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Eckerd at Sundance: Pizza, sex and Soderbergh

By Nathan Andersen on Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:16 am

A number of our Sundancers took part in my "Film and Philosophy" class last Fall, for which they made episodes in an ongoing web-based series called "The Examined Life." The idea was to create scenarios in which philosophical questions would come up in the lives of ordinary college students. Here are a few of the scenarios that were created by current students in the Sundance Winter Term course.

Jason Voss discusses the ontological status of pizza, in "The Examined LIfe, Episode 1":

Kaye Breeman wrote the screenplay for this meditation on the philosophy of friendship and sex:

Matt Went shot video on this film about the value of knowledge:

Eliza Sheehan directed, and Lila Lupetin stars in this short Rashomon-inspired film about interpretation:

For more, check out our Sundance Winter Term youtube page and the Examined Life youtube site. For more about our class, and all our reviews and other postings, go to our website.

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The film festival is just a few days away and we're all getting ready. We've been reading about and watching some of the independent classics, posting our takes on some of the indie icons and legends, and putting together wishlists of the films we will be sure to catch when we get to Park City, Utah.

Meanwhile, here's a quick introduction to most of us - shot on a little Flip video camera - that may help those who read these pages to see more than a snapshot of who we are. Below that, I've posted some short films that some of the students in this class made during the fall semester as part of my "Film and Philosophy" class. They're not quite to the level of getting into Sundance - though in all honesty I find some of them more entertaining and thoughtful than some things I've seen at major festivals - but at least some of them can truly say they are "independent filmmakers" too.

Here's a very recent spoof on Steven Soderbergh's independent classic sex, lies and videotape, made by several of our Sundancers: