Sundance Rides Again With Confidence : * Film: The festival, which begins tonight, spawned controversy on-screen and off in ’91.

As the Sundance Film Festival proved last year, one man’s “Poison” can be another man’s perverted cinematic excess: Todd Haynes’ film, chosen best dramatic feature, went on to less than rave reviews from the Rev. Donald Wildmon, and more publicity than any film festival could provide.

But the cachet of Park City, Utah, helped a number of other films--notably “Paris Is Burning,” “Trust,” “Slacker” and “Straight Out of Brooklyn”--none of which had anything in common outside of their independent origins, and the fact that they screened at Sundance last year.

The Sundance Film Festival ’92 begins tonight with the world premiere of “This Is My Life” by first-time director Nora Ephron, and closes a week from Sunday with Spalding Gray’s monologue “Monster in a Box.” In between are a group of films as wildly varied as the estimated 3,000 filmmakers, distributors, publicists, members of the press and just plain film buffs who’ll be descending on this posh ski town.

“One of the more difficult things to do with the festival this year is to typify it,” said festival director Geoff Gilmore. “And that’s a goal. We try very hard not to have 15 very slick melodramas made by white males, so it’s intentional for us to show a range of different kinds of independent cinema.”

“Poison” aside, not all the controversy last year was generated by what was on screen. A Premiere magazine article that preceded the 1991 festival created a mini-crisis with stories of financial mismanagement, low morale and a leadership crisis precipitated by the reluctance of Robert Redford--who founded the Sundance Film Institute in 1981--to maintain more of a presence at the festival. Gilmore, though, was upbeat about 1992.

“I think financially things are terrific,” he said. “We’ve solved a lot of our problems, a lot of the debt’s been paid off, and the debt that’s remaining is under control.” He added that development support was up 15% over last year for the festival, which has remained attractive to sponsors: Piper-Heidsieck, for instance, is inaugurating an “Independent Vision” award, which this year will go to actor John Turturro.

Hollywood, of course, is always interested in what Sundance has to offer, and this year the 11-day festival will show 77 features, 33 of which are competing in either the dramatic or documentary categories; five shorts programs, 27 world premieres, and 13 U.S. premieres.

Stanley Kubrick will be honored with a program of his best-known work, as will Chinese director Zhang Yimou (“Ju Dou”). There are programs on “British Independents” and one on Latin-American film titled “Pan American Highway,” plus the 1992 Discovery program for new directors and numerous panel discussions for and about independent filmmakers.

Gilmore said that the films chosen range from those with a primitive aesthetic, to those that are slick and conventional in narrative, to those that would be described as art films. “People sometimes make the presumption that independent films in general are arty and that’s just not the case,” he said. “Quite the opposite: Most of the films we look at are fairly conventional in their narratives.”

Toward that end, Gilmore and competition director Alberto Garcia, who work with an advisory panel, saw from 350 to 400 films last year, 165 just for the competition. The dramatic entries this year include “Gas Food and Lodging,” a film about female relationships by Allison Anders that stars Brooke Adams and Ione Skye; “Black and White,” by Russian emigre filmmaker Boris Furmin; first-time director Tom DiCillo’s story of “Johnny Suede,” an aspiring rock star who idolizes Ricky Nelson, and “The Tune,” an animated feature by Bill Plympton.

The documentary competition ranges from “Deep Blues,” writer Robert Palmer’s examination of the Mississippi Delta sound, to “Brother’s Keeper,” about the celebrated case of four elderly brothers in upstate New York State, one of whom is indicted for another’s murder, and “Rock Soup,” Lech Kowalski’s portrait of a homeless soup kitchen on the Lower East Side.