Sundance Film Festival: a Photo Journey and Diary of a Theatre Volunteer

Sundance Film Festival is held each January in Park City, Utah with special screening and filmmaking workshop events also held in Salt Lake City and at the Sundance Resort near Provo, Utah. If you love movies and storytelling like I do, you should consider becoming one of the 1,500 volunteers that Sundance Film Festival needs each year to help filmmakers realize their dreams. Sundance Film Festival begins volunteer applications in the fall each year.

You can check out the Sundance Film Festival Volunteer application information to learn more about becoming a volunteer. There are also Sundance volunteer opportunities throughout the rest of the year to help pass out marketing pieces for summer film screenings or take filmmakers from the Salt Lake City airport to the Sundance Resort for filmmaking workshops.

I was a full time theatre operations volunteer for two years at Sundance Film Festival and have documented my journey in the Sentiments of Sundance Film Festival Photo Tour and diary from various articles posted at the end of this article. The experiences I had, the films I saw and the new friends I made at Sundance will remain as some of the most memorable of my life.

One of the volunteer friends I met at Sundance was so inspired by independent filmmaking that he launched the Indie Spirit Film Festival in his home town of Colorado Springs, Colorado each April. The film festival is now in its 4^th year and growing. One of the things that excited me the most about both the Indie Spirit Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival is the dedication that the film festival directors have to helping Native Americans since my daughter is part Creek Indian. You can read this interview with Indie Spirit Film Festival Director Jim Turner and Co-Director Matt Stevens to learn more about their journey.

A cherished Sundance Film Festival moment was hearing film commentaries from Apollo Astronaut Buzz Aldrin after the screening of In The Shadow of The Moon (2007). I watched the Apollo Moon landing in 1969 and all the other Apollo missions from my living room. As a little girl, the sight of a man walking on the Moon was like something out of a fictional cartoon. Then, almost 40 years later, I was sitting in a Sundance Film Festival Theatre listening to a real Apollo Astronaut tell his stories. Wow, it just doesn't get much better than that!

Sometimes the memories made at Sundance Film Festival are shocking. I was sitting with a group of volunteer friends in the Eccles Theatre in 2008 waiting to see the Sundance screening of Sleepwalking produced by and starring Charlize Theron with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Hopper, and Woody Harrelson. The day before, we had been to see the screening of Incendiary (also named Blown Apart) starring Heath Ledger's girlfriend Michelle Williams and also starring Ewan McGregor.

I had already turned off my cell phone, but the lady two seats down from me did not. All of a sudden she yelled, "Heath Ledger is dead." We all looked at her in disbelief and perhaps thought she was pulled some sick prank in the theatre, but as we know, she was not. It was a sad day in the film industry and at Sundance.

If you would like to see and read more about the experiences of being a Sundance Film Festival Volunteer, below are my Sundance Film Festival Photo Tour and Sundance Film Festival Diary of A Volunteer articles I have written about my memories at Sundance. While you are in Park City, Utah, be sure to check out Davanza's Old Town for the best tacos and pizza in town. Click here to read my restaurant review. Enjoy!

For more Sundance Film Festival information from Yahoo! Associated Content, check these out:

Sentiments of Sundance Film Festival: A Photo Tour

Sundance Film Festival: A Shocking Surprise

Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Adventures of Power

Sundance Film Festival: A Review from a Volunteer and Movie Fan

Sundance Film Festival 2008: Five Great Movies Worth Seeing

How to Volunteer for the Sundance Film Festival: An Insider FAQ