Sundance Channel HD offers indie sensibility to the region’s TV screens

The Middle East is the latest market to receive the rapidly expanding Sundance Channel – what does that mean for viewers in the region?

Robert Redford. AP

OSN’s launch this month of Sundance Channel HD, the regional version of the Sundance Film Festival-affiliated channel, should cause some excitement among the Middle East’s cinephile community. The region is not spoilt for independent film, either in cinemas or on TV. The big annual festivals and some commendable efforts by the OSN Festival channel are an exception, but the multiplexes and broadcasters tend to play it safe with local winners and Hollywood blockbusters – with some commercial justification, one suspects. The new channel could change all that, having already succeeded in a number of international markets. Here are five reasons why Sundance HD could be a very good thing indeed.

10 Days of Sundance

The channel is now a separate entity to the festival, but the links to the leading indie cinema festival in the US remain close. Robert Redford founded both and the channel is currently screening a strand entitled 10 Days of Sundance, featuring top picks from last year’s festival. Check out Andrew Bujalski’s geeky comedy Computer Chess as well as such flicks as The Meteor and Halley.

Step off the beaten track

Some of the channel’s original content is truly out there, though some of it may not make it to the regional channel as it can be a little close to the bone. Green Porno, for example, has Isabella Rossellini act out the reproductive habits of marine animals and insects in what the channel describes as a “scientifically accurate yet extremely entertaining” manner. The Honorable Woman, on the other hand, casts Maggie Gyllenhaal as the daughter of a Zionist arms dealer who inherits her father’s company, uses it to lay data cables between Israel and the West Bank and campaigns for reconciliation in the region, then causes an international incident by being appointed to the UK’s House of Lords. American Idol this is not.

Talking shop

This continuing series In Conversation With features some of the world’s great directors, writers and actors talking about their life and work in half-hour slots. Slots pop up in the schedules most days and the current crop of conversationalists includes Ken Loach, Stephen Frears and Ben Kingsley – who should have the odd interesting thing to say.

Great drama

In its early days, the channel existed solely as a premium movie channel, largely to promote work that had screened at Sundance. In recent years it has branched out significantly, with original drama series emerging as a strong point. The channel is home to the critically acclaimed Rectify, which is about to launch its second season in the US. The Red Road and The Honorable Woman also debut early this year.

Journey: mystery solved

I may be alone in this one, but way back in 2009, I was at the UK’s Download Festival. The ageing American soft rockers Journey had just inexplicably topped the iTunes chart with their 1981 track Don’t Stop Believin’ and I felt bound by a sense of ironic duty to check out their set. Imagine my surprise to see before me the expected group of guitar-toting pensioners, fronted by what appeared to be a young Filipino. Now, because of Sundance HD, I can find out why, thanks to the documentary Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, a documentary telling the “rock ’n’ roll fairy-tale story of the Filipino musician Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the frontman for the iconic American rock band, Journey”. It’s screening all this week.