‘Dollhouse,’ ‘Creek’ Top Sundance Awards Flurry : Festival Celebrates Strong Year With 17 Honors

Perhaps inspired by the record snowfall (10 feet in 10 days) that has impressed even the seen-that local population, the juries at the Sundance Film Festival handed out an unexpectedly large number of awards Saturday night, 17 instead of the usual dozen, in tribute to what most visitors agreed was a stronger-than-usual event.

Winning the festival’s Grand Jury Prize on the dramatic side was Todd Solondz’s almost universally admired “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” a highly original take, both funny and poignant, on the personal miseries of an 11-year-old girl.

Looking genuinely shocked at getting the award, director Solondz allowed that he was “truly a very lucky guy” and thanked “everyone who helped make something from truly the most unpromising of premises.”

Taking the Grand Jury Prize for documentary, as well as the Audience Award in that category, was “Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern,” an unapologetically personal look at the difficulties an Iowa family had in holding on to a farm that had been in its possession for generations.

Sharing the filmmaking duties were the husband-and-wife team of Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, whose family owned the farm and whose father, Russ, was at the ceremony. “He felt sorry for us, he didn’t believe anyone would be interested in our story,” said Ascher, while Russ Jordan himself got most appreciative applause when he modestly said: “Anything I could add wouldn’t mean much.”

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The other highly regarded film in the dramatic competition, “Big Night,” the beautifully crafted story of two Italian brothers hoping to make a success in the restaurant business, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Stanley Tucci and Joseph Tropiano.

Films with strong women’s themes and performances were conceded to be the leitmotif of Sundance this year, and those films ended up well represented in award categories. The carefully sentimental “Care of the Spitfire Grill,” which featured excellent performances by Alison Elliott, Ellen Burstyn and Marcia Gay Harden, won the Audience Award, and the protean Lily Taylor was given Special Jury Recognition for Performance for her starring role as Valerie Solanas in “I Shot Andy Warhol.” “To Valerie,” Taylor said in accepting. “Rest in peace and don’t hurt anybody.”

And the only dramatic film to win two awards (the Filmmakers Trophy, voted on by the other directors, and Special Jury Recognition for Collaboration) was “Girls Town,” an intense, hard-edged examination of the lives of a trio of high school girls (one of them played by Taylor) whose lives are wrenched by a tragedy. Worked on in collaboration with its performers, “Girls Town” was “devised and directed by” (the credit he, like Mike Leigh, prefers) Jim McKay.

The only other documentary to win two awards was “Cutting Loose,” directed by festival veterans Susan Todd and Andrew Young, whose “Children of Fate” won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Cinematography Award in 1993.

The film’s subject is New Orleans’ Mardi Gras as seen through the eyes of eight diverse local participants as they prepare for their roles as carnival royalty. Lively, colorful and cheerful, “Cutting Loose” won both the Filmmakers Trophy and the Cinematography Award for co-director Young.

Winning that honor on the dramatic side was cinematographer Rob Sweeney for Christopher Munch’s emotionally distant but visually impeccable “Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day.” The story of a young man’s infatuation with the dying Yosemite Valley Railroad, “Day” features black-and-white images that challenge Ansel Adams.

Two other documentaries were award winners. “The Celluloid Closet,” a history of how gays and lesbians have been treated by Hollywood, took the Freedom of Expression Award. And “When We Were Kings,” an engaging examination of the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” won Special Jury Recognition for Artistic Merit.

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Using documentary footage made in 1974 (but tied up in litigation from then to now) intercut with contemporary interviews with people like Norman Mailer, “Kings” has the benefit of Ali in his prime, more charismatic than anyone else on screen either in or out of competition.

Despite some initial difficulties due to delays at Customs, it was a good year for Cuban film at Sundance. “Madagascar,” a 49-minute featurette directed by Fernando Perez, won the Latin American Special Recognition Award. Honorable mentions went to “Guantanamera,” Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio’s follow-up to “Strawberry and Chocolate,” and, from Argentina, “Wild Horses,” directed by Marcelo Pineyro.

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The short film jury, feeling large, also handed out three awards. The Shorts Special Recognition Award went to “A Small Domain,” directed by Britta Sjogren, and honorable mentions in short filmmaking went to “Dry Mount,” directed by Nichol Simmons, and the simple but gleeful “Pig,” directed by Francine McDougall.

Despite, or perhaps because of, Sundance’s efforts to showcase films that did not arrive at the festival with distribution attached, much of the talk here centered on which films were getting picked up by whom.

After the battle over “Shine” between New Line and Miramax, the biggest news was the acquisition of “Care of the Spitfire Grill” by Castle Rock for a widely rumored $10 million for worldwide rights. The “Shine” controversy had such staying power that Sundance Institute President Robert Redford quipped at the awards ceremony, “We do very simple things to provide entertainment here. We leave it to the snow and to Harvey Weinstein.”

Given that several of its films were at least the equal of those in competition, it was heartening to see several films in the American Spectrum section find distribution. “Ed’s Next Move” was picked up by Orion Classics, and Lisa Krueger’s “Manny and Lo,” a perfectly pitched oddball comedy that revealed a wholly original sensibility, was taken by Sony Pictures Classics.

All this is one more symptom of Sundance’s continuing success, which has spawned everything from Los Angeles’ Independent Film Festival (the second edition set to begin April 18) and New York’s pay-per-view “Reel Street” to the Independent Film Channel and Redford’s own Sundance Channel.

Sticking most in the festival’s craw seems to be Slamdance, an alternative to Sundance that appeared to prosper at a local hotel despite reports of poor projection and Redford’s press conference carping that it was a festival “born out of rejection.”

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Also displaying staying power was the much-appreciated 30-second spot that began every festival screening, the bit of film that playfully pinpointed Utah as the place where films that don’t fit are taken.

The spot, directed by Chris Riess, turns out to have been the project of an ad/film class at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. The class’s half-dozen members raised the $5,000 cost themselves, got the film to Redford through an editor who’d worked for him and ended up with the most-seen piece of celluloid in the festival. That’s a Hollywood ending even an independent could appreciate.