Column: Why you should go to Sundance

Each winter, Utah basks in a week and a half of fame as celebrities, celebrity-hungry paparazzi and hipster cinephiles fill Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, which starts today.

This year, you can settle for what you do every other year: scroll through Sundance photos while melancholia envelops your homework-ridden soul. Or, you can make the two-hour trip and experience Sundance for yourself.

“But I have homework and classes and work,” you protest. “I can’t afford to go to Sundance. I’ll go when I graduate.”

I’m a firm believer in that timeless personal philosophy of “You Do You.” But before you do you, consider your options.

Do you know how easy it is to attend one of the nation’s biggest film festivals? The first time I went to Sundance was with my one and only acting class freshman year. We didn’t see anyone famous, but we did attend two film screenings, and I shook the hand of a director who worked one-on-one with Ryan Reynolds. Based on my limited knowledge of the transitive property of equality, that counts.

I went again with friends two years later, and we rode the shuttles around, got a little lost, saw one film and had a generally good time.

Both times, we went during the second, less-frenzied half of the festival after all the A-listers got bored and went home. This was ideal for two reasons: it’s easier to get standby tickets for film screenings — usually between $15 and $20 — and it’s also easier to make your way around Park City after the initial chaos dies down.

To see movies at the festival, all you need is patience and a sound understanding of basic shuttle maps. Look online at the film showtimes and locations, get there an hour or more early and ask for a standby ticket or number.

If Park City is too far out of your comfort zone, you can follow the same basic steps to see film screenings at one of seven locations in Salt Lake City or, for the exceptionally unambitious, at Peery’s Egyptian Theater in Ogden. I’ve been lucky to experience both options and see “Best of Fest” festival winners both times. Doing so can help weed out some of the especially obscure, sometimes disturbing films that run throughout the festival’s regular scheduling.

However, seeing a film that makes you a little uncomfortable or lends a foreign perspective is one of the more valuable aspects of events like Sundance. It’s a good way of (cue cheesy, inspirational music) expanding your horizons beyond this beloved Cache Valley bubble. A little bit of discomfort goes a long way.

— Noelle Johansen is a senior majoring in journalism and Spanish. Send cat memes to her at noellejohansen@gmail.com or on Twitter @broelle. Look for upcoming 2015 Sundance reviews on usustatesman.com.