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Event
Information:
The Sundance
Film Festival is a film festival
that takes place annually in Utah,
in the United States. It is the
largest independent cinema festival
in the United States. Held in
January in Park City, Salt Lake
City, and Ogden, as well as at the
Sundance Resort, the festival is a
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
out-of-competition sections,
including NEXT, New Frontier,
Spotlight, and Park City At
Midnight.
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
(then head of Wildwood, Robert
Redford's company), John Earle and
Cirina Hampton Catania (both serving
on the Utah Film Commission at the
time). The 1978 festival featured
films such as Deliverance, A
Streetcar Named Desire, Midnight
Cowboy, Mean Streets, and The Sweet
Smell of Success. With Chairperson
Robert Redford, and the help of
Governor Scott Matheson of Utah, the
goal of the festival was to showcase
strictly American-made films,
highlight what the potential of
independent film could be and to
increase visibility for filmmaking
in Utah.
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, paparazzi, and
luxury lounges set up by companies
that are not affiliated with
Sundance, though the Festival itself
has tried to curb these activities
in recent years, beginning in 2007
with their ongoing "Focus On Film"
campaign. In the television series
Entourage, one of the independent
movies which Vincent Chase stars in
(Queens Boulevard) premieres at the
Sundance Film Festival, where it
begins to gain in popularity.
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