, and the
Frontier section, an often neglected showcase for
experimental filmmakers, has grown in recent
years. These 10 works, most of them tucked
away at the fringes of the festival, tried to do
something new.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/most-daringexperiments/

40. 10. Strange Culture (2007)
CALL #: DVD 7120
SYNOPSIS: A documentary in which actors
interpret the legally touchy subject of artist
Steve Kurtz, who is being held as a suspected
terrorist because of his work. (IMDB)
THEY SAID : In recounting the bioterrorism
case of artist and FBI target Steve Kurtz, Lynn
Hershman Leeson uses a fluid blend of reenactments and deconstructions that
coalesce into an intelligent, indignant
response to Patriot Act America.

41. 3. Clean, Shaven (1993)
CALL #: DVD 0908
SYNOPSIS: A harrowing story of a
schizophrenic man's desperate search for his
young daughter. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID : With its auditory hallucinations
and visual abstractions, Lodge Kerrigan's
remarkable debut forces the viewer to share
the head space of a tormented schizophrenic
(PULP FICTION's Peter Greene, in a great
performance). A mix of clinical detail and raw
poetry, this radical film demolishes the notion
that movies are not suited to expressing inner
life.

42. 2. Gerry (2002)
CALL #: DVD 4527
SYNOPSIS: A friendship between two
twenty-something men is tested to its very
limits when they go on a hike in a desert
and forget to bring any water or food with
them. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Gus Van Sant emerged from
his years in the studio wasteland with this
wilderness hike, a road to nowhere that led
the director out of a creative dead end. A
movie with Hollywood stars (Matt Damon,
Casey Affleck) that borrows heavily from
the likes of Chantal Akerman, Andy Warhol,
and Bela Tarr, it was met with
bewilderment and walkouts at its
Sundance premiere but kicked off a
remarkable career reinvention.

43. 1. Decasia (2002)
CALL #: DVD 3499
SYNOPSIS: A meditation on the human
quest to transcend physicality, constructed
from decaying archival footage and set to an
original symphonic score. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Bill Morrison's found-footage
piece, assembled entirely from degraded
archival clips, is a beautiful, ambivalent
essay on the looming extinction of celluloid:
an implict call for film preservation and a
Zen-like meditation on the state of decay.

44. Top 10 World-Cinema Films of the
Decade
An American showcase first and foremost,
Sundance has nonetheless expanded its
global reach over time and especially in recent
years, expanding the world cinema section
and splitting it off into competitive categories.
These were my favorite non-American films
that received their U.S. premieres at Sundance
this past decade.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/best-world-cinema/

45. 9. Last Life in the Universe (2003)
CALL #: DVD 2667
SYNOPSIS: A suicidal, obsessivecompulsive Japanese librarian is forced to
hide out with a pot-smoking Thai woman at
her shabby beachside home. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: This pan-Asian love story —
from Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang,
collaborating with Japanese hearthrob
Tadanobu Asano and Hong Kong-based
cinematographer Chris Doyle — is hushed
and delicate, but no less resonant for that.
Fitting that the original Thai title translates as
TINY ENORMOUS LOVE STORY.

46. 8. Up the Yangtze (2007)
CALL #: DVD 8562
SYNOPSIS: A "farewell cruise" takes a luxury
ship up the vast Yangtze River shortly before
completion of the massive Three Gorges Dam.
The passengers glimpse a rapidly changing
countryside, while the local people struggle to
adapt as their lives are irrevocably altered. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: In this intimate yet cinematic
debut, Canadian documentarian Yung Chang
follows a cruise ship along the world's thirdlongest river, whose banks are about to be
flooded for the Three Gorges Dam project.
Against this glaring symbol of the new China,
Chang picks out the young local workers trained
to interact with Western tourists, showing how
individual lives have been affected by the
abstract forces of modernization.

47. 4. Bus 174 (2002)
CALL #: DVD 2210
SYNOPSIS: A powerful, award-winning
examination of the tragic series of events
that followed a desperate bus hijacking in Rio
de Janeiro in 2000 that turned deadly when
a SWAT team took evasive action against the
drug-addled hijacker. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID : Jose Padilha's gripping
documentary about a hostage situation that
played out live on Brazilian TV in 2000 goes
far beyond the incident to piece together the
biography of the hijacker, placing a violent
tragedy within the context of a wider social
disaster.

48. 3. Bloody Sunday (2002)
CALL #: DVD 8504
SYNOPSIS: Recreation of the events of
"Bloody Sunday", Jan. 30, 1972, when British
troops fired on unarmed protesters in Derry,
Northern Ireland. By the end of the day, 13
civilians were dead and 14 more wounded in
the tumult and tragedy of Norther Ireland's
darkest day. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID : At the time still a relative
newcomer to fiction, former documentarian
Paul Greengrass applied what we now know
as his trademark style — raw, hectic,
immediate — to the 1972 Derry massacre, the
single worst day of the Northern Ireland
conflict, and in the process launched perhaps
the most intriguing Hollywood career of recent
years.

49. Top 10 Films That Rock
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival
/top-ten/ten-films-that-rock/

50. 8. Young@Heart (2008)
CALL #: DVD 8261
SYNOPSIS: A documentary on a chorus of senior
citizens from Massachusetts who cover songs by Jimi
Hendrix, Coldplay, Sonic Youth, and other unexpected
musicians. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Directors Stephen Walker and Sally
George follow a chorus group of senior citizens led by
their younger, middle-aged director, Bob Cilman.
Sounds boring right? Did I mention this chorus group
only sings rock songs? Everything from Jimi Hendrix to
Sonic Youth to The Clash to James Brown, these folks
can actually rock in their own sort of way. But what's
truly moving about this film is the enthusiasm and
dedication shown by the chorus members, most of
which who would otherwise be confined to their
nursing homes. You will laugh and you will probably
cry, too - I did - as you watch the chorus on their
personal and collective journeys.

51. 7. Joe Strummer: The Future is
Unwritten (2007)
CALL #: DVD 8115
SYNOPSIS: Documentary follows the life of
musician and political activist Joe Strummer. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID : Narrated by Strummer, via old
interviews and tapes from his radio show, it
celebrates the life of one of punk rock's most
influential songwriters. Supplemented with
interviews with his friends and some famous fans,
it depicts Strummer as a brilliant, yet emotional,
legend of all things rock. While the film includes
plenty of Clash recordings and live performances,
it also opens a window into Strummer's troubled
personal life through home videos. Overall, it's a
solid piece of work on a man who should never be
forgotten.

52. 6. American Hardcore (2006)
CALL #: DVD 7066
SYNOPSIS: Set against the conservative early
80s political landscape, this film chronicles the
homegrown hardcore scene that was a swift kick
in the head to corporate rock and mainstream
complacency, as disaffected teens adopted the
same collective credo--harder, faster, louder.
(UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Any self -proclaimed member of
the ''counter culture'' should be required to
watch this film. While hardcore punk may be
dead, the ''Do-It-Yourself'' philosophy created by
these musicians has forever changed the face of
the music industry. Watch the movie, learn a
couple guitar chords, and go start a band.

53. 5. Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!
(2006)
CALL #: DVD 6034
SYNOPSIS: Based on concert footage of
October 2004 in Madison Square Garden shot
by fans at the concert and edited into a unit.
The Beastie Boys handed cameras (mostly
high-8) to 50 excited fans, who were told "Do
whatever you want, just keep shooting." (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: …this project is one-of-a-kind.
After some solid editing by Neal Usatin, the
finished product is undeniably ass-kicking. I
didn't think I was in to the Beastie Boys
anymore, but after watching this, within
moments, I was blasting Ill Communication in
my room. Sorry, mom.

54. 1. DIG! (2004)
CALL #: DVD 3694
SYNOPSIS: Dig! plunges into the underbelly of
rock 'n' roll, unearthing an amazing true tale of
success, self destruction, friendship, and the
ultimate rivalry between two up-and-coming bands:
Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols.
(UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: While the Warhols enjoyed moderate
success, the more-talented (in my opinion) Brian
Jonestown Massacre, led by their self-sabotaging
mastermind Antone Newcombe, provide the real
entertainment via on-stage fist fights, heavy drug
usage and starving-artist lifestyle required to fulfill
all the typical rock band clich's…It's like having an
orgasm during a ten-car pileup on the freeway.
Definitely a rare, must-see experience.

55. Top 10 Sundance Fiction Films of the
Decade
If the '90s were the boom years at Sundance,
the '00s were a more unsettled time, swinging
between optimism and pessimism, bumper
crops and aesthetic droughts, as uncertainty
increased about the future of distribution,
criticism, and film itself. Amid all this volatility,
plenty of great work was produced — upholding
the best traditions of independent film and
maybe even inventing some new ones.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/best-fiction-films/

56. 10. Smiley Face (2006)
CALL #: DVD 6726
SYNOPSIS: After a young actress
unknowingly eats her roommate's pot
cupcakes, her day becomes a series of
misadventures. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Based on a script by Dylan
Haggerty and featuring a very funny Anna
Faris, Gregg Araki's delightfully strange pot
odyssey is presumably the only stoner movie in
history to revolve around a first-edition copy of
The Communist Manifesto and, with a rousing
scene in a sausage factory, pay tribute to JeanLuc Godard and Jane Fonda's 1972 agitprop
farce TOUT VA BIEN.

57. 9. The Savages (2007)
CALL #: DVD 7976
SYNOPSIS: A sister and brother face the
realities of familial responsibility as they begin
to care for their ailing father. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Tamara Jenkins's sharp,
unsentimental tragicomedy, in which two
combative siblings (Laura Linney and Philip
Seymour Hoffman) must care for a semiestranged father with dementia, deftly
sidesteps the cliches of the dysfunctionalfamily movie that has long been a Sundance
staple.

58. 8. The Sleepy Time Gal (2001)
CALL #: DVD 3775
SYNOPSIS: A young woman, played by
Martha Plimpton learns of her adoption and
eventually quits her law firm job in NYC and
goes on a journey to find her birth mother played by Jaqueline Bissett. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Christopher Munch's portrait of a
middle-aged woman with cancer (Jacqueline
Bisset) doesn't tailor its protagonist's
eccentricities to the usual shape of an illness
melodrama. This tender, limpid film is, in the
end, less about its willful heroine's preparation
for death than about the fullness and
complexity of her singular life.

59. 7. Half Nelson (2006)
CALL #: DVD 5259
SYNOPSIS: An inner-city junior high school
teacher with a drug habit forms an unlikely
friendship with one of his students after she
discovers his secret. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Built around a knockout
performance by Ryan Gosling as a crackaddicted junior-high teacher, this sly
classroom drama both honors and
subverts its familiar genre, and smuggles
in some dialectical theory and a political
point of view to boot. The filmmakers Ryan
Fleck and Anna Boden more than lived up
to the promise of this debut with 2008's
SUGAR.

60. 6. In the Bedroom (2001)
CALL #: DVD 4303
SYNOPSIS: A New England couple's collegeaged son dates an older woman with two
small children and an unwelcome exhusband. Then something terrible occurs in
this wrenching, emotional drama. (IMDB)
THEY SAID : The standout among the
decade's Sundance actor-turned-directors,
Todd Field made his debut with this
adaptation of an Andre Dubus story: a
stark, patient study of grief and a vigilante
film that resists the customary satisfactions
of revenge.

61. 3. Old Joy (2006)
CALL #: DVD 6675
SYNOPSIS: Friends, Kurt and Mark, reunite
for a weekend camping trip in the Cascade
mountain range east of Portland, Oregon. For
Mark, the weekend outing offers a respite
from the pressure of his imminent
fatherhood; for Kurt, a long series of carefree
adventures. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: In Kelly Reichardt's subdued
but endlessly suggestive road movie, two old
friends search for a remote hot spring, and
perhaps for something more elusive. In this
open-ended elegy, a lament for lost ideals
and forgotten selves, the passing landscape,
seen from a moving car, comes to stand for
the irretrievable past.

62. 2. Donnie Darko (2001)
CALL #: DVD 3591
SYNOPSIS: A troubled teenager is plagued
by visions of a large bunny rabbit that
manipulates him to commit a series of
crimes, after narrowly escaping a bizarre
accident. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Set on the eve of the '88 BushDukakis contest and starring Jake Gyllenhaal
as the brooding Donnie, Richard Kelly's debut
combines wormhole metaphysics and
apocalyptic teen angst to sensational effect.
With a soundtrack that brings to mind a
beloved mix tape, this was one of the
defining cult movies of the aughts and
remains the last word on growing up in the
Reaganite '80s.

63. 1. Primer (2004)
CALL #: DVD 3952
SYNOPSIS: Four friends/fledgling
entrepreneurs, knowing that there's
something bigger and more innovative than
the different error-checking devices they've
built, wrestle over their new invention. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: A couple of white-collar drones
tinkering away in a suburban garage
accidentally invent a time machine — before
long, reality is spinning off its axis. Both a
satire and an embodiment of DIY
resourcefulness, Shane Carruth's ingenious
feedback loop of a movie matches braintwisting paradoxes with coolly composed
visuals and science-nerd banter. Winner of
the 2004 Grand Prize.

64. Top 10 Gay-Themed Films
Conceived in the heyday of queer theory and
AIDS activism, the New Queer Cinema of the
early '90s was a galvanizing but short-lived
movement. Still, its edge rubbed off on
Sundance, which has since had a welcome
mat out for provocation and transgression.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/festival/top-ten/best-gaythemed-films/

65. 10. The Blossoming of Maximo
Oliveros (2005)
CALL #: DVD 10315
SYNOPSIS: Maxi, a twelve-year-old Filipino
boy, crushes on a policeman who is
investigating Maxi's family of thieves.(UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Effeminate and precocious, the
12-year-old Filipino boy of the title can't help
standing out in his gritty Manila slum. But the
tough guys around him are surprisingly
unflappable, as is director Aureaus Solito,
who handles his pubescent protagonist's
sexual awakening with composure and
sensitivity.

66. 7. The Times of Harvey Milk
(1984)
CALL #: DVD 8794
SYNOPSIS: A documentary of the successful
career and assassination of San Francisco's first
elected gay councilor. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: A quarter century before Gus van
Sant and Sean Penn brought him to life, Rob
Epstein's documentary made very clear the
symbolic importance and the practical lessons
of the slain San Francisco activist.

67. 6. The Hours and Times (1991)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 8863
SYNOPSIS: A fictionalized account of what
may have happened when John Lennon and
Brian Epstein went on holiday together to
Spain in 1963. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: Beatles manager Brian Epstein
took John Lennon to Barcelona for a long
weekend in the spring of 1963. With
consummate delicacy and grace, Christopher
Munch's speculative chamber piece suggests
what might have happened.

68. 5. Paris is Burning (1990)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 6773 or VIDEOTAPE
16149
SYNOPSIS: Story of the young men of Harlem
who originated 'voguing' and turned these
stylized dance competitions into glittering
expressions of fierce personal pride. A story of
street-wise urban survival, gay self-affirmation,
and the pursuit of a desperate dream. (UH
Voyager)
THEY SAID: Jennie Livingston's documentary
about the Harlem drag-costume balls is a vivid
chronicle of a consistently surprising subculture,
where black and Latino gay men reinvent
themselves in the images of mainstream pop
culture. It won the documentary competition, the
same year that POISON topped the dramatic
category.

69. 4. Mysterious Skin (2004)
CALL #: DVD 3834
SYNOPSIS: A teenage hustler and a young
man obsessed with alien abductions cross
paths, together discovering a horrible,
liberating truth. (IMDB)
THEY SAID: With his outlaw road movie THE
LIVING END Gregg Araki became the bad boy
of the New Queer Cinema. This coming-of-age
heartbreaker was an artistic maturation no
one saw coming. With newfound sincerity
and the fearless directness that had long
been his hallmark, Araki tells a story of child
abuse that avoids easy moralizing and
sensationalism.

70. 3. Swoon (1992)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 8771
SYNOPSIS: A film noir "thriller" that presents
the true case of Nathan Leopold and Richard
Loeb, brilliant young men from good Jewish
families, who were convicted for murdering a
13-year-old boy. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: Tom Kalin's coolly cerebral, boldly
stylized take on the '20s child-murdering gay
lovers Leopold and Loeb is as original as truecrime case studies get. Shot in beautiful blackand-white, the film won Ellen Kuras the first of
her three Sundance cinematography prizes
and, coming just a year after POISON,
confirmed Christine Vachon as a producing
force for the ages.

71. 2. Edward II (1991)
CALL #: VIDEOTAPE 7661
SYNOPSIS: Edward II embraces the essential
dramatic themes of passion, murder, and
unrequited love. Steven Waddington plays the
monarch as a man whose destiny hangs on his
overpowering passion and lack of responsibility to
the British throne. He rebuffs his wife, Isabella,
lavishing affection on the handsome Gaveston --a
choice that ultimately seals his fate. (UH Voyager)
THEY SAID: One of the great cine-iconoclasts of
all time, Derek Jarman, who died in 1994, paid a
visit to Park City the year the New Queer Cinema
was christened, and brought with him one of his
best movies, a Christopher Marlowe adaptation
bristling with the clear-eyed fury that characterized
much of his late work.