PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Television Festival this is not.
That snarky, small-screen nickname is nonetheless being tossed around by some of the Hollywood attendees who are gathering here for the 31st Sundance Film Festival, which starts on Thursday. The reason: Like the rest of moviedom, the independent-film world is grappling with the incursion of television as a creative and financial force.
Independent film used to define the cutting edge in entertainment, but the indie crowd has lately ceded ground to television, which is turning out risk-taking shows like Amazon’s “Transparent,” created by a Sundance film alumna. A vast majority of the 123 movies that will play Sundance this year will end up finding an audience not in a theater but on a video-on-demand system.
The shift leaves Sundance, longtime attendees say, on the edge of an identity crisis. The festival, fiercely proud of its heritage as America’s foremost showcase for independent cinema, is working to hold on to that identity. At the same time, it is tentatively embracing an art form, television, in which innovation and energy abound.
In other words, it is trying to remain relevant.
The signs of this push and pull are everywhere, starting with “Animals,” an independently produced and financed television series. The first two animated episodes, about lovelorn New York rats and gender-questioning pigeons, will make their debut at Sundance on Monday as a special event. Moreover, “Animals” is hoping to use the festival to land a distributor — a first for a television series, Sundance staff members said.
A TV show being shopped at Sundance? It is not as strange as it sounds, at a time when analysts estimate that digital and video-on-demand services are replacing art houses as the primary outlet for more than 90 percent of independent films. The most active Sundance buyers this year are expected to include distributors that tend to lean on video on demand, like IFC, Magnolia and Radius-TWC, the boutique division of the boutique Weinstein Company.
Twelve Sundance documentaries are already spoken for by HBO, CNN, Showtime and Netflix. “Your local art house cinema is moving to your living room,” said Jason Blum, a producer whose film “Whiplash” opened Sundance last year and who notably just announced a major expansion into television.
At the same time, more independent directors and writers are hoping to use Sundance as a launching pad not for a film career but for a television one.
“Now the dream is to write and direct an indie film, get into Sundance and then use that to become a big-time TV series creator, like Lena Dunham, or a show runner or a TV director,” said Reed Martin, author of “The Reel Truth,” a guide to making an independent film. “TV is where all the money is, and where a lot of the creative risk-taking is celebrated these days,” he added.
The indie brain drain is noticeable. The filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass, long Sundance darlings, have recently been busy creating the series “Togetherness” for HBO. (They are also executive producers of “Animals.”) Woody Allen, who was indie before indie was a thing, is making a digital series for Amazon, where Jill Soloway — who directed the 2013 Sundance entry “Afternoon Delight” — is the creative force behind “Transparent.”
John Ridley is following up his Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave” screenplay with “American Crime,” which arrives on March 5 on ABC.
So where does all of this leave Sundance?
On the one hand, festival organizers are thrilled about the rise of television as fertile ground for the independent-cinema crowd. Sundance’s oft-repeated goal is to “support independent storytellers,” regardless of the medium. The nonprofit Sundance Institute last year added a television writing lab to its roster of workshops.
More than 900 people applied for 10 openings, according to Keri Putnam, the Sundance Institute’s executive director.
“We spend a lot of time listening to our community of artists, and what we began to see, like everybody else, was the surge of opportunities for independent voices on television and online platforms,” Ms. Putnam said. “This feels like a very natural expansion of our work.”
Similarly, the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last year started a program dedicated to online series, and the more commercially oriented South by Southwest festival in Texas added a television section.
But Robert Redford, Sundance’s founder, and his crew also want to protect their movie base, which is one reason they work so hard to stage world premieres (106 this time around, out of 123 features total). When film executives no longer need to make the trek to Utah to see new offerings — when everyone can simply view them on Vimeo link from New York and Los Angeles, as some already do — Sundance stops being a must-attend event.
Some festival officials even avoid the word television, referring to it instead as “episodic storytelling.”
“We have no formal plans to add an episodic festival section,” Ms. Putnam said.
Still, “Animals” represents an important toe in the water.
That seven-episode series is not the first TV project to be shown at Sundance. In 2013, the festival screened Jane Campion’s seven-hour “Top of the Lake” mini-series in its entirety, billing it as a “cinematic event.” Last year, the festival’s experimental New Frontier section included Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “HitRECord on TV,” a variety-show outgrowth of a website.
But both of those shows already had cable distribution locked up in advance and were trying to use Sundance to generate tune-in buzz. The same is true of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” a six-part documentary series headed to HBO next month; Sundance will screen the first episode on Tuesday.
“Animals,” in contrast, is being dangled for sale by agents at ICM Partners, alongside films like “People, Places, Things,” a potential crowd-pleaser about a newly single graphic novelist with twin daughters.
The element of commerce is important. Sundance first hit its stride in the 1980s partly because independent-film executives, split between New York and Los Angeles, came together in the middle to wheel and deal. The festival’s heat has always come from the money changing hands.
“We truly have no idea what to expect,” said Mike Luciano, who wrote and directed “Animals” with Phil Matarese. “It could end up on traditional TV. It could go to one of the interesting home streaming options. That’s what’s exciting about it.”
犹他州帕克城——这里并不是在举行“圣丹斯电视节”。
第31届圣丹斯电影节(Sundance Film Festival)于周四拉开帷幕，一些出席的好莱坞人士经常用这个和小屏幕有关的难听外号来称呼它。这可能是因为，和电影界的其他部分一样，独立电影界也在努力应付电视作为一种创作力量和经济力量的入侵。
独立电影界曾经代表了娱乐业的最前沿，但是近来，独立电影界已经开始把自己的领地割让给电视界，比如亚马逊冒险推出的剧集《透明家庭》(Transparent)，就是由圣丹斯出身的班底主创的。今年在圣丹斯电影节上映的123部影片中，大部分不会在影院播出，而会在视频点播系统中播出。
圣丹斯的长期参与者们认为，这个变化令该电影节面临身份危机。圣丹斯电影节是美国独立电影的最佳展示机会，组委会深以这个传统为骄傲，致力于保持住这一身份。与此同时，它也暂且接受电视这种充满革新与能量的艺术形式。
换言之，它试图保持确当性。
处处都显现出这种挣扎，先是《动物们》(Animals)，这是一部独立制作、独立核算的电视剧。前两集是动画，讲述失恋的纽约老鼠与对性别有疑问的鸽子，它们将于周一作为特别活动在圣丹斯首播。此外，《动物们》希望利用电影节寻找分销商——圣丹斯的工作人员们说，这样的做法对于电视剧来说还是第一次。
在圣丹斯电影节上卖电视剧？其实这并不像听上去的那么奇怪，如今，分析师们评估，数字与视频点播服务正在取代艺术影院，成为90%的独立电影的主要出口。今年，预计圣丹斯电影节上最活跃的购买者中也会包括依靠视频点播的分销商，诸如IFC、Magnolia和Radius-TWC，其中Radius-TWC是业界精英温斯坦影业(Weinstein Company)旗下的精英部门。
在圣丹斯播出的纪录片中，已经有12部被HBO、CNN、Showtime和Netflix预定。“本地的艺术影院来到了你的起居室里，”制片人詹森·布拉姆(Jason Blum)说，他的影片《爆裂鼓手》(Whiplash)是去年圣丹斯电影节的首映影片，最近他也在电视上获得了较大知名度。
与此同时，更多独立电影导演和编剧不仅希望把圣丹斯作为促进电影事业发展的平台，在电视事业上也是如此。
“现在人们的梦想是编写并执导一部电影，在圣丹斯放映，然后凭借这份资历，成为黄金时段电视剧的主创，比如莉娜·杜汉姆(Lena Dunham)，或者成为电视节目主持人或者导演，”里德·马丁(Reed Martin)说，他是独立制片指南书《胶片真相》(Reel Truth)的作者。“现在的资金都投向电视，近来电视也鼓励很多创意方面的冒险，”他补充。
独立电影界的人才流失很明显。独立电影制片人马克(Mark)和杰伊·杜普拉斯(Jay Duplass)是圣丹斯颇受宠爱的常客，最近正忙于为HBO台拍摄《患难与共》(Togetherness)。此外两人也是《动物们》的执行制片。伍迪·艾伦(Woody Allen)早在独立电影成气候之前就已经是独立电影人了，如今他在为亚马逊拍摄一部数字电视剧；此外曾执导2013年圣丹斯参赛影片《午后乐事》(Afternoon Delight)的吉尔·索洛维(Jill Soloway)也在为亚马逊工作，担任《透明家庭》的主创。
约翰·里德利(John Ridley)曾因撰写《为奴12年》(12 Years a Slave)的剧本而获得奥斯卡奖，如今他为《美国重案》(American Crime)做编剧，该剧将于3月5日登陆ABC台。
所以圣丹斯还剩下什么呢。
一方面，电影节组织者们为电视业的兴起而兴奋，它为独立电影业提供了丰富的观众基础。圣丹斯电影节经常重申自己的目标是：“支持独立的故事讲述者”，不管讲述者采取的是什么媒介。去年，非盈利性的圣丹斯学院在自己的工作室中加入了一个电视剧本创作实验室。
圣丹斯学院的执行理事吉莱·帕特纳姆(Keri Putnam)说，有900多人申请了这个实验室的10个空缺职位。
“我们花了很多时间听取同行艺术家的意见，我们开始和所有人一样意识到，在电视和其他网络平台中，开始涌现出大量独立的声音，”帕特纳姆说。“于是我们的工作自然而然就延伸了。”
同样，纽约的翠贝卡电影节也在去年开设了一个项目，专门用于网络剧集；更为商业化的得克萨斯州西南偏南电影节亦增设了电视剧单元。
但圣丹斯电影节的创始人罗伯特·莱德福特(Robert Redford)和他的工作人员们仍然希望维护电影基础，所以他们才努力搞了那么多全球首映（在本届圣丹斯电影节上映的123部长片中，共有106部是全球首映）。如果电影业的执行官员们不必长途跋涉，赶到犹他州来看新片，如果任何人都可以呆在纽约或者洛杉矶，从Vimeo网站观看这些影片（其实有些人已经这么做了），到那个时候，圣丹斯就不再是什么非参加不可的活动了。
有些电影节组织者甚至讳谈“电视”这个字眼，称电视剧为“分集讲故事”。
“我们还没有正式推出增设分集电影单元的计划，”普特纳姆说。
不过，《动物们》代表一次重要的尝试。
这部剧集有7集，不过它并不是第一次出现在圣丹斯上的电视节目。2013年，圣丹斯电影节完整放映了简·坎皮恩(Jane Campion)七小时的迷你剧《湖畔之巅》，并将之列入“电影活动”。去年，电影节的实验项目，“新边疆”单元播放了约瑟夫·高登-莱维特(Joseph Gordon Levitt)的《HitReCord on TV》这是一个出自网站的综艺秀。
但这两个电视节目都已经事先预定在有线台播出，旨在利用圣丹斯平台做宣传。《噩运：罗伯特·博斯特的生与死》(The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst)也是如此，它是一部六集纪录片，将于下月在HBO播放，圣丹斯电影节将于周二播放前两集。
《动物们》则正相反，它正由ICM伙伴公司对外出售，该公司出售的电影还包括《人物、地点、事件》(People, Places, Things)，这是一部潜在的讨好大众的电影，主角是一个新近失去伴侣的图文小说家，带着双胞胎女儿生活。
商业元素很重要。圣丹斯电影节能在20世纪80年代达到第一个全盛时期，部分是由于原本分裂为纽约与洛杉矶两派的独立电影制片人们聚集到这个中间地带，一起做买卖。电影节的激情一贯来自金钱交易。
“我们确实不知道未来会发生什么，”迈克·卢西亚诺(Mike Luciano)说，他是《动物们》的编剧，并与菲尔·马塔莱斯(Phil Matarese)联合执导了该剧。“它可能在传统电视台播放，也可能成为有趣的家庭流媒体之选。所以才这么让人兴奋。”