Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Cooler heads are making the case against the boycott of the Sundance Film Festival - a boycott proposed by gay-marriage activists who are mad at Utah because of the Mormon church's role in passing California's Prop. 8.

IndieWire reports on a lively discussion thread on Facebook in which filmmaker Allison Anders (whose films "Gas Food Lodging," "Mi Vida Loca" and "Sugar Town" all played at Sundance) called the idea of boycotting Sundance "absurd."

"Sundance was for decades one of the tiny few hands that fed gay filmmakers, women filmmakers, browns, blacks, reds and everyone underrepresented on the screen, and it continues to be that for all of us," Anders wrote. "If people continue to misplace their rage over Prop 8 passing, they will change not one thing and none of us who supported the No on Prop 8 vote wants to see that happen."

Producer Ross Katz ("Lost in Translation," "In The Bedroom") seconded Anders' view. "The idea of boycotting Sundance is totally misguided and only HURTS the cause," Katz wrote. "They offer a voice - a loud, uncompromising voice - for filmmakers of all ethnicities, sexual orientations, political bents. Those voices are shouted from the mountain tops of Park City. If anything, take the amazing platform that Sundance is, and run with it."

Even the New York Post's movie critic Lou Lumenick, no raving liberal, argued on his blog that a boycott of Sundance misses the intended target.

"Park City, where the Sundance festival is held, has a longtime reputation as the most liberal city in the state - they refer to it as 'sin city'' in other part of Utah - and by far the most tolerant," Lumenick notes. "Though it is headquarters to LDS, Salt Lake City, which also hosts Sundance screenings, is not much further behind. Believe me, LDS would be happy to see Sundance suffer. The highly inclusive Sundance Film Festival has played a key role in nuturing the Queer Cinema movement for two decades and showcases several gay-themed movies every year. So this would seem to me to be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center is urging a more direct message to the LDS Church: Postcards.

The center is raising money to mount a legal challenge to invalidate Prop. 8 - and for every $5 donated, the center will send a postcard to church president Thomas Monson, acknowledging the donation in his name.