Inside PBS Blog

The Sundance Film Festival came to a close earlier this week. For those of us who weren't able to make it to the festival in person, the web helped bring the festival experience to life online.

The Sundance Film Festival came to a close earlier this week. For those of us who weren't able to make it to the festival in person, the web helped bring the festival experience to life online.

The PBS indie film series P.O.V. offered a good deal of festival coverage, with series producer Yance Ford posting updates on screenings and festival gatherings via the P.O.V. Twitter account and blog. Watching the inauguration from one of Sundance's filmmaker lodges, she wrote, "There are more Emmy, Oscar and Sundance Audience Award winners in this room than you can shake a stick at. " Ford loved some films she saw - including El General and William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, both of which P.O.V. will be airing --- and walked out of others. Ultimately, Ford left the fesitival "feeling good about the state of documentaries," despite "distribution challenges and persistent struggles for funding."

The Independent Television Service (ITVS), which produces the PBS indie film series Independent Lens, was also at Sundance, and wrote about the experience at ITVS' Beyond the Box blog. The chaotic exhilaration of the Sundance experience comes through in these posts, with ITVS vice president of programming Claire Aguilar noting:

"Because of trying to shoehorn everything into a 24 hour day (midnight screenings, early morning meetings, bus trips, slogging through snow and black ice), basic human needs such as food, water and sleep are often at a minimum. Everyone is watching, promoting, developing, networking, organizing and discussing films so you tend to forget about lunch."

The ITVS blog captures the festival's strange juxtaposition of searing documentary films on weighty topics, on the one hand, and celebrity sightings, on the other - mixed, this year, with what sounds like pervasive giddyness about the inauguration of President Obama.   At a screening for The Reckoning, a documentary about the International Criminal Court and its pursuit of justice against crimes of genocide and war crime: Chris Rock! En route to a screening of The Reporter, a doc about the crisis in journalism: Ben Affleck!

Aguilar also mentions another PBS film that screened at the fest: Wounded Knee , a documentary by Stanley Nelson that will air this spring as part of We Shall Remain, a series exploring Native American history. (You can watch a trailer for Wounded Knee on the series website.)

Last but not least, the Sundance website itself offers a portrait of the festival, complete with videos, detailed film listings, photo galleries - and, of course, its very own blog. On the last day of the festival, official Sundance blogger Evany Thomas wrote that as soon as she gets home, she plans to "reintroduce greenery to my diet, and fold into bed no later than 8 p.m. each night."

And with that, our collective Sundance experience comes to a close.

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