Robert Redford was disillusioned with the Hollywood mainstream. The Sundance Kid, who died Tuesday at age 89, knew that there have been extra tales on the market, ones that weren’t getting made into movies due to the rigidity of the enterprise. So he made one thing totally different, founding Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival as a substitute avenue for rising filmmakers, the place independence was a advantage, not a legal responsibility.
Over the previous 4 a long time, the institute and the competition have given an early platform to numerous younger filmmakers, together with Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Coogler, Chloé Zhao, Nicole Holofcener, Nia DaCosta, Taika Waititi, Ava DuVernay, Rian Johnson, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and lots of extra.
“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence.’ I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard,” Redford advised The Associated Press in 2018. “The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”
In 2019, Redford stated he meant to step again from his public dealing with position on the competition, although he remained the group’s president and founder till his dying.
“I think we’re at a point where I can move on to a different place, because the thing I’ve missed over the years is being able to spend time with the films and with the filmmakers and to see their work and be part of their community,” he stated on the 2019 kickoff. “I don’t think the festival needs a whole lot of introduction now: It runs on its own course, and I’m happy for that.”
Redford’s love affair with Utah started a lot earlier, on a cross-country motorbike highway journey in 1961 when he purchased 2 acres of land. By 1969, with more cash in his pocket from his movie successes, he’d bought 5,000 acres, a few of which was a mountain resort however many of the land was for wilderness preserves. He named it Sundance, after his character in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
In 1981, the yr he received greatest image and director for “Ordinary People,” he established the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit group and held the primary filmmakers lab on the Sundance Mountain Resort, about 13 miles northeast of Provo. Just a few years later, in 1985, the institute took over what was then often called the U.S. Film Festival, which might later be renamed the Sundance Film Festival. The competition within the mid-80s hosted the Coen brothers “Blood Simple” and Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise.”
The competition was actually placed on the map when Soderbergh premiered “sex, lies and videotape” in Park City in 1989. A real indie, the movie went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes and get an Oscar nomination, but it surely was its field workplace success that ignited a veritable indie movie growth. And Sundance was the place all of the discoveries had been taking place. In 1991, the competition premiered “Daughters of the Dust,” “Paris is Burning” and “Slacker,” in 1992, Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” in 1993, Wes Anderson introduced “Bottle Rocket,” and in 1994 “Hoop Dreams” and “Clerks.”
“If it weren’t for Robert Redford, independent art houses might not have succeeded,” stated Gary Meyer, cofounder of Landmark Theatre, and a former competition director at Telluride who additionally labored with Redford. “Having the ‘Sundance Kid’ give his stamp of approval to independent features and documentaries brought audiences to our theaters, while helping launch the careers of dozens of filmmakers … He made it ‘cool’ to see adventurous movies when they came to commercial neighborhood theaters.”
In 1994, the Sundance Institute additionally made a dedication to Indigenous filmmakers by launching a competition program to showcase Native and Indigenous movies that continues to today.
Film and TV producer Bird Runningwater, who’s Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache, spent 20 years on the Sundance Institute serving to Redford construct a platform for Indigenous artists.
While exhausting to sum up the significance of what has been achieved over the a long time, Runningwater known as it life-changing for not solely artists however for tribal communities as nicely, to see themselves mirrored on the display in an genuine means.
“I’m so pleased to have been a part of that for Sundance, and it’s all thanks to Redford’s vision,” he stated. “You know, he just had this notion that things could be different if we talk our own stories, and I do believe we’re in that era of changing things.”
The competition may get essentially the most headlines, but it surely’s the year-round work of the Institute that has actually left a mark on unbiased cinema. The screenwriting and directing labs have been simply as, if no more, influential in serving to to launch the primary movies of lots of Hollywood’s high filmmakers over the previous 40 years, beneath the management of Michelle Satter, who has helped shepherd initiatives from “Hard Eight” to “Fruitvale Station” and “Love & Basketball.”
“Sundance changed the trajectory of my career,” filmmaker and labs adviser Gina Prince-Bythewood advised the AP in 2023. “How many of these special projects would have never seen the light of day without Michelle, without Robert Redford’s vision, without this incredible place? It’s actually really scary to think about.”
Native filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (“Rez Ball”) stated that his profession as a younger man was outlined by Redford’s assist for unbiased cinema and supporting Native storytelling.
“I went to the Sundance Filmmakers lab at 23 years old,” Harjo wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. “The support from Sundance made me feel like I belonged in an industry that most times felt so unreachable. He personally taught me things about story, shooting, and editing that I take with me today.”
The listing of notable movies which have performed at Sundance grows yearly. Some enduring favorites embrace: “Get Out,” “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Memento,” “Before Sunrise,” “Boyhood,” “Y tu mamá también,” “Brick,” “The Squid and the Whale,” “Manchester by the Sea,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “A Real Pain.”
The competition acquired its first greatest image winner with “CODA,” which performed on the competition in 2021. Questlove’s “Summer of Soul,” which additionally debuted in 2021, received the academy’s documentary award that yr as nicely.
Many greatest documentary winners begin at Sundance, together with “When We Were Kings,” “Born Into Brothels,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Man on Wire,” “The Cove,” “Searching for Sugarman,” “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Icarus,” “American Factory,” “ Navalny,” and “20 Days in Mariupol.” The most up-to-date winner, “No Other Land” was supported by the labs.
Redford had apprehensive for years that the competition had outgrown Park City, Utah. In 1996, an estimated 15,504 attended the competition. In 2015, the quantity had ballooned to 46,100. It peaked in 2018 with 124,900 festivalgoers. The competition estimated that the 2025 version had 85,472 in-person attendees, a 17% enhance from 2024.
Earlier this yr, the choice was made to relocate to Boulder, Colorado, beginning in 2027. That means there will likely be one final competition in Park City in January.
“Bob’s vision launched a movement that, over four decades later, has inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the U.S. and around the world,” Sundance leaders stated in a press release Tuesday. “The vibrant storytelling landscape we cherish today, both as artists and audiences, is unimaginable without his passionate drive and principled leadership.”
There had been already plans within the works to rejoice the imaginative and prescient of Redford. In the wake of his dying, that tribute will likely be much more deeply felt.
Former Sundance director John Cooper, a detailed good friend of Redford’s who led the competition from 2009 to 2020, advised The Associated Press in an interview earlier this yr that he felt like his position was “to be a keeper of the flame for Robert Redford and his legacy.” Now, Cooper, the inventive director of Sonoma’s True West Film Center who remains to be a daily presence at Sundance stated, that mission is extra essential than ever. It’s “a lot to process, going from a legacy that was alive in him to one we have to carry on,” Cooper advised the AP. That legacy, he stated, facilities on spreading the facility of storytelling.
Associated Press author Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Utah, Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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