While everyone talks about the Sundance Film Festival, anyone who has been here quickly realizes that there are many festivals, or, at least, many ways of looking at it.

Just as Wallace Stevens found “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird [www.writing.upenn.edu],” here are 13 perspectives on the festival.

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UPDATE: Manda Bala is a superbly-composed and riveting look at kidnapping and corruption in Brazil. It made its theatrical debut on Friday, August 17 at the Angelika Film Center in New York, with nationwide releases leading through November.

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UPDATE: This runaway hit from Sundance Film Festival, SON OF RAMBOW, went on to the Milwaukee Film Festival and will be coming out on DVD soon. The story of two young kids who think of themselves as the “sons of Rambo(w)”. About youth, imagination and the troubles of a challenging childhood.

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Sundance Institute announced today the program of short films selected to screen at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. This year the Festival Short Film Program comprises 83 short films representing 17 countries from 5,107 submissions, from U.S. and international filmmakers. Submissions grew by more than 15% over last year. The 2008 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17-27 with screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah.

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UPDATE: Making its limited theatrical debut this past October, MY KID COULD PAINT THAT was released with wide acclaim. Richard Roeper says, “It’s one of the best documentaries of this or any other year.” IN UPDATE: THE SHADOW OF THE MOON invoked a sense of nostalgia in many when it was released for its theatrical debut on September 9, 2007. It went on to receive the Audience Award from the Florida Film Festival, as well as the Grand Prize at the Boulder International Film Festival.

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UPDATE: Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Wood have received praise from critics for their roles in KING OF CALIFORNIA, which had a limited release in theaters this past September 2007. With a theatrical release coming this January 28, 2008, Variety’s Justin Chang describes HOW SHE MOVE as a “moody, intelligent take on conventional material.”

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UPDATE: James Greenberg from the Hollywood Reporter reviews NANKING: “Indispensable, beautifully crafted account of a little-known Japanese massacre.” It had its limited theatrical release in December 2007.

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UPDATE: Said to have the ability to obtain cult-movie status, ROCKET SCIENCE had a limited theatrical release this past summer.

“What makes the first fiction feature from documentarian Blitz persuasive is its late-film detour from the inspirational niche-sports genre to something altogether unexpected — and the winning lead performance of Reece Daniel Thompson.” – Jim Ridley (Village Voice)”

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UPDATE: With a limited theatrical release in June, CRAZY LOVE captured the attention of critics with its interesting look into a dysfunctional relationship. “Crazy Love scrapes away the cartoon exterior around this story and peers into the unknowable murk of the human heart.” – Ty Burr (Boston Globe)

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UPDATE: GRACE IS GONE, a touching story of a family’s survival after the loss of the mother in Iraq, made its theatrical debut on December 7, 2007, went on after Sundance to win the Critics Award at the Deauville Film Festival.

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UPDATE: Irene Taylor Brodsky’s Audience Award winning documentary HEAR AND NOW [festival.sundance.org] documents what happens when a pair of deaf parents decide to undergo cochlear implant surgery in order to hear the world again. The twist, however, is that the subjects aren’t just any pair of parents; they are Brodsky’s own mom and dad, Paul and Sally Taylor.

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