I’m blogging over on Shooting People’s Festival Focus blog for the next week or so, along with Jesse Esptein. So go over there right now! Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Sundance is going to be interesting this year. With the economy in the dumps there is almost certainly not going to be the usual sales activity, and hopefully filmmakers will be going there with expectations firmly in check. This could actually be a good thing for Sundance. As Steven Zeitchik writes in the Hollywood Reporter: But what these breakouts show is that the fest’s main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent…

The list of short films screening at Sundance 09 is below but I wanted to give a special shout out to all the Shooters on the list: Filippo Conz and Jon Haller (Concerto), Khary Jones (HUG), Topaz Adizes (Trece Anos), Morgan Currie (Good: Internet Censorship), Annie P. Waldman (So the Wind Won’t Blow it All Away), Martina Amati (A’Mare), Chema Garcia Ibarra (The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5), Urszula Pontikos (China’s Wild West), Finlay Pretsell (Ma Bar), Eva Weber…

More films announced for Sundance 2009. These films are playing out-of-competition. Also announced: this year’s Closing Film is the world premiere of Robert Stone’s Earth Days, a history of our environmental undoing seen through the eyes of nine Americans whose work and actions launched the modern environmental movement. PREMIERES To showcase the diversity of contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors and world premieres of highly anticipated films. Films…

Sundance has just announced its competition line-up. I’m already getting excited about discovering new work and big congratulations to everyone who got in. But just remember that Sundance is not the whole world, it’s not even the whole indie world. Whether or not your film was accepted you should read this piece by Eugene Hernandez in indieWIRE. It’s full of good level-headed practical advice on how to think about festival strategy. Of course if your film got in you should…