One of the premier events in the U.S. for independent filmmakers, the Sundance Film Festival, founded nearly two decades ago, takes place this year from January 15-25 in Park City, Utah, with 103 features and 67 shorts. Attracting 12,000 people, Sundance holds a separate competition for documentaries and has been a springboard for recent notables such as Hoop Dreams and Crumb. In 1996, Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern, by Jeanne Jordan and Steve Ascher, won the Audience and Grand Jury Prizes, and Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings, also in official competition, went on to win an Oscar.

Other programs include American Spectrum, Premieres, World Cinema, Park City at Midnight, Frontiers (a challenge to conventional filmmaking), Native Visions and Shorts. Of the 16 films in the documentary competition at the 1998 Sundance, 12 list women as filmmakers. The following – culled from 200 submissions – make up the short-list for the coveted Grand Jury Prize:

Baby, It’s You – Anne Makepeace
Beautopia – Katharina Otto
Decline of Western Civilizations, Part III – Penelope Spheeris
Divine Trash – Steve Yeager
The Farm – Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus
Frank Lloyd Wright – Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Frat House – Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland
A Letter Without Words – Lisa Lewentz
Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart – Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Modulations – Iara Lee
Moment of Impact – Julia Loktev
Out of the Past – Jeffrey Dupre
Paulina – Vicky Funari
Slavegirls – Ellen Bruno
Some Nudity Required – Odette Springer
Wild Man Blues – Barbara Kopple

In this Report:
-The Doc Side of Sundance
-Sundance Short List
-He did it his way: A doc-maker self-distributes