Sundance continues to open up worlds and cinema

Park City, Utah

ART and industry are still slugging it out at the Sundance Film Festival. That's true even if you no longer hear many anguished discussions about the meaning of independent cinema. These days, chatter about distribution deals, a movie's commercial potential and even if a title will be in play at the next Academy Awards tends to drown out meaningful discussions of cinema and whether independence can be quantified by vision, spirit, money or some ineluctable combination of these.

Then again, given how thoroughly the industry has colonised the festival (as the clusters of agents at screenings suggest), anguishing about it can feel like misplaced nostalgia.