It’s been one big pain in the a*s uphill battle to get roaDANCE, the mobile independent film festival, rolling on the streets of Park City during Sundance. Scheduled to take place January 16-26, roaDANCE was going to bring filmmaker submitted shorts to the streets by projecting them on a 14 foot cube truck with a digital projector, a tape deck, a diesel generator and a rear projection screen. For ten nights, the roaDANCE truck would cruise up and down Main Street, making stops at every theatre venue, presenting eye candy for those waiting in line for other festival screenings.
But not long after roaDANCE announced that they would be taking the streets of Park City again, they were shut down. First off, Sundance alerted Dino at roaDANCE that there needed to be a major overhaul made to his website, or there would be trouble. You see, the roaDANCE website was designed to look almost identical to the Sundance website. We thought it was funny, but apparently nobody at Sundance did. And then, not long after Dino received that call, there was another one from the officials of Park City, Utah, alerting him to the fact that his festival would be in violation of a law passed in 2000, prohibiting the type of public exhibition roaDANCE was proposing. Dino was informed that if he and his mobile movie theater showed up in Park City, he would be arrested.
Then, not long after that report, we heard back from Dino, saying that it looked like roaDANCE was on after all. Basically, the city was having a hard time utilizing their own laws to prevent the mobile film festival from taking place. And so, roaDANCE victoriously cruised the streets of Park City, until…
We received this email from Dino last Saturday night –
I finally got busted tonight. It is a long story, but ultimately the man came down on me. I was issued a ticket for a 4.5.3g of the civil code which according to the description is: “solicitation/ exhibition from vehicle”. I have to appear in court in Park City at a later date and pay a fine. Not only that, but the man said, “If you start it again, I will take you straight to jail, impound your vehicle and make you post $10,000 bail”.
I was only showing short films all G rated to people walking up and down the street…
So I put up a bunch of posters and got about 100 people to sign a petition to have me back next year…more later…tired.
Dino
Show your support and hopefully we can get Dino back on the road next January.
For more information, visit the roaDANCE website.
