Sundance before Sundance

So every year since I've been programming the festival, I have emailed (well when I started it was faxing) the directors/producers of the films that will be screening in Sundance for a video/DVD of the film as soon as Sundance announces their lineup.

The request goes something like this: "blah blah blah, the Cleveland International Film Festival is great and you'd be a fool to pass us up, blah blah blah, so send me a screener before Sundance for us to consider it, blah blah blah, since our programming deadline is the last weekend of Sundance, blah blah blah."

In a dream world, most filmmakers would send me a DVD of their film and I would be able to clear up my Sundance schedule and see the films that either have distributors already or are "high profile" - or open up my schedule in the off chance that I get invited to a huge party (rarely).

In the real world, (up until last year) I would receive two or three DVDs, and typically, they weren't the greatest films playing in Sundance.

This year, I've already viewed four films screening in Sundance and at least 10 more are on their way. So now on top of watching the piles of recommended submissions, DVDs from sales agents and foreign film agencies, I have to find more time for these Sundance films. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm now getting worried about needing to turn some of these Sundance films down.

Anyway, the main point to this post is mainly to say that three of the four Sundance films that I've seen so far are documentaries, and I would like to screen all three. If this is a sign of what is to come, we're going to have an amazing documentary year. Who cares that US distributors are limiting their buying this year (especially of documentaries). It gives festivals like Cleveland more of an opportunity to screen these awesome films.