Actress Katie Holmes is one of many names that has attended the Sundance Film Festival over the years in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

The 2011 Sundance film festival is underway in Park City in Utah and is a winter wonderland of film chaired by Robert Redford and was founded in 1978. It is a good place for two important things early on in the celebrity season. The first is Sundance is a good place to spot celebrities with names such as Juliette Lewis, Paris Hilton, Naomi Watts and Katie Holmes pictured above and with other big name stars making an appearance over the years.

Sundance 2011 Star spotting photos courtesy ET Online

Secondly as its officially the first major film festival of the season Sundance normally gives a pretty good idea of what films could be the driving forces later in the year. Unlike most film festivals Sundance is a casual informal event with not a red carpet in sight.

This years hot news causing  a stir is that there are three Australian films in the running and Chaz Bono is causing a stir at the festival and a documentary about Chaz is the reason. He is the son of Cher and Sonny Bono. He used to be their daughter until his recent sex change operation. As the sex change came to an end Chastity Bono started going by the name Chaz and now Chaz is at Sundance to help promote the documentary Becoming Chaz which documents his female-to-male transition. It’s getting the media in a lather but as it’s a documentary style film distribution will be limited in cinema or as they say in the states theaters.