Main Street in Park City, Utah has remnants of a frontier silver mining town past. Clapboard buildings line the narrow roadway, bearing names like “General Store” and “Elks Hall.” Those grizzled miners would no doubt be baffled by the present-day pedestrians - women in brightly colored ski jumpsuits and multi-colored toboggan hats, guys sporting designer denim jackets and knit caps pulled over their ears. And everyone with sunglasses pushed back into their carefully disheveled coifs. At night during the Sundance Film Festival, the street is choked with outsized SUVs and people patronizing high tone restaurants, or corporate parties held in chic bars and temporary tents, sponsored by the likes of computer companies, movie magazines, and satellite service providers.

One of the functions of Sundance and other film festivals around the world (including our own Cleveland International Film Festival) is to serve as a test market for new movies. In addition to scene makers, this place is filled with deal makers - movie and TV distribution companies send scouts here to check out the latest “product” and see audience reaction to it. Getting a “buzz” at Sundance, betters the chance of getting your film into theaters around the country.

The opening night attraction was “Friends with Money,” featuring Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, and Catherine Keener. The program description spoke of a quartet of longtime friends and their lives with boyfriends, husbands and offspring. My “chick flick” radar went off as I turned the page, but in fact it’s a very serious and funny examination of class, gender and relationships.  It’s the kind of picture that people around here say, “I’m sure that one will be picked-up for distribution.”

I’m very curious about how much buzz “A Lion in the House” is going to get. That’s the documentary made by Dayton-area filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. It has two serious barriers for commercial success - it’s about the lives of children in a Cincinnati cancer ward, and it’s four hours long. The chief oncologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital contacted Bognar and Reichert and pitched the idea that his patients would make for a compelling story on the order of the award-winning inner-city basketball film “Hoop Dreams.” 

The filmmakers subsequently spent six years living with six families who gave them extraordinary access into their personal lives. Steve says that they wanted to go beyond the telethons that feature “cute bald-headed kids” as a ploy to raise money. The film slowly pulls you into the story of each family and how they coped. And then, after the premiere showings this past weekend, the auditorium lights came up to reveal that most of the families and their doctors had made the trek to Sundance to be a part of the presentation and to answer questions about what it was like to have people  with cameras in your house during a time of crisis. The impact was overwhelming.

Another Ohio connection rounded out the opening Sundance weekend. A New Zealand playwright came to town with his first film, “No. 2,” about a family of Fiji Island natives who have tried to adjust to the urban life of New Zealand. The one American in the cast is Cleveland-born Ruby Dee, who plays the matriarch of the family. After the film ended, Ms. Dee came out along with the director and another actress to answer questions. What is particularly striking is the fact that she had just barely arrived in New Zealand to start shooting last year when word came that her husband Ossie Davis had died. She came back for the funeral, but then quickly returned to the film set to finish a very moving story about the power of family ties. A number of times during the picture, the camera dwells silently on her sad, wizened face. It isn’t hard to imagine that part of her own family experience is present in that performance.

Dayton-area filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar met with ideastream’s David C. Barnett to discuss how they came to make the Sundance entry, “A Lion in the House.”