Yance FordPOV series producer Yance Ford attended the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. She wraps up her experience by completing the Sundance meme.

Agnes Varnum, blogger extraordinaire, tagged me in a Sundance blog meme. After I figured out what a meme was, I started to compose mine, post-Sundance ’09.

Here goes:
The rules are as follows:

1. Players start with listing their Sundance favorites, separated into 8 categories.

2. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their 8 favorites and include these rules.

3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.
Gabourey Sidibe as Precious Jones in Push

1.Favorite feature: For me, it’s a tie between Push, in which Gabourey Sidibe gives a devastating performance as Precious Jones (Note to critics, try writing about Sidibe’s performance, not just her size. She’s so much more than that.) and the hilarious (if a little long) blaxploitation pic Black Dynamite.

2.Most problematic/interesting/ thought-provoking feature: Again, that would be Push. It would have been tough for anyone to adapt Push — an amazing but wrenching novel by Sapphire — for the screen, and I think director Lee Daniels made interesting choices, particularly with Precious’ fantasies. In my view, some of them work and some do not, but they are definitely provocative directorial choices.

3.Favorite Short Film: Four-way tie between Before the Wind Blows it All Away by Annie Waldman, The Archive by Sean Donne, Steel Homes by Eva Webber and Utopia Part 3: The World’s Largest Shopping Mall by Sam Greene and Carrie Lozano. Has anyone seen Utopia Parts 1 and 2? Somehow I missed them.
A screening at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

4.Film Most Regrettably Missed: We Live in Public

5.Most Fun Party: Chicken & Egg Pictures reception.

6.Best Post-screening Q & A: William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe — seeing Yusef Salaam in person was pretty great.

7.Favorite Nonfiction Character(s): William Kunstler

8.Most Memorable Moment: Filmmaker Lodge on Inauguration Day.
Now I have to tag fellow bloggers. Let’s hear it, Joel Heller and Ingrid Kopp!

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Yance works closely with POV's executive director and programming director to evaluate films submitted to POV She is instrumental in curating the series, a showcase of acclaimed documentary film on PBS. Yance frequently represents POV | American Documentary at conferences, festivals and markets, procuring work from filmmakers both nationally and internationally. Yance also oversees POV's annual call for entries, which yields upwards of one thousand entries, and coordinates POV's annual programming advisory board. Yance is a Programming Consultant and Pre- Screener for film festivals around the country, including the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Black Maria Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, Latino Public Broadcasting, Creative Capital and the Sundance Film Festival. She has served on festival juries at Full Frame and Silverdocs, appeared on panels at Sunny Side of the Doc and DocuClub and served on the IFP Advisory Committee. A graduate of Hamilton College and the production workshop at Third World Newsreel, Yance is a former Production Stage Manager for the Girls Choir of Harlem and has worked as a Production Manager on numerous independent productions for the Discovery Health and History channels. Ford has also worked in various capacities on the documentaries The Favorite Poem Project, Juanita Anderson, Executive Producer, Brian Lanker's They Drew Fire (PBS), and Barry Levinson's Yesterday's Tomorrows (Showtime).Yance's favorite documentaries include:1. Hands on a Hard Body2. Tongues Untied3. Harlan County, USA4. Cul de Sac5. When We Were Kings6. The Thin Blue Line7. Night and Fog