Sundance Film Festival super fans to surpass a combined 1,550 films seen

PARK CITY — While many Utahns claim they are big fans of the Sundance Film Festival, none are more dedicated than Sandy resident Sean Leslie and Pleasant Grove resident Mike Wisland.

The two cinephiles have been attending the festival since 1995 and combined have seen more than 1,500 films.

"I had just been always into making movies with my friends and then decided to take advantage of this huge international film festival in my backyard. So I went with my friends in '95, and went to the festival for my first time and was immediately hooked and loved every second of it," Leslie said.

That same year, Wisland was in the area for a conference and decided to ask if there were any unclaimed passes for the film festival. Luckily, there was one pass, so he got to attend, and he also got hooked.

One of the most influential films for Wisland was "Genghis Blues," the story of a blind bluesman who learned Tuvan throat singing. Wisland was so inspired by the teenage directors who just hopped on a plane with barely any money to chase the story.

"After I left that theater, I went out and bought a Panasonic DVX 100, the Sundance filmmaker cam of choice, you know, and I started making little documentaries ... that was a favorite film of mine," Wisland said.

It wasn't until 10 years after they both started attending that Wisland and Leslie met when Leslie was a student in Wisland's audio class at Utah Valley University. Leslie told his professor he wouldn't be in class during the film festival, and Wisland said he was also going to be at the festival.

"We started noticing each other at the same Salt Lake screenings, so we started sitting next to each other," Leslie said.

But they weren't just casual Sundance attendees. Wisland has seen more than 700 films at Sundance in total, and Leslie is expecting to surpass 850 films this festival.

"For the first 15 years, I could always name every single film that I saw in order every year, and then after 15 years is when everything started blurring together," Leslie said.

As the years went by, Sundance got more expensive. Wisland said he has spent around $700 just for one festival. Leslie started volunteering for the festival so he could see more movies and not have to shell out so much money for each screening. His record was 56 films in one festival.

"I would take work off. You'd have to hit every early morning screening and go all the way until midnight," Leslie said.

Leslie volunteered for the festival for a total of 20 years. He sometimes even slept in his car to make sure he made it to an early morning screening. He especially loved finding the weird films that have larger-than-life stories or just the craziest, most random topics.

"The best ones are ones that surprise you, where you have time between two films to see another film, and nothing really jumped out at you, so you just go see something to fill the time, and it ends up being your favorite of the festival. Those are the ones that I love," Leslie said.

Wisland said it's sad that Sundance will be leaving Utah, but it seemed "almost inevitable" to him. With the cost of living rising so significantly in Park City, it just makes sense the festival would need to move somewhere else that wouldn't be as expensive to operate, he added.

"A lot of the new hires, they're not hiring from Utah, they're hiring from Hollywood. It's just getting Hollywood-ized. When you're hiring everyone from Hollywood, they don't have any connection to Utah, and they don't have the history. It is a sad thing," he said.

The festival has definitely evolved over the years and grown so much bigger than what it started as, Wisland said. He joked that it used to be much easier to get tickets before it became so popular and expensive.

Wisland and Leslie said they're planning to still attend Sundance next year in Boulder, Colorado, and will likely volunteer to make it more affordable.

But they will fondly remember waiting in hour-long lines in the freezing cold, hoping to get a ticket to the movie they wanted to see.

"Just the creativity and the passion for storytelling and all the combinations of vast differences of movies that you could see ... the topics were so wide and varied, and it just sparked so much creativity, and I just loved eating up every movie I saw," Leslie said.

Sundance always has something new and unique being shown with a massive range of genres coming from undiscovered filmmakers, but the interaction with the filmmakers is what sets it apart.

"The Q&As afterwards ... you get to see the famous people in the film, and they talk about the film, and there's directors or the subjects of documentaries. What are some of the most thrilling films? It's when you see this wonderful documentary film about these incredible people," Wisland said.

Wisland reminisced about when the Tuvan throat singer from "Genghis Blues" was flown to Utah and surprised everyone after the screening.

"That theater erupted with just a standing ovation and people cheering. It's just electric. A 15-minute standing ovation isn't uncommon in some films," he said.

Whether the film sounded interesting, was filmed in a cool location or was just the only one available, Leslie and Wisland always jumped at the opportunity to watch something new.

"I love the immersive experience of film, especially in a theater. In your home, you just don't get the same thing. The energy of going to Sundance films, people come here, having fought tooth and nail to get here and flew here, got a rental car, hotels," Wisland said.

Films have the power to educate, inspire and move people through visuals and audio. From scathing documentaries exposing corruption to uplifting narratives of love, Sundance plays an important role in bringing stories to light, he added.

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