The Reinvention of W New York – Union Square

(Sundance Film Festival Programmers Ash Hoyle LEFT, Stephanie Owens RIGHT)

A little backstory: every year since its 1978 inception, Sundance has printed a festival catalog, which details each film showcased in ‘capsules’ that the programmers write. A mix of logline and editorial, these ‘catalog capsules’ form a historical document of each year’s program.

This year, festival operations communicated internally that there wouldn’t be a catalog for budgetary reasons. Instead of accepting the loss, Ash Hoyle and Stephanie Owens--two programmers on the features team--took matters into their own hands.

In lieu of a traditional catalog, they made something cooler: a 100+ page zine with contributions from filmmakers past and present. They planned A DIY distribution strategy for the festival. A little samizdat, a little punk rock, the ‘little zine that could’ soon took on a life of its own.

What follows is an oral history of the making of the S*ndance 2025 zine. It’s filled with challenges both institutional and mechanical; what ultimately shines through is the sheer determination and inventiveness of these two festival programmers.

LILY LADY - Walk me through the making of this zine.

ASH HOYLE - It started after some meeting with festival operations where they told us that there was no plan to print catalogs for the year. We knew people were gonna be mad bummed, from the filmmakers who play the festival to the volunteers who have their names printed on the back.

STEPHANIE OWENS - I got a text from Ash that was like, you wanna work on this? and I was like, yeah! It felt like a great way to make sure filmmakers still got an artifact from the festival.

AH - Our curatorial work--including the literal shape of the program itself [the capsules written about each film]--are not saved anywhere. They are published on our website, which is wiped each year. We don't archive the website, so it only exists in the paper catalog. Even in our work that involves figuring out who to invite to panels, et cetera, I reference the catalogs back to the 80s to see oh, what happened? What did we play? Who do we show? Who has already been a moderator on the ‘Fresh Faces’ panel? The way to look at the history of our enterprise is through this catalog, and we felt there was something that would be critically missing from the history if there wasn't one available for 2025. So we said let's do it. We often have these moments internally that are frustrating because of budget cuts or because of changes in thinking around the festival. But [we learned] we can just say, okay, that's what's going on on the official channel and we can still make something with the cool people we know who love the festival.

SO - The components of the zine came together pretty seamlessly. I felt it was very easy.

The ‘bootleg’ zine cover, designed by Lena Redford.

AH - The vibe was mad chill. The catalog is made up of the work we have to do anyway. It's the program. It's our notes. Like, we write them. It was an act of preservation, not necessarily just an act of creation. The meat of it is the film notes we have to compose anyway.

When it came to contributions, it was great. Finally, we're doing it and we're not doing it with a million copy editors and a million sponsors, we're just doing it. We’re programmers, we know cool people. It's our job to know these people to talk to them constantly about their shit. And so we were whispering around like, "hey, we're doing this and anybody who has something, send it."

The first thing we put together were the sketches that Adrian Tomine made of the US dramatic film Q&As from last year. He was super willing to send them. And then it was like, "okay, that's great. What if we could have those directors write a handwritten note about the moment that Adrian captured?" That was when we knew we had gas, because I was shooting out these requests and people were just like, "Holy shit. This is so cool."

Charlie Shackleton was like "what should I do?" [The answer was] "I don't care." The point is that the right people are involved, so there's no need for editorial scrutiny. It was like, "just whatever is in your head, just make it and we will totally print it."

That's also why we were down to the wire with printing, because we wanted to include as much of what was coming in as we could.

SO - As far as distribution, I thought it was gonna be a breeze. I thought printing was gonna be a breeze. But then we encountered all these obstacles. We still laughed through them, I have to say.

It started with our Staples quote. We confidently went in. We knew it was going to be expensive. The woman who was helping us was like, "yeah, it's going be super expensive" and we were like, "yeah, we know."

We were in there, assembling it, and once we added the spiral binding, she was like, "that’s an extra $200." And we went, "okay, extra 200 on what?" And then she said the number. And it was almost ten thousand dollars for about three hundred copies.

That was a shock. We were confident we could find another solution and spent the next few days trying to find that solution.

AH - It became then a ‘microcosm of a microcosm,’ which was, "okay, we made this thing. and it rocks so hard, and it captures this spirit of the festival." And now we need some resources to make it happen and that's really hard to conjure up.

Steph and I were doing lots of math. If we had locked it earlier, sent it out and got it shipped, we probably could have done it for a few thousand dollars. But it wouldn't have been the same thing because people were getting jazzed and just finishing their films. So it wasn't necessarily worth it, but [we found ourselves] in this frustrated place.

It was a lot of money for Steph and I to potentially be holding the bag on.

SO - The colleagues that we discussed these issues with primarily were the ones that we were staying with [in the programmer’s lodges]. They were all very supportive. Ash and I found ourselves sitting in front of the printer and we had colleagues that were willing to take a shift printing, but we couldn't even assign shifts because we were waiting to see if the ink was gonna work, if the printer was gonna work. It was kind of hard to even know what to delegate. And when you're on the ground at the festival, you're pulled in a lot of different directions and don't have too much extra energy.

AH - The folks that we know who have seen it are ecstatic. Old timers, long timers, people who are involved in Sundance editorial. It was purposefully circulated by word of mouth, on the downlow.

SO - We had the hope that we could just give it out. That it would be in the welcome bags for filmmakers, but the timing didn't work out and everything started to unravel a little bit.

AH - We made it by hand. We were printing on several printers we bought and then returned to Staples. Every zine that's currently on the market was a hand printed and collated by Steph and my own two hands. And we got it to a bunch of contributors who were there. We got it to jury members, friends of the festival, people that we knew it would mean something to. Our panels producer cried when I gave her the zine. She’s been coming to the festival since she was six years old. She has all the catalogs. It really moved her.

The story of distribution is not over. We put an email address on the back, and a couple people have hit it just being like, "yo, I heard this exists, I want to buy one." And I'm sure people will pay, but we weren't quite set up to get a shop going while we were also executing at the festival. My hope is that now that the festival is over, we have the time to at least print enough to get it into the hands of every film team from ‘25. And then I'm down for a word-of-mouth approach. And anybody who reaches out, especially if they're willing to throw a coin or two our way, an aspiration I have is that we can get them one.

SO - Yeah, I just want anyone who wants one to have one. I would also say getting them to our team. It was nice to see Ash give zines out to audience members at Film Church [an event on Sundance’s last day]. It was so fun to see one person at the end giving it to people to sign it. I thought that was so sweet, since one of the inspirations was a yearbook.

AH - The hope was always getting one to everyone who wants one. Especially now with a return to regular life in LA, we can figure out channels to make that happen. We definitely have massive resistance to making it available online. If we wanted something digitally circulated, 50% of what's in the catalogue was on the website. But the other parts of the zine, that’s what the paper catalog was about. It makes me feel existential about the whole enterprise. Sundance is full of people who have this nostalgia for place and time. For this type of analog, even obsolete artifact. At the same time, it’s on the cutting edge. Brand new, embryonic films are getting launched into the world that are gonna mean something different later. Things have even evolved with the films in the program since last week. So it’s important to capture it all in a limited, time-space way, before things evolve.

SO - I agree. I wasn't too jazzed about a digital copy. At first we were like, we need these by Friday, and then that evolved and people were telling us just do it black and white, and we were like, no. However many were able to print, I like that it exists in print. Hopefully everyone who wants one gets one, but I don't think it's something that we have to try to print forever.

AH - There’s a limited proliferation. That's what's meaningful about how cultural artifacts like this move around. It’s an iteration of the aspiration of the festival itself. It's not about reaching as far as ‘everyone.’ The festival is about who all got together in this specific time in this specific place to encounter specific art. The zine mimics that important part of it.

SO - Despite the challenges, it was really fun. It will make this festival unforgettable. I always remember the way this festival all started. The experience of creating it together was super fun.

AH - The spirit of Sundance is still alive. Even if it was buried under a printer for a minute. We owe a debt of gratitude to the contributors, and to the festival filmmakers whose films constitute the large majority of the piece. It's not about, if you don't want to pay, you can't have one. It’s not that. But I am opposed to it being online. People can post a picture of the paper copy, but the spirit of it is in print.

If you email sffbootleg@gmail.com you can get a copy. Anybody who reads this or whatever, write in, we’ll try to get you one.

Or here's the order form