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Before going into my Women Directors Tracking which I have vowed to continue until women reach a parity with men in the film business and Latino Directors groove, I want to thank Howard Feinstein for watching the most obscure films of Rotterdam to find the jewels! Scratching Below the Surface for Some Rotterdam Fest Gems - indieWIRE. Kudos! I wish I could have seen these!

Howard spotted this one: "A young woman named Rusudan Pirveli brought to the 'Bright Future' section Susa, another story of hard financial times. 'The Lost Generation' is represented here by the absent father of an adolescent boy, who, working for his mother, sells bootleg vodka in bottles. Sadly, he lives under the delusion that dad’s return would ease his and his mom’s hardship. Like Koguashvili, Pirveli eschews unnecessary authorial intervention: Both directors understand all too well that they are living amidst powerful,...

As I said in Toronto and again at the Hof Flm Festival, until there is parity between male and female directors I will continue to look at women directors. I heard the other day that the number of women directors is actually decreasing in the television world.

Here are some quick facts on Sundance this year:

If you include shorts- 51 women directors are represented at Sundance.

In the Premiere section, out of 16 films 7 have women directors.

John Cooper, Director, Sundance Film Festival, brought it to my attention that "Low Budget is dominated by the boys still but that is changing with Lynn Shelton, Katie Aselton etc stepping up. Even there, many have women producers. I have a hunch in the indie creative producer world women dominate. Like I said, that is just a hunch I have never done a study."

Sundance Film Festival is showing approximately 115 features. Of those 25 (20%) are...

Perhaps one of the festival's least popular sections, among the twelve selected titles in 2010's Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition, we have seven world premieres including Jose Padiha's latest and the U.S premiere of Lixin Fan's Last Train Home - winner of the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Idfa). - Perhaps one of the festival's least popular sections, among the twelve selected titles in 2010's Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition, we have seven world premieres including Jose Padiha's latest and the U.S premiere of Lixin Fan's Last Train Home - winner of the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Idfa). Word to publicists: please keep some screeners handy. Here are the selections: "Enemies of the People" (Cambodia-u.K.) - Directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, which recounts the shocking revelations that ensue when a young journalist whose family was killed by the Khmer...

I feel a special bond with the Sundance Film Festival. Not because I’ve been there, but because the guy in charge of it this year, John Cooper, shares my name. Because we share this bond, I feel that I’m able to take license in referring to the man as Coop for the rest of this article.

For the annual event held in Park City, Utah from January 21-31, thousands of films are submitted and screened — this year, 3,724 films were viewed by the festival’s ten programmers. I wonder when they slept.

Coop has high hopes for the festival as a whole:

“We may even be going into a golden age for independent films, in that the technology will make it possible for the films to be made and for audiences to see them. The industry is going through a major evolutionary stage right now, there’s no doubt about that,...

Sundance Film Festival 2010 is a little over a month away and that means we can now bring you a list of the competition films that will be playing. Here you go boys and girls… enjoy!

Documentary Competition

“Blue Valentine” – Directed by Derek Cianfrance, written by Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis, a portrait of an American marriage that charts the evolution of a relationship over time. With Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Mike Vogel, John Doman. “Douchebag” – Directed by Drake Doremus, written by Lindsay Stidham, Doremus, Jonathan Schwartz and Andrew Dickler, in which a man about to be married takes his younger brother on a wild goose chase to find the latter’s fifth-grade girlfriend. Features Dickler, Ben York Jones, Marguerite Moreau, Nicole Vicius, Amy Ferguson, Wendi McClendon-Covey. “The Dry Land” – Directed and written by Ryan Piers Williams, in which a returning U.S. soldier tries to reconcile his experiences overseas with his life in Texas.

Photo: Sundance Today the Sundance Institute announced the films that will be in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in both the U.S. and International dramatic and documentary categories. The festival will run from January 21-31 in Park City, Utah. There are a few changes this year as there will be no opening-night picture and the festival will take select festival films to eight cities during as the fest plays out.

Last year notable films such as this year's major Oscar contenders Precious and An Education debuted at Sundance 2009 as did audience and critical favorite (500) Days of Summer.

As for this year's crop I have highlighted a few titles among the list below in red, but I have primarily done so considering the names attached to the pictures not necessarily based on any advanced buzz I've heard around any of the films. Names to look out for include Ryan Gosling,...

The Sundance Film Festival is where some of the great films of the year will get their first viewings, and if you don’t believe me, here’s just some of the great films this year that made their debut at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival: Precious, World’s Greatest Dad, Big Fan, Bronson, Moon and even (500) Days of Summer, which I didn’t care for but made a big splash.

The festival is where buzz starts happening and now Sundance has released the list of which films will be in competition for 2010. Keep in mind that there are plenty of other films which play out of competition and can be just as great. But some of the big names fighting for the crown are the Allen Ginsberg obscenity trial film Howl starring General Hospital’s James Franco, Hesher starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo’s directing debut Sympathy for Delicious,...

Although the Sundance Film Festival might have tried to wring some extra sunshine from its selections last year, the 2010 lineup looks to be back to its typical mirthless self. One could say it has gone from "You gotta give 'em hope" to "You gotta give 'em mope."

"That's our filmmakers," festival director John Cooper said with an amused mix of pride and resignation. "There's some lightness in here somewhere."

Yes, it's wedged back behind the assassinations, political corruption, war carnage, crumbling educational system and Khmer Rouge revelations. The fest, which runs Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah, might start to feel like 11 Days of Glummer.

But perhaps that's to be expected. The implosion of the independent distribution system amid the ever-present threats of a maimed economy and two wars has provided festival organizers and filmmakers an opportunity to cut loose and follow their probing passions,...

• #89.Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko FilesDirector/Writer: Andrei Nekrasov, Olga Konskaya Producer/Production Company: DreamscannerDistributor: Kino International The Gist: Russian-made documentary film looks at the last four years of the plutonium poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko who died an agonizing death -- followed live by the world's media -- in November after ingesting radioactive Polonium-210, slipped into his tea during a meeting in London where he had been living in exile.Fact: Nekrasov's controversial doc was a (very) last minute addition to the 07 edition of the Cannes film festival and was also in the Toronto film fest line-up.See It: Did Time Magazine put the trigger man (Vlad Putin) on the cover?  Despite already knowing the victims and the accused, you won't need to bother watching adventure spy game flicks after this true life spy game docu. Though this story has received tons of media attention, there are new files and dossiers worth re-opening,

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