The Sundance Diaries: Shorts Filmmakers Take Us Through The Festival

Every year the Sundance Film Festival committee singles out a group of filmmakers who usually have day jobs. These are the shorts makers -- artists who spend months and even years putting together movies that run under 50 minutes. Often first-time directors, most of these women and men had no reason at the start of their process to believe they'd reach the public at all, much less at the best-known film festival in the country.

This year, 64 shorts were selected from a pool of 7,675 submitted from filmmakers around the world. From now until the festival's close at the end of January, Huffington Post Culture will be bringing you diary-style multimedia entries from the storytellers, animators and documentarians behind these 64 works, as they navigate a path that's new to many of them and invisible to most of us. Our first five entries start below (you can go directly to any individual post by clicking on the filmmakers' names). Dive in!

• Animator Stephen Neary on the only member of his family who didn't care about the fate of "Dr. Breakfast."
• Andrew Ahn on coming out to his Korean family through his movie, "Dol."
• "Hellion" director Kat Candler on why getting into Sundance is like losing your virginity.
• TV-writer Jill Soloway realizes no matter what she tells herself to the contrary, she's not as photogenic as Wilmer Valderamma, star of her short "Una Hora Por Favora."
• Animator Drew Christie illustrates his parents' frustration at having to hide the news of "Song Of The Spindle"s acceptance from their Thanksgiving guests.