Sundance Channel Specializes In Independent Films

You’re clicking, clicking, clicking with the television remote, and you stop.

“What’s this?” A young man wearing a scarf on his head is seducing what appears to be an underage girl.

Or a husband is proposing to a pool boy that he drown his wife’s cat.

Or a struggling actor/director is desperately trying to convince a benefactress to invest in his Christmas production of “Hamlet.”

What you’ve encountered is the Sundance Zone, a phenomenon slowly sweeping the country. You’re susceptible to it if you’re one of the 4.1 million subscribers to the Sundance Channel, a premium 24-hour cable channel specializing in recent independent and foreign films.

For the film- and television-addicted, the channel is an all-day sucker - sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. It takes a while, several licks, before you know what you’re watching.

The beauty of it is, if the taste offends, you can turn the channel.

Sundance Channel has been around since February 1996, an offshoot of Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival, held annually in Utah. Redford is creative director of the channel, which he owns in partnership with Showtime Networks, Inc., and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.

Both the festival and the channel celebrate independent filmmakers, most of whom are first-time “auteurs” working with small budgets and unfamiliar actors.

Those who suddenly find themselves in the Sundance Zone may just as suddenly exit. Not all of the work is good, and some of it is downright disturbing.

Not all of them are unfamiliar. Yes, there are titles like “Lost on the Bohemian Road” (the guy in the kerchief), “The Pool Boy” (the cat/ wife hater) and “A Midwinter’s Tale” (Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet tale). But there are also films that have slipped into the mainstream: Richard Linklater’s “subUrbia”; “Swingers,” starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn; and “Carrington,” starring Jonathan Pryce and Emma Thompson.

Some have been the highest profile, including four of the five movies nominated for 1997 Best Picture Oscars: “Fargo,” “Shine,” “Secrets and Lies” and “The English Patient.”

Most of the films and film shorts are new, unlike those on such other independent-movie channels as Bravo and its sister, the Independent Film Channel. But Sundance Channel also offers such independent chestnuts as 1976’s “Harlan County, USA”; 1974’s “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs” and 1969’s “Putney Swope.”

Movies from the Sundance Film Festival sometimes appear on the channel right away, Redford said. “A lot of it depends on what Showtime is willing to purchase and what PolyGram will put on line out of its roster.”

His love of film, Redford said, is basically due to his sense of himself as an artist. Making films has been his livelihood since “War Hunt” in 1962. (A dozen or so TV appearances, on such shows as “Naked City” and “Route 66,” pre-date that.) “Beyond that, I think film is an incredible medium for communication, and to do it through art is enormously appealing,” he said. “Very often you can learn more about culture. I believe in film as a great translator of cultures, particularly international cultures.”