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Kelly Reichardt has a long relationship with Sundance, from her first feature River of Grass (1994) through the popular Old Joy (2006) and this year’s Meek’s Cutoff, the story of Western pioneers lost on the trail. Before River, Reichardt worked in the art department on many independent films, including seminal features by Hal Hartley and Todd Haynes’s Poison; she is still close friends with Haynes. “I worked on a lot of people’s first film,” Reichardt remembers.

When asked about his favorite Festival experience thus far, veteran filmmaker David Zellner is quick to respond: “Sharing our feature Goliath with an enthusiastic audience. A close second was eating hamburgers on Main Street with Magic Johnson, Gaspar Noe, and Louie Anderson.”To call the Zellner Bros (David and Nathan) “seasoned vets” doesn’t fully summarize how crazy and uncommon their run has been.

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.

On the center screen, a man sits behind the wheel of a car. Simultaneously, on a narrower screen to the left, the landscape blurs in retreat. And on another screen to the right is a close-up of the dashboard.

It’s an aspect of filmmaking that gets very little attention, and that very few people in the film industry know how to talk about. So rather than shed just a little light on the subject, Sundance Film Festival and BMI positively flooded it. Ten directors and eleven composers crowded onto the stage at Sundance House Presented by HP on Wednesday afternoon for “Music and Film: The Creative Process,” a roundtable discussion on the process of scoring music for 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.