SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Yesterday, just minutes before the Festival's opening day press conference at the Egyptian Theatre, Robert Redford, Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore (left), and Chicago 10 director Brett Morgen (right) exchanged green room greetings. At the press conference, the three shared their excitement about the opening night film and a Festival that promises to renew filmgoers' sense of what is possible - creatively, socially, and politically. Gilmore spoke of the Festival's New Frontier program which celebrates the work at the new nexus of film, art, and technology, and encouraged audiences to "Focus on Film." -- Photo by Henny Garfunkel

Chicago 10 Raises First of Many Voices
By Sarah Keenlyside

Last night at the Eccles Theatre, Robert Redford, Sundance Institute President and Founder, introduced this year’s opening night film, Brett Morgen’s documentary Chicago 10, and asked the audience to reflect on America’s recent history while watching the film. “Six years ago, I stood on this stage in the wake of 9/11 and that catastrophe, and pledged our support for a time for healing,” he said. “Some of us who had issues or questions ... We put our voices on hold in the interest of unity … to let the leaders lead.

“Now we can reflect on that. I’ll leave it to you to decide how you feel about it, but I think we’re owed a big, massive apology,” he said, followed by an uproar of audience applause.

Chicago 10 is the second documentary to open the Festival, after Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants in 2004.

“There’s an evolution that’s opening up this nexus of the art world, the film world, and what’s going on with new technology that I think is going to create a whole new generation of experimentation and fresh innovation”

— Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore

Chicago 10 tells the story of eight anti-war protestors who, in 1968, were notoriously brought to trial after clashing with Chicago police during the infamous Democratic Convention. “Brett’s film is about another time when young people raised their voices in protest of what they felt was wrong and put themselves in harm’s way to have their voices heard. So now we can look back on that,” Redford said, “and you can decide what you think about it.”

At yesterday afternoon’s opening press conference, Redford emphasized that an additional reason for opening the Festival with Chicago 10 was to underscore the Festival’s ongoing support for the documentary form. “I’ve had a personal love and interest in [documentaries] for a long, long time,” he said. “Once [the Festival] got going … and we had a platform to work from,” Redford continued, “I saw documentaries as something that should be promoted … because the mainstream was not really allowing them any space other than in some academic area.”

The Festival is also committed to being on the vanguard of new technology, whether it is streaming Festival shorts online for free or for download-to-own, which will enable people around the world to experience the Festival in new ways, or the unveiling of the New Frontier section of the Festival, with its dedicated space to display video installations and new technology as well as encourage dialogue about the future of filmmaking. “The avant garde in American cinema has always been a difficult subject to talk about, it’s always been very marginal, often times marked by a certain kind of formalism,” said Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore at yesterday’s press conference. “There’s an evolution that’s opening up this nexus of the art world, the film world, and what’s going on with new technology that I think is going to create a whole new generation of experimentation and fresh innovation,” he said. “Every year there is a sense that the independent film arena is evolving, but I don’t know that I’ve ever had such anticipation for a Festival as I do this year.”

Discovering new technology, new audiences, and of course, new filmmaking talent has always been at the core of the Festival’s mission, Redford explained at the press conference. “I had no idea when I started [the Festival] in the 1980s, I didn’t know if it was going to make it or not because it was not going to be about commerciality. It was going to be about diversity and new product and new voices – a place for discovery,” he said. Redford then urged people not to lose focus on the real reason the Festival exist: the films, which is behind this year’s Festival mantra, “Focus on Film.”

Opening night filmmaker Brett Morgen has benefited from the Festival’s spirit of discovery first hand. He was “discovered” when he came to the Festival for the first time back in 2000 to screen his film On The Ropes. “This stage is not a place I’d ever imagine myself to be … You don’t dream about opening the Sundance Film Festival – it’s so intangible in terms of what you dream of as a filmmaker,” Morgen said before last night’s screening. “I started my career here eight years ago and [since then] the Festival has been so supportive of me and my work … When I came here in 2000, I felt like I’d found a documentary community and it felt great. It’s a festival that makes very little distinction between [fiction and nonfiction film]. I think the reason documentaries have penetrated the marketplace as deeply as they have is largely because of what these two men [Geoffrey Gilmore and Robert Redford] have created.”