For subscribers
The death of the indie film
Fear of missing out used to rule the Sundance Film Festival – but now it’s mostly just fear.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Robert Redford’s death has triggered a sense of uncertainty over the Sundance Film Festival’s future.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Sharon Waxman
At a bar on Main Street in Park City on the night of Jan 26, a gaggle of veteran movie producers gathered to share war stories and bid farewell to the Sundance Film Festival as they’d known it.
Over more than four decades, the Sundance Institute, founded by actor-director Robert Redford, who had a mountainside home nearby, challenged Hollywood to be less formulaic, more personal and original. It succeeded. Indie films became the subject of frantic bidding wars in the lobby of the Eccles Theater auditorium (which, because Park City in Utah is basically a small town, was attached to the local high school, which remained in session). Two generations of film-making stars were born.
