iPods are your ticket to the Sundance festival

If you have a computer, an iPod, or another way to view a podcast, you have a ticket to the Sundance Film Festival.

Best known for showing independent films, the festival also features a number of panels that include directors, journalists, industry insiders and scholars, discussing and debating cinema.

This year, for the first time, those discussions will be available via the Internet — for free.

While the traditional experience of standing in line with fingers crossed hoping for some released tickets may be missed, viewers can experience the panels in almost real time at festival.sundance.org/2007 and on iTunes at www.apple.com/itunes.

Hired by the Sundance Institute to manage the content for the podcasts is industry Web site Zoom in Online (zoom-in.com) which is a multimedia site for entertainment professionals and students, but which is also open to public access.

The site captured a single podcast at Sundance 2006, and the number of hits proved that there was an audience for such material, according to site founder and CEO Megan Cunningham.

"We discovered there is a real appetite for this," Cunningham said. " There is a live event like this, a place in time, and amazing things happen, and you missed out. That is no longer the case. People will be able to view critical events."

While films at Sundance have often been available for viewing later, panel discussions were very difficult for most people to access. Cunningham thinks that will change, and she sees a lot of parallels with such technologies as TiVo, which change the way people receive information.

Cunningham's site is also bringing Sundance to a larger audience with daily blog updates from independent-film vet Reid Rosefelt, who will seek out filmmakers and industry movers for interviews and news clips.

The site is designed with industry professionals and students in mind but isn't exclusive.

Cunningham feels it is important that content be available to everyone, so watching the online coverage requires no downloads and no special hardware, beyond having access to any computer produced in the past several years.

Some of the Sundance short films will be available at iTunes for $1.99 fee, while other content, such as musical performances and other short films, will stream online for free.

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E-mail: lc@desnews.com