NY Times: The Soul of Sundance's Machine

The festival has become so famous it is practically synonymous with independent film, but until now, the process by which films are selected has remained a mystery within the industry. In a rare discussion of the festival's inner workings, the programmers said they were suffering not only from the sheer volume of images cascading into their heads, but the pressure of discriminating among them. Added to that are the expectations of the media, the public and the independent film industry, a field that has both influenced what mainstream Hollywood makes and in some ways supplanted it. John Clark reports on the inside workings of the Sundance Film Festival.