Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore announced the lineup of films that will be screening at the 2007 festival today, and said that choosing the 64 films that will appear in the four competition categories (dramatic, documentary, world cinema dramatic and world cinema documentary) was harder this year than ever before. While that's a bit like someone saying "You guys are the best crowd ever!" they definitely did have more films to choose from for the same number of slots, so who can blame him? They received 3,287 films for consideration this year, the most in the festival's 39-year history.

122 total films were chosen (not all of them screen in competition), and 82 of them will be world premieres. That's a heck of a lot of movies over two weeks. If you've ever attended Sundance in the past, then you know how difficult it is to get tickets. Passes are expensive and sell out quickly (in fact, only one level of pass is currently left, the $2500 Express Pass-B), however individual tickets will go on sale the week of January 9. You can pre-register right now through January 4 on the Sundance FIlm Festival website to receive a random, lottery-style time that will allow you to log in and purchase tickets that week.

Sundance is one of my favorite film festivals because of the sheer volume and variety of films that you are able to pick and choose from. Plus it's a chance to meet the filmmakers, other film lovers, and to experience it in beautiful Park City, Utah. The last two years that I've gone it was with minimum preparation and usually as a last-minute decision, but I've still managed to see at least 15 films in about five days each time. It's well worth the trip and enduring the cold to step out of your own world and into a creative environment, if just for a little while.

You can download a PDF file of all the 2007 Sundance Film Festival selections here. The festival runs from January 18th through the 28th -- time to start picking and choosing!

Entertainment Weekly has a Sundance Q&A with Kevin Smith up. In it, Smith discusses how Sundance director Geoff Gilmore pretty much guaranteed Clerks 2 a slot at Sundance (how many filmmakers would love to have that kind of in to Sundance?), but Harvey Weinstein turned the offer down cold in favor of debuting the film at Cannes instead. Smith talks in the piece about how he would have preferred to debut Clerks 2 at Sundance, since he got his start as a filmmaker after debuting Clerks there way back in 1994 (1994? Really? God, I feel old now).

I'm not sure how I feel about this move, actually. Smith says he trusts Weinstein knows what he's doing, but really -- wouldn't it seem to make a lot more sense to debut the follow-up to Clerks at Sundance? I'm not just saying that because I would have been able to see it there, either, although I wouldn't have complained about that. Smith fans, what do you think about Weinstein snubbing a Sundance offer for Clerks 2? Brilliant marketing move guaranteed to have the worlds' eye on the film at Cannes? Or major misstep by Weinstein?

[ via News Askew ]

I got a chance yesterday to sit down with Geoffrey Gilmore, longtime Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Geoff is all about the films, and through the course of our conversation he talked about everything from his programming strategy, to the potential impact of technology on the festival's future. You can download the file directly here, or scoop it up from the iTunes music store.

Format
QT MPEG4 (3IVX), 18:39, 66.8 MB

[Download Here]