Sundance Film Festival a Boon for Independents : Film: It’s an outlet for more movies being made ‘by hook, by crook, by Mom and Dad and by Aunt Sally,’ program director says.

Ironically, while the Sundance Institute is finishing a troubled year, its annual film festival 45 minutes away is booming.

More than 2,000 people--equal to almost half of this resort town’s population--are cramming the theaters, looking for the next “sex, lies, and videotape,” which was discovered here two years ago, or “Metropolitan,” which was discovered here last year. Total revenues for the Sundance Film Festival, which is funded by ticket buyers and sponsoring companies, are expected to be up 26% over last year.

The festival this year also demonstrates the durability of independent films in the face of mounting odds. Only a few independent distributors are left alive--and those companies tend to be on the lookout for a few films that will make more than $10 million at the box office rather than many films that may make only $2 million. It’s something that Sundance program director Geoff Gilmore calls the “ ‘sex, lies, and videotape’ phenomenon,” a reference to how the success of that independent film has raised expectations.

Despite all that, however, 30% more films were submitted for consideration this year, Gilmore said. “A number of independent films are getting made,” he said, “by hook, by crook, by Mom and Dad, by Aunt Sally, by corporations and grants. . . . and I am not talking about a sacrifice in production quality. The production quality has increased because people are more sophisticated.”

The festival opened in Salt Lake City on Thursday night with a premiere of director Lasse Hallstrom’s “Once Around,” a Sundance project in which Richard Dreyfuss plays an aggressive condo salesman who destabilizes Holly Hunter’s close-knit Boston family. That was followed by the Park City premiere of the critically acclaimed “The Grifters,” after which director Stephen Frears confessed that he originally wanted to cast Anjelica Huston opposite Cher. (Instead, Annette Bening co-stars with Huston and John Cusack.)

Some of the work that has drawn favorable attention includes:

* Hiroaki Yoshida’s “Iron Maze,” a Rashomon story set against the Japanese buyout of a shut-down steel mill that stars Jeff Fahey and Bridget Fonda.

* The performance of Patsy Kensit in Don Boyd’s “Twenty-One,” the story of a woman who treats the movie audience--as if it were her diary--to the intimate details of her life and thoughts.

* Elizabeth Perkins’ performance in “Enid Is Sleeping,” a where-do-we-bury-the-body comedy directed by Maurice Phillips that co-stars Judge Reinhold.