If there has ever been any doubt that the Sundance Film Festival is home for low-budget, independent filmmakers, it was erased Saturday night as a major award was given to a movie that cost only $7,000 to produce.
"El Mariachi," a comic thriller by 24-year-old Texan Robert Rodriguez, about a mild-mannered guitarist mistaken for a hitman, won the Audience Award in the dramatic competition, the same award that went to one of the festival's highest-profile movies four years ago, "sex, lies and video-tape."The documentary Audience Award went to director Emma Joan Morris' "Something Within Me," which profiles the use of music as a teaching tool in the South Bronx at St. Augustine's School of the Arts.
The Audience Award says, in essence, that these were the most popular films of the 1993 festival, as voted by the thousands of audience members who cast ballots after screenings.
The festival's top jury awards, the Grand Jury Prizes, went to four films this year. The dramatic and documentary juries each split their respective awards between two films.
Sharing the dramatic Grand Jury Prize:
- "Ruby in Paradise," written, directed and edited by Victor Nunez, about a young woman who has fled her home in the Tennessee hills for a new life in a small town on Florida's Gulf Coast.
- "Public Access," directed and co-written by Bryan J. Singer, a dark look at small-town America through the eyes and ears of a cable TV access channel, compared in the festival Film Guide to "Blue Velvet."
Sharing the documentary Grand Jury Prize:
- "Children of Fate: Life and Death in a Sicilian Family," a look at the legacy of life from the viewpoint of one family in a Palermo slum, with the unique perspective of interweaving footage shot 30 years ago by Robert M. Young and Michael Roemer with footage shot last year by Andrew Young and Susan Todd.
- "Silverlake Life: The View From Here," directed by Peter Friedman, is a a very personal account of the final days in the lives of Mark Massi and Tom Joslin after they were diagnosed with the AIDS virus, interwoven with footage from a film they had made earlier about being gay.
The awards were presented Saturday night in Z Place, a Park City club, where young, shoestring filmmakers mingled with Hollywood honchos. Veteran character actor Seymour Cassel, who won an acting award at the festival last year (the only acting award given in the festival's history) served as emcee.
In a way, there was a sense that this 15th annual celebration of independent film had come full circle with awards given to Victor Nunez and Robert M. Young, both of whom were among competing filmmakers in the festival's earliest years (Nunez with "Gal Young Un" and "A Flash of Green" and Young with "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" and "The Plot Against Harry").
And there is no question that the number of prizes handed out has increased markedly each year. For 1993, the festival offered awards galore, suggesting that if any more are added or split off, all the competition films might as well receive a plaque.
In addition to jury awards and audience awards, there is the Filmmakers Trophy, for both dramatic and documentary films, voted by the filmmakers themselves to the films they most admired during the festival. The dramatic winner this year was "Fly by Night," directed by Steve Gomer, about rap singers in New York seeking fame and fortune, and the documentary "Something Within Me."
Other jury awards were:
- Special Jury Award for Distinction (dramatic): "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.," written and directed by Leslie Harris, about a young black girl in the projects trying to better herself.
- Special Jury Award for Distinction (dramatic): "Lillian," written, produced, directed and edited by David Williams, about an older black woman in the South who spends her life caring for others.
- Special Jury Award for Craft (documentary): "Earth and the American Dream," co-written, directed and photographed by Bill Couturie, an indictment of environmental sacrifices in the name of progress, with narration provided by major movie stars.
- Special Jury Award for Merit (documentary): "Something Within Me."
- Cinematography Award (dramatic): "An Ambush of Ghosts," about a young man coming to grips with his mother's insanity, photographed by Judy Irola.
- Cinematography Award (documentary): "Children of Fate," with 1961 sequences photographed (in black and white) by Robert M. Young and 1991 sequences photographed (in color) by Andrew Young.
- Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (dramatic): "Combination Platter," about illegal Hong Kong aliens in Brooklyn, written by Tony Chan (who also produced and directed) and Edwin Baker.
- Freedom of Expression Award (documentary) (sponsored by the Playboy Foundation): "Silverlake Life."