You fly in from around the world, drive your rental Escalade up into an ecologically sensitive canyon, tripling the size of a tiny town and gridlocking its roads. You send a FedEx fleet worth of swag in from L.A., drink your Starbucks lattes out of disposable cups, cover the town in postcards and fliers … It's hard to describe the Sundance Film Fest as an environmentally friendly event.
But that's the spin marketers are using this year. Top 2008 prefixes include eco- and enviro-, even when their application, upon a split second of reflection, becomes particularly ludicrous.
Consider the Eco Lounge Hotel, the "hippest Earth-friendly style suite on Main Street at the Sundance Film Festival … a sponsored, branded entertainment multi-media gifting loft & lounge right … with direct access to media, VIP / Celebrities, producers of TV, film, internet, and print." After saving the planet there, celebrities can head to the ABSOLUT/LIVE EARTH Green Screen Lounge. Quaff a drink (your $1 cocktail donation goes towards an eco-charity) before heading up the street to the Lexus Hybrid Living Presents Project GreenHouse. This one claims to be "a leading authority in showcasing the latest in responsible innovation and partners together with non-profit organizations to bringing awareness to environmental causes." GreenPeace, watch your back!
To the festival's credit, two years after launching An Inconvenient Truth, it's premiering several new envirofilms: Up the Yangtze, about the destruction in the wake of China's giant dam project; Flow: For the Love of Water, about the world's burgeoning H20 crisis; and Fields of Fuel, which explores the need for new sources of energy.
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