Lisa Brady didn't have the Sundance Film Festival in mind when she surveyed future locations for her teahouse business.

As luck would have it, however, the Sundance Film Festival had its sights dead set on her Beehive Tea Room when it needed an official festival cafe.

Brady's selling point? Her 12 W. Broadway location in downtown Salt Lake City fell almost dead center between the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts and the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Those two venues -- plus the offshoot Tower Theatre at 900 S. 900 East -- form the nexus of the festival's downtown Salt Lake City core for movie screenings.

It's a loose-packed nexus to be sure, and far removed from the jam-packed hustle and bustle of Park City, but that's part of the appeal. Festival partymongers and celebrity hounds know well enough by now that the road in that direction leads straight to Park City. Film aficionados, on the other hand, know that their surest chance of scoring a screening seat is in Salt Lake City. Parking's less of a challenge, too.

"If [Sundance] didn't have Salt Lake City, they wouldn't be able to show as many films," said Karen Hannahs, a Salt Lake City social worker and counselor who's attended both ends of the festival every year since 1992, except for last year when she fell ill.

And while it's his job to pump Salt Lake City up all he can, Scott Becker, Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau president and an avid Metallica fan, notes that he saw a festival documentary on the band among a crowd of 20 at the Broadway Centre. The Park City screening of the same film was sold out, natch.

"The energy of Park City is undeniable," Becker said. "But the true film fan understands it's all about the movies."

Avid festivalgoers know Sundance has deep roots in Salt Lake City as well. At least until 2004, the first year the festival moved its opening-night screening from its traditional Salt Lake City location up to Park City. "Locals know there's a broad showing of films here that make an undiscovered gem," Becker said.

For Brady, the hope of added business due to the festival started small when the Beehive Tea Room signed on as an official cafe in 2006. It's since grown huge, requiring additional staff and hours during the festival's 10-day stretch. Beehive Tea Room signs come down, the Sundance Film Festival logo goes up, musicians perform nightly and the festival literati descend.

"For us, it's business as usual, but times eight," Brady said. "There are times when I come out of the kitchen -- although that's rare -- to see people from all over the world hanging out. Our main goal is to get people fed and off to their movie on time.

"We don't really get the entourages, but we do get the directors," she said, recalling times when festival big shots occasionally use the tea room as a way station between airport arrival and a festival volunteer's ride to Park City.

The exposure has already garnered her business a shooting location for one movie, "Dark Matter," about a Chinese physics student's troubled times adapting to American society.

Hannahs said that while the Salt Lake City festival district is almost guaranteed to give festivalgoers a more manageable experience, the downside is that it risks feeling a bit lackluster. "If you saw a film in Salt Lake City, you very seldom got to see and hear from the film director or someone in the cast. That means you lose a lot of the festival experience," Hannahs said. "I feel bad for people who don't know what it might be like."

The local filmgoer thinks organizers are paying the festival's Salt Lake City venues more attention, realizing that local film mavens unable or unwilling to make the drive to Park City deserve more festival atmosphere. "[Festival organizers] are starting to recognize that a lot of strength in their audience comes from Salt Lake City," Hannahs said.