Sundance filmmakers make time to challenge high school students with thought-provoking questions

SALT LAKE CITY — On the ninth day of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, "5 Broken Cameras" co-directors Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi ascend to the stage in a downtown theater that echoes yesteryear with a low-hanging balcony and loud paisleys dotting the plush red carpeting. More than 400 high school students sit in uncharacteristic silence, eagerly absorbing every word emerging from the men's mouths.

Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the United States. And as the 2012 event draws to a close, Burnat and Davidi stand on the cusp of fame. The very next night the men will win Sundance's World Cinema Directing Award for documentaries, and "5 Broken Cameras" is playing to rave reviews as it takes viewers to the front lines of a Palestinian village's peaceful resistance against the forceful Israeli seizure of ancestral farming land in order to build new Jewish settlements.

But the bright lights will have to wait at least a few more hours for Burnat and Davidi, who have left the fawning media and deep-pocketed film distributors up on the mountain in Park City to venture into the Salt Lake Valley and take part in the Utah High School Screening Series. The Sundance Institute annually facilitates this program so that local high school students can have the chance to view intellectually invigorating festival selections which have been rigorously screened ahead of time to ensure minimal objectionable content. (Twelve full-length documentaries were tabbed for this year's High School Screening Series, and a handful of short films made the cut for a similar program, Filmmakers in the Classroom.)

"Part of the reason why we do the high school screenings and Filmmakers in the Classroom," Sundance Institute manager of community programs Megan Leiker explains, "is to give students access to storytelling — independent filmmaking as an art form and the stories that people tell through that from around the world."

Despite no financial incentives or media coverage at these events, the filmmakers who have a movie selected to be part of a Sundance-sponsored student program often trek to the pertinent venue — either Rose Wagner Theatre in Salt Lake City or Park City High School — for something similar to what the "5 Broken Cameras" directors are doing today: introducing the film before the lights dim and answering questions after the end credits roll.

"American audiences take films in a very emotional way," Davidi explained during a sit-down interview. "I hope all these emotions will be able to be transformed into a more developed consciousness that doesn't just stay with emotions. … Here at the school screenings, we want to help (the students) develop a political consciousness about where we're living and about what is right and what is wrong."