The big idea yesterday at the “Power of Story: The Big Idea” panel, presented by TimeWarner and Sundance Institute, was collaboration: how it works and why it’s necessary in filmmaking. But the panel also revealed that a smart filmmaker isn’t threatened by working with other creative people; it’s possible to hold fast to your vision while inviting in ideas from others. Boys Don’t Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce started things off with an emotional wallop by screening a rape scene from that now-iconic film.

David Mackenzie’s apocalyptic romance, Perfect Sense, is a sensuous experiment in sensory deprivation. A mysterious virus provokes a wave of sadness in its victims, followed by the permanent loss of the sense of smell. The condition confounds doctors and scientists, including a beautiful epidemiologist named Susan (Eva Green), and makes life difficult for master chef Michael (Ewan MacGregor).

** MEDIA ALERT **
WHAT: Sundance Institute and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have announced Cherien Dabis, director of May in the Summer, as winner of the 2011 Sundance / NHK International Filmmaker Award.
Originally created to celebrate 100 years of Cinema, the annual award recognizes and supports a visionary filmmaker on his or her next film. Sundance Institute staff works closely with the winner throughout the year, providing creative and strategic support through the development, financing and production of their films.

If she were American rather than Danish, Susanne Bier would likely be one of the more recognizable filmmakers in the world. She specializes in emotionally gripping, character-based dramas that manage to be both accessible and aesthetically accomplished. Pigeonholed in the American arthouse, she’s really making stories for the masses.

Park City, UT – Sundance Institute today announced that Another Earth, directed and written by Mike Cahill and written by Brit Marling, is the recipient of the 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Now in its ninth year, the Prize carries a $20,000 cash award by the Alfred P.

Based on the collaborations of director Jesse Peretz and writer Evgenia Peretz, the sibling-centered film My Idiot Brother takes brother-sister dynamics to every extreme. When Ned (Paul Rudd) is released from prison, his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, and Zooey Deschanel) take turns letting him crash at their place. The comedy really shines with Ned’s candid, trusting attitude.

Israeli filmmaker Yossi Madmoni brings the powerful portrait of familial conflict Restoration to the Festival this year, demonstrating deft directorial skills and a filmmaker to watch in the future. The film, written by Erez Kav-El, tells the story of an antiques dealer dedicated to restoring old furniture who gains a new apprentice while at the same time is losing his son. Screening in the World Cinema Dramatic competition, Restoration is at once a very specific story and a new take on classic themes of generational strife, and Madmoni’s graceful attention to the nuances of performance creates a film of surprising impact.

One of the best things about the Off Screen program at the Sundance Film Festival is that you never know what might happen when some new combination of people get together and start talking. This is true of the Cinema Cafe series, where the casual setting creates all sort of moments of unexpected insight and fun. This was especially true for your humble correspondent on Tuesday morning, when I found myself sharing a stage with Kevin Clash, puppeteer and subject of Festival documentary Being Elmo, and Phil Shane, co-director of the same.

Don’t bother confining Yi Zhou to a single artistic medium. The young Chinese artist considers the collision of art forms essential to conveying the surreal landscapes presented in her work. Her 2011 Festival short, The Greatness, is featured in this year’s Animation Showcase and fuses 3-D animation with sculpture and film to take the audience on a computer-generated voyage inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Miguel Arteta’s first trip to the Sundance Film Festival was in 1997 with his celebrated debut feature, Star Maps, a film that not only put the filmmaker on the map but joined a handful of other low budget features to kick-start a new era of American independent filmmaking. Arteta followed Star Maps with Chuck and Buck in 2000, an edgy character study starring Mike White and Chris Weitz. The film was another low-budget effort, and was shot on DV, and again, Arteta earned acclaim, this time for exploring the potential of digital video as a new tool for independent filmmakers, and for continuing to build his own highly personal filmmaking style.

Fast becoming an expert in the fiction short-form, British filmmaker Daniel Mulloy makes his third appearance at the Festival this year, bringing with him the masterfully executed Baby. Mulloy previously premiered the BAFTA-winning short Antonio’s Breakfast at the 2006 Festival, and subsequently returned to Park City the next year with another short, Dad. Screening at the close of Shorts Program IV, his newest piece follows the alluring aftermath when a young woman intervenes in a mugging.

Chaz Bono, the delightfully precocious child of Sonny and Cher, never felt comfortable as a woman. After spending most of his life trying to cope with an existence in a body that was never meant to be his, Chaz finally made the bold decision to undergo gender reassignment and share his journey to manhood in front of a camera crew. Becoming Chaz is the result, a film that starts out as a story about transition and eventually evolves into a true love story.

What makes a film independent? Its financing? The edginess of the director’s vision? However you define indie film, the notion of being an outsider – because of a film’s content, or its production outside the studio system – is common to almost everyone’s definition of indie film, as Emanuel Levy points out in his 1999 book Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. But a number of movies in this year’s Festival lineup, in addition to being indie films, feature outsiders as characters, or the filmmakers are outsiders to the material they’re covering.
Take Matthew Bate, the Australian director of Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, which is screening in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

It’s the Wednesday of the Festival. This is when most of us filmmakers relax. Our films have all screened.