Among the filmmakers, there was one minor casualty: British documentarian (and Sundance juror) Nick Broomfield, whose "Kurt and Courtney," about the late rock star Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, made Sundance history by being pulled over music rights and "other things," according to program director Geoff Gilmore. Love was said to be unhappy with the film, which, of course, suddenly became the film to see - possibly as a pirated screening at the rival Slamdance festival. (At his state-of-the-festival press conference, Robert Redford said he found it ironic that "someone [Love] who benefited so greatly by being on the cutting edge" would take such a tack, adding, "it's frustrating when one artist prevents another artist from expressing" himself.)

Elsewhere, filmmakers were making their mark by actually showing films. Hav Plenty, by first-time writer-director Chris Cherot, had a wildly successful, sold-out screening Saturday. And despite the inevitable comparisons to other recent African-American twentysomething romances such as "Love Jones," Cherot's audacious comic timing and willingness to lampoon cultural conventions sets him apart from most of his contemporaries.

Coincidentally, Hav Plenty turned out to have a complement among the documentaries - "Melvin Van Peebles Classified X," in which the veteran filmmaker charts the systematic degradation of the black image in Hollywood movies. Decrying the shortage of positive, independent black filmmaking, Van Peebles gives perhaps inadvertent benediction to Cherot.

Van Peebles' house was far from full, but one had to beg, borrow or steal tickets to several lighter-than-air comedies. Not that there aren't some extraordinarily ambitious films among the mix. In "Conceiving Ada," which stars Tilda Swinton as the inventor of computer language, video artist Lynn Hershman Leeson marries fluid sci-fi filmmaking to a hallucinogenic computer vision. "Divine Trash" examines the pungent career of John Waters. "Affliction," Paul Schrader's adaptation of the Russell Banks book, contains one of the more powerful performances in Nolte's career.

And there are some remarkable movies in the World Cinema section - including the Japanese "Hana-Bi (Fireworks)," the droll, dark Norwegian comedy "Junk Mail," the scathing British dramas "TwentyFourSeven" and "Under the Skin," and John Duigan's moving "Lawn Dogs." That these films might get short shrift isn't new, nor is the weariness of so many industry professionals who find the collision of commerce and art an annual chore.