The 2006 Sundance Festival will end this week-end with its ceremony prizes but most of the movies are already sold and their buyers are already home.

Fox bought "Little Miss Sunshine" 10 million dollars, Warner Independent Pictures bought Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep" for 6 million, Miramax bought "Tsotsi" without comunicating the price, etc. It is clear that the Indie scene is worth it.

Past Sundance critical and comercial successes included films such as Reservoir Dogs, The Blair Witch Project, The Full Monty, American Splendor and Napoleon Dynamite. For anyone who likes Cinema, whether he or she liked these movies, he or she remembers their names. As I pointed out in preceding posts, independancy is one of the ingredients of good art and it didn't take a long time for movie distributors to agree.

These independent movies have a taste of reality, they seem to be closer to our lives, and therefore speak to us in a more comprehensible language. This might be because these actors have yet to be labeled as stars and therefore, we feel closer to them. This might also be because they are not perfect, I mean perfectly scenerized and shot with the main criterion of Hollywood: cleanliness. That absence of cleanliness makes them more realistic because we all know that perfection is not part of this world.

I don't want to emphasize a hypothetical match opposing Hollywood versus Indie movies. The reason is there is enough room for both genres since they are not necessarily aiming at the same audience. The best is to see them all.