The 2006 Sundance Film Festival, happening January 19th – 29th in Park City, Utah, will include:


The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, a comedy, is an entry from the Philippines, about the first love of a 12-year-old gay boy, living in the slums with his father and two brothers who are involved in petty crimes, encounters a handsome policeman who he falls in love with.

Songbirds, a documentary from the United Kingdom, comes from director Brian Hill who interviewed women prisoners of Downview Prison in Surrey, England. Their stories are turned into a musical performance.

Small Town Gay Bar, produced by Kevin Smith, is a documentary about the proverbial local gay watering hole (something all too many gays from the rural and geographically-isolated environments are familiar) throughout the American South. From the barstool to beyond, the film documents the struggle to build a meaningful gay and lesbian community within hostile surroundings.

From director of The Fluffer comes Quinceanera, the second feature film by Richard Glatzer, is about disaffected Latino teenagers who come of age in a gentrifying community in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles.

Director Peter Richardson will introduce Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon. A local lumber baron, Rex Clemens, becomes wealthy and generous enough to pay for the college tuition for every high school graduate in the tiny town of Philomath, Oregon. But once a transplanted superintendent arrives from Chicago, concerns are raised over the increasingly “liberal” direction of the school. A conflict ensues between the locals, the superintendent, the philanthropist and the future of the town’s next generation’s future.

Director Byron Hurt in his documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture, (later to be aired on PBS), dissects the structures of violence, hyper-aggression, homophobia and misogyny present in much of today’s hip-hop world.

Forgiving the Franklins, a comedy, is another entry from the United States, that centers on a conservative, God fearing Southern family who is spiritually changed by an auto accident, but who they become puts them at odds with the highly conservative values around them.

Sundance’s John Cooper has described director Jay Floyd’s feature as one of the festival’s more unusual films in that it “juxtaposes Christianity and sexuality in ways you’ve never seen before.”

Puccini for Beginners will have its world premiere at Sundance. The film, starring Justin Kirk, Gretchen Mol and Elizabeth Reaser, is about a lesbian on the rebound from her latest lesbian relationship. A New York writer, she ironically finds herself in two surprising complicated love affairs in this only-in New York screwball comedy.

First Date is a short film from a Kansas City filmmaker that traces, with a comedic approach, a parolee’s disastrous first date with a man he met in an Internet chat room.

The Tribe, a documentary short, is already being described as “an unorthodox, unauthorized history of the Jewish people and the Barbie doll in about 15 minutes.” Director Tiffany Shlain focuses on a surprising fact about Barbie was the creation of a Jewish-American woman. This fact becomes a powerful metaphor about assimilation and Jewish identity in the 21st Century through Shlain’s eyes.

True North is a short audiovisual film installation by British artist Isaac Julien. The cinematic experience for the audience will be meditative and comprise reflective images of the sublime.

Bugcrush is a short film directed by Carter Smith and is based on Scott Treleaven’s award-winning short story of the same name about a small-town high school loner, whose fascination with a dangerously seductive new kid leads him into something much more sinister than he could ever have imagined.

The short film, Hello, Thanks, captures filmmaker Andy Blubaugh’s year in the personal ads, looking for love but having his true love affair with the words themselves.

At the Quinte Hotel, an entry from Canada, is an incredible animated version of the Al Purdy poem, a man waxes on about beer and flowers in a small-town basement tavern.

Another short film, Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf, centers on an Arab-American girl who must come to terms with her sexuality while balancing the mores of two different cultures.

I hate you if you’re going. Unless you take me with you.