Sundance på norsk… almost
Last week I got this email from the Sundance Film Festival volunteer manager that made me giddy.
Hi Yvette,
We have a need for a translator one day for two hours, to translate Norwegian, and your application indicated that this would be something you’d be willing to do. It’s for a film screening with a group of high school students, the Director is seeking assistance for the Q & A session. If this is a skill you feel you have, I’ll send along the details, and we’ll see if it fits in your schedule, too.
My stomach flip-flopped when I read that. The application she referred to was one that I originally completed in 2007 and basically just renew every year without looking at it too closely. I’d forgotten that I put Norwegian down as a language spoken. I probably checked the box for “willing to translate” with a snicker because most Norwegians speak way better English than I speak Norwegian.
I learned Norwegian when I was an exchange student a hundred years ago and have kept it up pretty well via frequent contact with my host family over the years. (My “little sister” is coming to visit again in February, in fact.) Though I was nervous about the prospect of assisting with translation, especially in front of a theater filled with hyper-critical high school students, I said I’d do it. Even when I found out that I needed to be in Park City at 7am.
While waiting for more information, I looked up what Norwegian films were showing this year at the festival. No feature-length ones that I could find, but there are three shorts: The Fight, Little Miss Eyeflap, and Still Birds. That middle one, aka Skylappjenta, is about a Pakistani-Norwegian girl, directed by Iram Haq which is a distinctly non-Norwegian name, and its language is listed as “Norwegian/Urdu.” I guessed the director of that was a Pakistani immigrant who speaks Norwegian but wasn’t great with English.
Unfortunately, I just received the news that the director backed out of the event, so my Norwegian services are no longer needed.
Damn.
I never found out exactly which director was coming, so I’ll probably never know with which director I could have hobnobbed. On the bright side, I don’t have to leave the house at 5:30am on Wednesday.
I will be heading up to the Sundance Resort this evening to work my first box office shift. I get to pick up my volunteer coat and hope that it fits… they hadn’t received the women’s coats yet when I checked in last week. It’s mostly white, so I’m going to have to be very careful not to drink coffee, hot chocolate, or Diet Coke while I’m “in costume.” Because I will spill and/or dirty it up no matter how careful I am.
I’m going to attempt to see as much of HOWL as I can once all of my box office paperwork is done. I doubt I’ll stay late to watch Restrepo—it’s just not something I’m terribly interested in seeing.
Tomorrow morning I’m heading up to Park City with my friend Marie and who knows what we’ll end up seeing. Films, wait-list riots, celebrity nudity… I’ll be tweeting it all. And maybe trying out Twitpic to share some crappy photos. I don’t have an internet-capable phone, but I am set up to receive Twitter direct messages… so please interact away! I mean, interact toward. Me. Er, something.
