Sundance TV

State of the Art

by Carly Carioli

Since founding the Sundance Institute in 1981 -- originally as a workshop for new filmmakers to hone their craft, and later as the sponsor of the Sundance Festival, which has become the premier market for independent films in the US -- Robert Redford has become the most recognizable Hollywood champion of indie cinema. This month the Sundance Channel (a joint venture of Redford, Showtime, and PolyGram) makes its debut in the Boston area -- it's available to MediaOne cable subscribers in Cambridge and Somerville, though not in Boston proper, where the rival Independent Film Channel reigns.

The occasion brought Redford to stump before the cameras. Thanks to the Sundance Festival, he told journalists at the Charles Hotel last week, "we have a mechanism in place that creates opportunities for new talent, new artists, new voices. And the Sundance Channel is also an opportunity for audiences to be able to get something they're just simply not going to get [elsewhere]. That's the end and we're the means."

Currently the Sundance Channel is available as a premium channel (i.e., at additional cost, like HBO) to some 200,000 MediaOne subscribers in the Northeast region encompassing New Hampshire and Massachusetts, though it's expected to be made available to some one million MediaOne customers by the end of the century.

"One of the top features of the Sundance Channel is that there's no other channel that can provide premiere films that have not been seen before," Redford explains. "Because of the distribution set-up and because of the number of films that are out there right now, there's sometimes a glut in the market. Films get pushed out of the theaters or they cannibalize themselves in the theaters because there's no time or space. The little films, what I would call the smaller or more independent films, can't compete."

And though it does feature short films and full-length features that haven't been released commercially, the Sundance Channel also functions (as does the rival IFC) as a cable outlet for films from the indie/arthouse circuit. Mirroring Redford's desire to spotlight marginalized directors and films, the channel's August "Representing Soul" festival is presenting a bevy of films by African-American directors, including Melvin Van Peebles (Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman), and John Singletary (Boyz N the Hood). In September the channel will highlight Parker Posey in a mini-festival to include subUrbia, Waiting for Guffman, and Party Girl; this fall it will offer Michael Tolkin's The New Age, Al Pacino's Looking for Richard, and Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, one of the hits from the 1997 Sundance Festival. "We like to think of ourselves not so much as eclectic but democratic and diverse," says Redford. "Anybody that's been snuffed out of the process or held back or thwarted, we try to give opportunities to."

-- Carly Carioli

Eligible MediaOne subscribers can receive the Sundance Channel for free for the month of August by calling (978)-683-5500.