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Sundance Film Festival
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The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in the state of Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the U.S. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, Utah, as well as the Sundance Resort, the festival is the premier showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature-length films and short films, and a group of non-competitive showcase sections, including the New Frontier, Spectrum, and Park City @ Midnight.
Utah/US Film Festival
Sundance began in Salt Lake City in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah.
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Encyclopedia
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in the state of Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the U.S. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, Utah, as well as the Sundance Resort, the festival is the premier showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature-length films and short films, and a group of non-competitive showcase sections, including the New Frontier, Spectrum, and Park City @ Midnight.
History
Utah/US Film Festival
Sundance began in Salt Lake City in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah. Founded by Sterling Van Wagenen and John Earle with Chairperson Robert Redford, the goal of the festival was to showcase what the potential of independent film could be. At the time, the main focus of the event was to present a series of retrospective films and filmmaker panel discussions; however it also included a small program of films made outside the Hollywood system, commonly known as independent films.
The jury of the 1978 festival was headed by Gary Allison, and included Verna Fields, Linwood Gale Dunn, Katherine Ross, Charles E. Sellier Jr., Mark Rydell, and Anthea Sylbert.
Sterling Van Wagenen subsequently left the film festival to help found the Sundance Institute with Robert Redford.
In 1981, the festival moved to Park City, Utah.
In 1984-85, the now well-established Sundance Institute, headed by Sterling Van Wagenen, took over management of the US Film Festival, which was experiencing financial difficulties. Gary Beer and Sterling Van Wagenen spearheaded production of the inaugural Sundance Film Festival which included Program Director Tony Safford and Administrative Director Jenny Walz Selby.
Over the following years several factors helped propel the growth of Utah/US Film Festival. First was the involvement of actor Robert Redford. Redford, a Utah resident, became the festival's inaugural chairman and having his name associated with Sundance gave the festival great attention.
Second, the festival moved from September to January. The move from late summer to mid-winter was reportedly done on the advice of Hollywood director Sydney Pollack, who suggested that running a film festival in a ski resort during winter would draw more attention from Hollywood.
Sundance Institute
Management of the Festival was taken over by the Sundance Institute, a non-profit organization, in 1985. In 1991 the Festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival, after Redford's character The Sundance Kid from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.. Many famous independent filmmakers, including Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, James Wan, Edward Burns and Jim Jarmusch had their big break at Sundance. It is also responsible for bringing wider attention to films such as Saw, The Blair Witch Project, Better Luck Tomorrow, Primer, Reservoir Dogs, Little Miss Sunshine, El Mariachi, Clerks, Thank You for Smoking, Sex, lies, and videotape, The Brothers McMullen and Napoleon Dynamite. Three Seasons was the first in Festival history to ever receive both the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award in 1999, the same as God Grew Tired of Us and Quinceañera in 2006.
Corporate America has taken notice of the Festival by setting up independent marketing operations during the Festival. This has not pleased the Sundance Film Festival, who have tried various ways to encourage brands to officially sponsor the festival, instead of creating their own marketing event. The Festival has also (controversially, in some circles) become a press event for celebrities.
From 2006 through 2008, the Sundance Institute collaborated with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on a special series of film screenings, performances, panel discussions, and special events bringing the institute's activities and the festival's programming to New York City.
In January 2009, the festival was marked by a early exodus of celebrities who turned up for the first few days of the festival, but left early to attend the inauguration of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. This did not dampen the enthusiam of thousands of remaining independent film fans.
Growth of the festival
The Festival has changed over the decades from a low-profile venue for small-budget, independent creators from outside the Hollywood system to a media extravaganza for Hollywood celebrity actors, directors from studios that are subsidiaries of the major studios, paparazzi, and luxury-goods company sponsors giving gifts to the attendees.
In recent years the Festival has strived to distance itself from these distractions, and in 2007 and 2008 handed out buttons to all filmmakers that read, "Focus on Film."
Festivalgoers who cannot obtain tickets in advance may buy same-day tickets at the box office, or line up for wait list tickets at a theater two hours before a scheduled showing. Wait list tickets are an excellent way to get into the screenings that appear to be sold out, for those who are prepared to wait.
2009 marks the 25th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival.
In popular culture
In December 1998, South Park, an animated show on the network Comedy Central, came out with an episode where the directors of the festival move it to a "different small mountain town", that of the show's main setting South Park, in order to "drain it and morph it into a new LA".
In Entourage, one of the independent movies which Vincent Chase stars in (Queens Boulevard) premiers at the Sundance Film Festival, and gains its popularity from there on.
In The Simpsons episode Any Given Sundance, Lisa enters a documentary about her family into the Sundance Film Festival.
See also
Further Reading
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
External links
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