Okay, rewind to the preceding Thursday: I flew out to Utah to help organize a series of events on behalf of Asian and Asian Pacific American filmmakers whose works were selected to screen in Park City at the Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals. A routine first started in 2002, when I drove all the way from California to Utah to help organize the first APA Filmmakers' Experience reception, I've participated in these activities since then as a way to help celebrate the participation of Asian Pacific makers at Park City. The event itself can be said to locate its roots at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, when Angeleno Rod Pulido's first feature THE FLIPSIDE was screened. Linda Mabalot, at the time the Executive Director at Visual Communications and VC FILMFEST Co-Director David Magdael took note of the fact that such a momentous achievement for Pinoy American cinema might be met with a ho-hum reception from the Festival community. Together with Winston Emano, a publicist with TCDM & Associates and some money from Visual Communications' reserve account, the two along with the film's producers and friends organized a crowded and well-received party befitting THE FLIPSIDE's World Premiere showing that year. The following year, Justin Lin's BETTER LUCK TOMORROW led a charge of nearly thirty API-produced and themed works into Park City, necessitating the creation of a more formal, lasting means of announcing an API presence at Park City. So there you have it -- the creation of the annual APA Filmmakers' Experience in Park City.

From its inception, my involvement has centered on creating collateral materials for promoting the event as well as photo documentation of anyone and everyone who attended these events. More recently, I've begun to venture beyond the activities of the organizing team in charge of putting together the Experience. Not having experienced much of Sundance in the early years of my involvement, I've gradually begun to attend more Festival events -- a couple of screenings here, a party there. This year, having been lucky to obtain a press pass allowing me entry into relatively sedate screenings of both competition and showcase films, I travelled to this year's Festival determined to screen as broad a selection of films as time allowed, the better to get a sense of how Sundance is doing at making a space for filmmakers and perspectives of color.

This last point is always a troublesome one for a festival such as Sundance, which is situated in a mountain ski resort fourty miles east of Salt Lake City and attracts a largely industry audience as white as the snow clogging the sidewalks, and nearly as trecherous to negotiate as the industry mindset that envelopes the psyche of even the most iconoclastic of independent filmmakers. Indeed, a popular activity among my colleagues during my stay in Park City involved star-gazing, or at the very least, bragging about select celebrity sightings. Me, I never really saw anyone I would have recognized on my own. Instead, it was Phil Yu, the Angry Asian Man himself who spotted a celebrity for me: Crispin Glover, the crazed lunatic from RIVER'S EDGE who was perhaps the only person ever thrown off a late-night television show (think: David Letterman). As Phil and I observed Mr. Glover holding court in the lobby of the Park City Marriott, in an all-black ensemble topped off by too-tight jeans and a hideous asymmetrical haircut with multiple banglines, I could think of only one thing -- who was the barber who fucked up Crispin Glover's head? But I digress...

Back to Steve. A frequent visitor to APA Filmmakers' Experiences past, Steve was also involved with not only doing field publicity for films represented by his firm, but he also helped out with his company's party planning for a well-attended reception hosted by the Korean Film Council in recognition of the Korean and Korean American filmmakers with works at both festivals. On the plane, we compare notes on how each others' week went. I mention the hard work that went into putting this year's Experience -- in addition to a longstanding reception that takes place in the only Chinese restaurant in all of Park City, organizers including Visual Communications, the Center for Asian American Media, Asian CineVision, the San Diego Asian Film Foundation, Process Space Consulting and David Magdael & Associates hosted an all-afternoon lounge and a panel discussion including select filmmakers, producers and actors of just some of the APA works being screened that week. Steve mentions that he attended Sundance's first-ever Black House, affording a presence for African American filmmakers and industry persons at the Festival.

"So, how long has the Black House been going on?" I ask.

Steve shoots me an exasperated look and replies, "This is the FIRST year they organized it. You know why, don't you?"

He answers his own question. "Because our people can't come together to make it happen. Can you believe that?" The rest of the flight was spent bitching and moaning about all sorts of slights that I have not been witness to in past Sundance Film Fests, but which Steve has seen time and again. Between bites of Twizzlers and mutual "uh-huhs" and "aww, yeahs", Steve pointed out numerous improprieties in this world-class film festival that, on second thought, I could not argue with at all:

1) Outside of its highly-touted Native Forum initiative for nurturing indigenous filmmaking talent, the Sundance Institute (parent organization of the Festival) has no formal long-term mechanism for including Third World peoples in the creative process of realizing feature-length film production. Thus, no Forums or Labs specifically for filmmakers of Asian Pacific American, African American, or Chicano/Latino descent.

2) With no Forum or Lab for us colored peoples, our presence at Park City doesn't seem to be much of a participatory one, much less "officially" sanctioned, but merely window dressing in the name of filling out the Park City diversity line-up card. And with no event or function formally sactioned by Sundance or that "other" festival -- aka Slamdance -- our presence here is as informal and transient (and ultimately meaningless) as the MySpace.com party or any other soiree clogging up the Park City activities that week.

3) Third World filmmakers and industry people must have some kind of phobia (or something) against uniting around making a space for themselves at Park City. While expressing admiration that a collective of various APA organizations could come together annually and carve out a presence for its community at Sundance/Slamdance, Steve lamented that it took so long for African Americans to do likewise. And that didn't include any discussion of Chicanos and Latinos, who didn't seem to HAVE any conspicuous presence in all the years I've trekked to Park City.

4) Unless we raise a stink and do anything about it, white people at Sundance can, and will, say and do just about anything stupid and racist and get away with it. To wit: according to various new reports, while in the midst of a cast photo shoot for his latest feature film FINISHING THE GAME, director Justin Lin got into a verbal shouting match with Mr. Roseanne Barr himself, Tom Arnold, who was caught throwing out a couple of "ching-chongs" in the back of the room while the photographer was snapping away.

What a sobering plane flight back to L.A.! And yet, in looking back at that trip, there were a few meaningful movie-watching experiences to bring back with me. While accepting Steve's gripes as mostly pertinent (and why not? I couldn't disagree with him at all), I filtered back on my latest visit to Park City, almost seven months later, to find the positives in a most daunting filmgoing assignment. Ready? Okay, here goes...