The convention center is in the middle of Hartford, about a forty-minute train ride from our college campus to the edge of the city. The building is nestled into a hill. The five glass-windowed stories of the lobby stare out across the highway like a king surveying his lands. To one side of the center is the attached hotel, a river of white stairs spilling between them.

As we hurtle toward the Oscars, the Sundance Film Festival has already come and gone in the mad rush of awards and festivals that marks this season as the busiest in the film industry. Artists new and old, young and seasoned come together in Park City, Utah to buzz and be buzzed about, creating hype around projects both fiercely independent and modestly mainstream.