5. "Tarnation"
Director: Jonathan Caouette
Regional premiere: Sundance 2004

Jonathan Caouette emerged as the emo golden boy of the 2004 Sundance with "Tarnation," his iMovie magnum opus about a troubled southern childhood and schizophrenic mother. Sundance programmer Shari Frilot called it a "sensual masterpiece of self-destruction and re-birth." It's the kind of film -- excruciatingly intimate, full of startlingly raw material -- that unnerves as much as it impresses, causing critics to reach, almost defensively, for the hyperbole that would fend off its relentless psychic charge. "Tarnation" also had talking points out the yin yang: along with being the first feature made on iMovie, in almost every story on the film its price tag -- which was reported, with several variations, as an absurdly accurate figure in the realm of $213.18 -- was mentioned, along with the fact that both Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell signed on as producer and consultant, respectively, after seeing long cuts of the film. Mitchell was especially excited, predicting a huge directing career for Caouette, who in the film is also clearly an incorrigible performer.

In a Sundance report, Movie City News called "Tarnation" a "cinema landmark," and Wellspring seemed to agree, signing on as co-producer (funding an upgrade to 35 mm) and distributor in April 2004. When it opened in October of 2004, after a showing at the New York Film Festival, "Tarnation" could not have been more poised for documentary sleeper-dom, though it's possible that by 2004 the words "Sundance favorite" could be as much a warning as a recommendation. Despite overwhelming critical acclaim, "Tarnation" took in $592,000 domestically, which is decent for a doc, but not a media juggernaut. Caouette turned to acting for a couple of years and is now working on a music documentary tentatively titled "All Tomorrow's Parties." --Michelle Orange

4. "Primer"
Director: Shane Carruth
World premiere: Sundance 2004

Shane Carruth's "Primer," with its $7,000 budget and ingenious sci-fi trappings, was the critical cause célèbre of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Receiving raves peppered with words like "knotty," "maddening" and "incredibly confusing," this time-travel puzzle irritated and fascinated in equal measure. After winning the Grand Jury Prize, it was acquired by ThinkFilm for limited distribution. It made $425,000 at the box office, more than enough to turn a healthy profit on such a frugal enterprise. But very little has been heard from Carruth since, while the cult around his work continues to grow. The film's web site forum was furious with debate well into this year, and one of the forum members even self-published a book ("The Primer Universe") promising to "explain everything." In an interview with the Dallas Observer in January '07, the director and former engineer said he's been working endlessly on his second script, and receiving encouragement from Steven Soderbergh, who had him visit the set of "Ocean's 13" "to see what a real movie looks like." Details on the screenplay are slim, but he enigmatically told Comme au Cinéma in February '07 that "it'll be focused on technologies dedicated to magic. Almost supernatural, but still based in science and logic." --R. Emmet Sweeney

3. "The Spitfire Grill"
Director: Lee David Zlotoff
World premiere: Sundance 1996

Sundance 1996 announced the arrival of some edgy new talents (Todd Solondz, Mary Harron, Nicole Holofcener), but the festival's biggest sale was a teary melodrama directed by the creator of "MacGyver": Lee David Zlotoff. Even the handy secret agent would have been confounded by the film's $10 million price tag paid by Castle Rock, and the company's L.A.-based execs didn't even get the benefit of watching the film -- about a young ex-con (Alison Elliott) who tries to reclaim her life in a sleepy Maine town -- in Park City, where it premiered to standing ovations en route to an Audience Award. It was a triumph for the Sacred Heart League, the Catholic charity group that put up "Spitfire"'s $6.1 million budget, but the film didn't turn a profit when it was released in August of '96, and the producers were hit with a lawsuit from Trimark Pictures, who believed they had a signed and sealed $1 million deal for the film before Castle Rock swooped in. (They would settle outside of court, with a donation made in Trimark's name towards an elementary school in Mississippi.) As for Zlotoff, he was strictly a hired gun and went back to TV. --Stephen Saito

2. "Happy, Texas"
Director: Mark Illsley
World premiere: Sundance 1999

A film whose performance in Park City is now regarded as the moment when the Sundance phenomenon became more industry sideshow than legitimate showcase, "Happy, Texas" deserved both better and worse. First-time director Mark Illsley funded much of the movie with family money, and assembled a cast of indie stalwarts like Steve Zahn, Illeana Douglas and William H. Macy (along with a slumming Jeremy Northam). The story of two escaped convicts who get mistaken for a gay couple and wind up judging a beauty pageant in a small Texas town activated the quirk-glands of the critics and execs in attendance at Sundance in 1999 to near-euphoric effect. Said to stand out in a year of otherwise weak competition, "Happy, Texas" attracted an unheard-of level of buzz that many of the people responsible for it might prefer to disown; a mob mentality seemed to overtake the buyers in particular, and Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics, Fine Line and Miramax competed for distribution rights. In a deal that was reported from anywhere between $2.5 and $10 million (being cagey with the numbers was a strategy to offset expectation), Miramax bought the film before the festival closed. When it opened later in the year, however, the crossover potential Harvey Weinstein had banked on proved elusive, and the film grossed under $2 million. Illsley made another film, "Bookies," in the 2003, but otherwise seems to be under director house arrest somewhere on the Weinstein compound. --MO

1. "The Blair Witch Project"
World premiere: Sundance 1999
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

The mother of all Sundance one-hit wonders -- no, make that of all cinematic history -- writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's $60,000 faux-snuff horror spun a fact-or-fiction gimmick and an ingeniously simple punchline (oh my god, he's standing in the corner!) into $248 million in worldwide box office gold (for which the two received only $1.1 million). That's it; there's no there there beyond the fact that swarms of moviegoers, all hyped to believe that a trio of poor documentary film students (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams) really disappeared and were murdered in the Maryland woods, and their recovered footage was now being distributed in multiplexes for a Friday night's good time. As a study in movie marketing, "The Blair Witch Project" is likely already being taught in film producing classes, as its web site cleverly made the whole affair out to be a found object, not a directed one, which didn't bode well for its real filmmakers -- whose names you probably couldn't even recall until now. Nearly a decade later, Myrick's 2001 Afghanistan-set scare flick "The Objective" received little attention at last year's Tribeca fest, and the same goes for Sánchez's next two: "Altered" (released straight to DVD) and "Seventh Moon" (release unknown since its Fantastic Fest '08 premiere). Way to go, guys, at least you can say you inspired "Cloverfield." --AH

Check out all of the 2009 Sundance coverage at IFC.com and SundanceChannel.com.

[Photos: "Tarnation," Wellspring Media, 2004; "Primer," THINKFilm, 2004; "The Spitfire Grill," Columbia Pictures, 1996; "Happy, Texas," Miramax Films, 1999; "The Blair Witch Project," Artisan Entertainment, 1999]