Sundance is the only major film festival in at least North America, and quite possibly the world, to create a section dedicated to the experimental/avant-garde and then turn around and destroy that section’s mission. The section is called New Frontiers, which used to be Sundance’s safe harbour for experimentation and, even if on rare occasions, non-narrative work. That was before the invasion of VR, which now has a near-monopoly on the section. Scan through reams of coverage of this heavily reported festival and you won’t land on this fact, which becomes more shocking the more you think about it. Imagine, if you will, TIFF preserving the section name “Wavelengths,” but programming the section with VR projects and relocating the venue to a made-over commercial space somewhere near downtown Toronto.
VR has been steadily taking over New Frontiers for years, starting as a goofy side project and becoming so high-tech and large that the section’s central venue is now known as—I’m not kidding—The Spaceship. Until recently, VR’s steady advance in Park City didn’t completely subjugate experimental cinema. It was only a couple of years ago that New Frontiers presented a Sky Hopinka film, and a year before that, Johann Lurf’s , and though New Frontiers never welcomed the kind of
