Sundance Film Festival is leaving Park City after over 40 years in Utah. No longer will the Egyptian Theater host a world premiere. Main Street won’t see a sponsor and vendor takeover come next year. Independent film will have a new home in Colorado.
While locals have not always loved the traffic and attention that comes with the festival, Park City is losing a piece of itself.
The festival started small – so unimaginably small compared to its current form, or the craziness of the 2000s version of the festival. It began as the Utah/U.S. Film Festival in 1978, with a few screenings at Trolley Square down in Salt Lake City. Robert Redford got involved on the board in 1979 and led the change to become the U.S. Film and Video Festival in 1981, which was the festival’s first year in Park City.
After it struggled financially for a few years, Redford saved the festival by having his Sundance Institute brainchild take control of the annual affair in 1984. They later renamed the event after the parent organization in 1991, becoming the Sundance Film Festival that is known around the world today.
In its time in Park City (with one more festival to go), the festival gave a start to over twenty feature films that were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars (including a win for CODA recently), plus all of the other nominations and wins in other categories. More than twenty documentaries have also been honored at the Oscars, not to mention dozens of short films.
Credit: Courtesy of the Park Record. Photo by Tanzi Propst.
Some of the most notable films in history were given their first chance at Sundance, as were the directors of those films. Many filmmakers went through programs at the Sundance Institute before brining a film to Park City. A short list of some of the most notable films and documentaries that debuted at the festival includes Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Saw; American Psycho; Super Troopers; The Blair Witch Project; Reservoir Dogs; Little Miss Sunshine; Donnie Darko; Clerks; 500 Days of Summer; Napoleon Dynamite; Whiplash; Boyhood; CODA; Past Lives; Memento; Get Out; Y Tu Mamá También; Before Sunrise, Blood Simple; An Inconvenient Truth; 20 Days in Mariupol; Searching for Sugar Man; Man on Wire; Summer of Soul; Paris is Burning; Grizzly Man; and so many more. There are too many actors, directors, and screenwriters to name who debuted at or got their big break through Sundance.
Sundance brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to Park City over the years. Some of those people stayed and became Parkites. The festival brought with it a passion for film, which led to a year-round thirst for cinema, allowing for organizations like Park City Film and an annual film festival at the high school to form.
The festival brought a sense of culture to what was then a bourgeoning ski town. It helped make Park City a home for the arts, for expression, and for exploration. It also brought celebrity status, for better and for worse, making Park City a place to be seen and experienced by celebrities, influencers, and stans.
Ultimately, Sundance Film Festival outgrew Park City – literally – and perhaps figuratively as well. Only time will tell the impact that Sundance leaving will have on both Park City and the festival, just as time allowed for independent film to help shape a small mountain community, and for that community to create a unique space for the cinematic arts.
The Park City Museum will be closed through Thursday, January 29 for the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City.