Presence is publicity - the only way to get your point across is being seen.

That's what's keeping the Queer Lounge - a focal point for gay and lesbian filmmakers - in business at the Sundance Film Festival, in spite of talk of gays boycotting Sundance and all things Utah because of the Mormon church's support of California's gay-marriage ban.

"For many [LGBT] filmmakers, Sundance is their single most important opportunity to ensure their stories about our community reach a broad audience," Neil G. Giuliano, president of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, told The Salt Lake Tribune's Christopher Smart. "And they are not in a position to stay away from that opportunity. ... We continue the Queer Lounge with a desire not to be rendered silent or invisible."

Labels: boycott

The talk about a boycott of the Sundance Film Festival has, for the most part, died down.

Most people have acknowledged that lashing out against Utah because the LDS Church urged its members donated millions to the anti-gay Prop. 8 in California may not be an effective strategy - and punishing Sundance, an event that has championed Queer Cinema virtually from the beginning, is hurting friends more than the opposition.

There is one subset of a Sundance-related boycott still gestating: A call to boycott the Cinemark theater chain - including Park City's Holiday Village Cinemas - because Cinemark CEO Alan Stock (a Mormon raised in Roy, Utah) donated $9,999 to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore told The New York Times that Sundance wouldn't pull out of the Holiday Village - "we don't have an alternative," he said - but the festival would be careful not to schedule any movie to play only at the Holiday Village.

This isn't much of a logistical change - the U.S. documentary competition has most of its screenings at the Holiday Village, but each film usually gets another screening at either the Library Center or Prospector Square. The biggest alteration may be for the World Cinema Documentary competition, and the Shorts and Frontier programs.

Labels: boycott, Geoffrey Gilmore