Thanks to Reinaldo Marcus Green ("Stop"), Una Gunjak ("The Chicken"), Shaka King ("Mulignans"), and Mike Forshaw ("Saturday") for participating in this roundtable at Sundance 2015. Teasers for "Stop" and "The Chicken" are below.
This is the journey of the Sundance Film Festival.
Robert Redford earned recognition as both a leading man, most memorably as the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and as an Academy Award-winning director for Ordinary People (1980).
Yet his most lasting contribution to cinema may be neither his acting nor his directing.
Redford's greatest cinematic achievement may be democratizing independent film through two groundbreaking institutions: the Sundance Institute, which he co-founded in 1981 to nurture emerging filmmakers, and the Sundance Film Festival, launched in 1985 to showcase their work to the world.
Let’s learn about these indie mainstays.
In 1961, on a cross-country motorcycle honeymoon with his wife, Redford stopped in Utah, where he fell in love with the place.
Following the back-to-back commercial successes of films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer (1969), Redford had become a household name. But back then, studio control was slowly creeping back into the industry.
Displeased, Redford left Los Angeles to move to Utah in 1980.
“There was no room for independent film anymore—everything was becoming more centralized. I could see there was going to be a gap,” Redford said during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival (via Screen Daily).
After moving to Utah, Redford put his land to practical use in addition to building a ranch. Although the Utah/United States Film Festival, organized by the Utah Film Commission, already existed, the whole affair was a bit underwhelming.
In 1981, Redford brought in collaborators to nurture fresh filmmaking talents outside the mainstream industry, and the Sundance Institute was established.
To fund the Sundance non-profit workshops, Redford obtained a $25,000 government grant. Fifteen independent filmmakers were chosen to be mentored by film experts such as Waldo Salt and Sydney Pollack in the first script lab, and films like El Norte were developed under this program.
“But five or six years into the labs, I realized there was no place for these filmmakers to go,” said Redford (via Screen Daily).
In 1985, the Sundance Film Festival opened in Park City, screening 86 independent films and a few documentaries in a single theater.
Before long, the film festival became one of the most talked-about events, serving as a platform for cult classics like Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, which the studios would have never greenlit.
In the coming years, the Sundance Film Festival saved multiple worthy movies from obscurity. By 1991, Redford had taken over the reins of the Utah/United States Film Festival, leading to its dissolution, which the Sundance Film Festival replaced.
Since the early 1980s, the Sundance Film Festival has been the home of independent cinema, launching the careers of many great filmmakers, including Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and the Coen brothers.
Today, it’s an essential annual winter gathering for independent filmmakers from around the world. Sundance promotes diverse storytelling and strives to give a platform to underrepresented voices.
The films that screen at this prestigious film festival address pressing social, political, and cultural issues. The festival also runs programs like the Native Forum and Women at Sundance to provide a platform for marginalized filmmakers, ensuring that no talent is overlooked due to power and financial constraints.
Over the years, the festival’s commitment to supporting films that spark empathy and compassion has been commendable.
Written and directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, The Blair Witch Project follows three students who go into the Maryland backwoods to investigate the Blair Witch.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez with a shoestring budget of $7,000, El Mariachi is about an aspiring musician, El Mariachi, who gets into trouble when a gangster group confuses him with another ruthless criminal.
Written and adapted by Christopher Nolan from a short story by his brother, Jonathan Nolan, Memento is a neo-noir psychological thriller that follows a former insurance investigator suffering from anterograde amnesia. He is trying to hunt down his wife’s murderer using notes and tattoos.
Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, follows a criminal gang whose members start suspecting each other of being a police informant after a simple jewelry heist goes horribly wrong.
Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh, Sex, Lies, and Videotape revolves around a sexually repressed wife who finds comfort in an unknown guest with a strange secret, as her husband cheats on her with her sister.
The Sundance Film Festival has evolved into a renowned institution over time and is considered one of the world's top film festivals, alongside Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto.
Are any of your favorite movies Sundance hits?
