Enjoy Sundance from the comfort of your own home

In just eight days, that annual event known to film fans all over the world by a single word, Sundance, will begin its 11-day run. As has happened since the mid-1980s, filmgoers, filmmakers and everyone in between will gather to the small resort town of Park City, Utah, to see the best of what American alternative film is up to. I plan to be among their number.

If you’d like to go, one word of advice: I arranged my lodgings a year ago. Finding anything at this point, even in nearby Salt Lake City, will prove difficult if not impossible. In any case, it will be expensive. So it might be best to forget it.

Still, you can experience Sundance. At home. On your own computer. Just go to the Sundance Film Festival site and click on the The 2004 Sundance Online Film Festival and you’ll be able to access 30-odd (and, in some cases, I do mean odd) short films of all types, animation to life action, humorous to the politically serious. It helps if you have a quick connection, say, a DSL line because it takes time for the films to download. But all it costs is $10, which you can pay through a credit card.

Too expensive, you say? Maybe. But some of the best films that I saw in all of the 2003 festival, a collection titled “Strindberg and Helium,” were part of the online festival. And I didn’t have to stand in line once.