By Vanessa Zimmer
Volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival might mean sitting next to Bill Gates, unknowingly chatting with Sting - or creating your very own character and welcoming film lovers with your best reggae accent aboard the shuttle you've renamed the Caribbean Express.
For Mary Helms, returning this January for her 20th year at the Festival, it also means inventing a vocabulary word that she now uses year-round: Sundancey. The Omaha, Nebraska, woman and her friends label movies that are fresh and inventive as Sundancey.
Helms first attended the Festival in 1998 while visiting friends in Salt Lake City. They watched 18 films in six days, which she enjoyed so much that she vowed: I've got to volunteer. She would schedule her vacation time from her job as a medical librarian at the University of Nebraska Medical Center so she could travel to Utah. It was a wild thing I did every year, in sharp juxtaposition to the orderly, structured life of a librarian, she says in a phone interview.
She watched her first subtitled film at the Festival (Adam's Apples) and learned to love documentaries (The Aristocrats, Joan Rivers - A Piece of Work). I like docs because I like to/want to learn new things. As a librarian, new-information gathering is part of the package.
One year, she took a seat near the back of the theater to watch the premiere of Real Women Have Curves and found herself next to legendary critic Roger Ebert. He was such a gentleman and really fun to talk with. He was always happy to meet and greet fans, she remembers. They talked quietly about the multitude of films, the atmosphere, the novelty of seeing Hollywood talent on Park City's streets. They both liked the film very, very much.
Nowadays, she rarely misses a film at Omaha's Film Streams arthouse. You'll find her there two or three times a week, scouting out all films Sundancey.
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By Vanessa Zimmer
