By Mahmood Farooqui (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 01, 2010)

// // // The Sundance ‘thing’ started for us in the shuttle as we travelled from the airport at Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, to Park City where the festival is mainly held. We were sharing the cab with an Iranian origin investment banker from London who had come to attend the premiere of his Arab-origin, New York-based girlfriend’s first film, The Imperialists are still Alive. Sitting at the front was a sales agent from L.A who was good friends, believe it or not, with Gulshan Grover and had helped produce Deepa Mehta’s Earth: 1947. It was all very international and also very US.

Our first screening of Peepli Live took place at the Egyptian theatre, down Main Street, the only screening venue which is located in the Park City. The quaint theatre hall was completely full and the first public screening of the film and also the premiere, went down much better than we expected. A hall full of Americans seemed to enjoy every nuance of what is a very Indian film. The Q and A afterwards, and this was true of every subsequent screening, had charged up Americans wanting to unravel complex economic issues of rural India.

The festival itself is spread out over several theatres several miles from each other and they are all unconventional venues. The Temple theatre is a Jewish synagogue, the Library is located at a school, The Yarrow is a hotel, Prospector is a lodge while the Eccles, the largest of them all, is More >