Sundance Film Festival

The programming staff at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival is in the process of watching the thousands of films — features and shorts — submitted for January's event.

But that doesn't mean one of the programming staff, Bridgette Bates, couldn't take a minute to report on the progress — and humorously answer a few questions for nervous filmmakers.

Yes, every disc does get watched at least once. If a disc arrives broken, the programmers will contact the filmmaker to send another one. (Once, a filmmaker deliberately sent a broken disc, to squeeze a little more editing time after the deadline — but now the Sundance folks are onto that scam.)

So far, Bates wrote, the programmers have noticed a lot of movies about horses. (Last year, boxing was a big recurring theme.)

Bribes are not recommended, though the programmers have received some doozies:

The best item we've received this year was a bag of candy corn, which is kind of sad considering that in the past we've received such zany items as a unicycle, a fondue machine, a giant boot that was spray painted gold, and some amazing sneakers that had the word "Hustler" bedazzled all over them.  We ask that applicants not send anything other than their DVD, but we do miss the copious amounts of candy we used to get every week (hint, hint).

The programming staff finished its work around Thanksgiving, and the slate is usually announced in early December.