The Last of the Movies

Well, Sundance is over for another year and the town is now really quiet. It could also be the blizzard that kept a lot of people home yesterday....

We went to the locals screenings called "Best of Fest." 2 movies are chosen on the last night of the festival for this screening. This time it was the Documentary Audience Award winner: "Fields of Fuel" and the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner: "Frozen River."
Here's where the ticket strategy came into play. We had sold our Sunday tickets to this movie when we found out what was going to be in the Best of Fest. Not attending BOF because we'd already seen the film was never an option! And we got to see 2 more movies!

"Frozen River," written and directed by Courtney Hunt, is about a single mother with 2 kids whose husband has taken off just before Christmas. She's trying keep things together for her family and desperately wants a new home, but can't make the payments to have it delivered. (It's a double-wide trailer home.) She meets a young Mohawk Indian woman who uses the frozen river between Canada and New York to smuggle people across the border. The two women work together smuggling people even though they don't like each other at first.
It's a good film and the actors draw you in to their worlds. It is not a downer of a movie and has a hopeful ending. What you'd expect to see on the Sundance Channel or the IFC channel.

The "must see" film of the night was "Fields of Fuel" by Josh Tickell. It's about how to get our country free of foreign oil. It's upbeat and hopeful, and that's probably why it won the audience award. Mr. Tickell has been working on this film for 10 years and his passion is contagious. His main focus is on sustainable energy:using biodiesel fuels. We can grow all the fuel we need. We should be able to have conflict-free energy. We seem to have done that with diamonds...

Years ago he converted a van (the Veggie Van) to run on vegetable oil and has logged over 25,000 miles in it, spreading the word. Now that he has this movie, he's taking it and the van on a 50 city tour and will show the film at both party's political conventions.

He was there for the QandA and stayed after the film in the lobby for over an hour talking to everyone who wanted a word.
We learned many new things: Sweden has pledged to be petroleum-free by 2020; there is algae that can be made into oil, not in millions of years, but in days or weeks; any diesel car, truck, van, ship or bus can run on biodiesel fuel immediately, with no modifications needed.

12 films in 4 days. Whew! It was a great experience and an amazing opportunity to see films of all kinds. We were able to get tickets to everything we wanted to see, and getting around wasn't too much of a hassle. Of course, we weren't invited to any of the big parties and events on Main St....

We have to thank our friends who invited us, housed us and showed us the ropes. Early morning coffee, late night pizza and wings, adventures in souvenir-gathering, celebrity spotting, all good times! Would love to go again!

Photo idea thanks to TFOP