IFS Park City, UT - 1/1/2022 - The Sundance Film Fesitval

After visiting every university campus in Utah, we decided to continue our tour of the state by visiting the locations of prominent Utah events each month.

For January, we're virtually traveled to Park City to check out the Sundance Film Festival –https://festival.sundance.org/ – which is back to screening films live and in-person in 2022!

The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort (a ski resort near Provo, Utah), and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers.

Sundance began in Salt Lake City in August 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah. It was founded by Sterling Van Wagenen, head of Robert Redford's company Wildwood, and John Earle of the Utah Film Commission. The 1978 festival featured films such as Deliverance, A Streetcar Named Desire, Midnight Cowboy, Mean Streets, and Sweet Smell of Success. The goal of the festival was to showcase American-made films, highlight the potential of independent film, and increase visibility for filmmaking in Utah. The main focus of the event was to conduct a competition for independent American films, present a series of retrospective films and filmmaker panel discussions, and celebrate the Frank Capra Award. The festival also highlighted the work of regional filmmakers who worked outside the Hollywood system.

In 1981, the festival moved to Park City, Utah, and changed the dates from September to January. The move from late summer to midwinter was done by the executive director Susan Barrell with the cooperation of Hollywood director Sydney Pollack, who suggested that running a film festival in a ski resort during winter would draw more attention from Hollywood.

In 1991, the festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival, after Redford's character the Sundance Kid from the film **** Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The Sundance Film Festival experienced its extraordinary growth in the 1990s, under the leadership of Geoffrey Gilmore and John Cooper, who transformed the venue into the premier festival in the United States, on par with Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Toronto International Film 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, and paparazzi.

At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, three films went on to garner eight Oscar nominations. Manchester by the Sea took the lead in Sundance-supported films with six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The next year, about 40 films were acquired by distributors, among them including Amazon, Netflix, Lionsgate, and Universal.

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