Sundance Day #1

To pick up where I left off in my last post -

I went to the box office to pick up my tickets I had bought online. It isn't always easy to buy tickets to the screenings at Sundance, but I think it helped that this year was a slow year (some people said it was the economy, others thought it was the inauguration).



I had a panel to go to about Avid file formats at 2:00, but I had a little bit of free time beforehand, so after I got my tickets and bought a souvenir T-shirt, I walked around and got the lay of the land.





Sundance has several different lodge-type spots where you can go in and relax, get warm, check your email, chat, etc., so I checked them out - the Sundance House, Filmmaker Lodge, and New Frontier. The Sundance House in conjunction with Brita and Filter for Good was giving away BPA-free refillable water bottles in an effort to reduce water bottle waste during the festival. I already had three of my own in my back pack (I drink a lot of water), but these were free and said "Sundance" on them so I picked one up. The best part was that there was free Brita water at all of the theaters and lodges; each lodge had its own mini cafe and none of them even sold bottled water. Since a reported 50,000 people go to Sundance every year (I read somewhere that this figure is 5 times as many as the amount of tourists who visit Park City the whole rest of the year), that's a lot of waste reduction. And hopefully people will continue to reuse their bottles after they get home.

The Filmmaker Lodge, despite the cool name, didn't have anything too exciting going on at the moment, so I headed over to New Frontier where the panel was going to be. The space was set up like a hybrid between a night club and a modern art museum. Colored lights lit the rooms (although the room with the panel was regularly lit), and video installations and interactive computer art lined the walls. They had plenty of couches to lounge around on while you waited for whatever you needed to wait for.




Despite the visually crazy club-like appearance, the video installations provided a soothing sound backdrop (something like birds and waves from what I remember), and it was actually a very relaxing and zen sort of place to hang out. It ended up being one of my favorite places to sit and recharge in between events.

After the Avid file format panel, I walked back down main street to Queer Lounge, which is a space open to the public to come in and chat, relax, check their email, etc. like the other lodges/lounges around town (the other lodges/lounges are actually only open to the public on a space available basis. I had bought a credential that would guarantee me access, however, it was slow enough this year that you didn't need one). Queer Lounge had the benefit of having a lot of queer people there, and like a couple of the other lounges, they also hosted daily panels and nightly parties.



That evening, I went to the "Thank GLAAD it's Friday" party at the lounge, which a friend of mine got me on the list for before arriving in town.

Here's a view of main street from the balcony -



It was really crowded inside and not totally conducive to talking to people.


After that, a group of us lesbos headed out for sushi.


After that, we finagled ourselves to be somebody's +1 for the film programmers party at the Filmmaker Lodge that night. I hung out with my lesbo friends, but was a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be a whole lot of networking going on.


At any rate, we stayed out late and had fun; it was an all around eventful day.