Sundance Film Festival organizers stated this week that they’d failed in some respects over the last few years and were vowing to improve.
Festival founder Robert Redford took the stage at the festival’s opening news conference and offered his mea culpa. “I felt we were sliding. We were beginning to flat line and we needed a fresh approach.” Redford didn’t elaborate on the specifics of what he felt was needed, but the news conference went on to cover everything from John Cooper taking over as festival director to Sundance’s increased emphasis on micro-budgeted films.
The annual press conference is usually more a place of generalities than controversies. But it can offer hints about the direction of the festival, and organizers this year suggested they wanted to plunge into the future by returning to what they’ve done in the past.
In addition to the low budget films, a Bansky documentary will be making its debut, while Leon Gast’s documentary about early days paparazzo Ron Galella, “Smash His Camera” also plays the festival.
In talking about the new direction, Redford acknowledged Cooper predecessor Geoff Gilmore with a series of compliments that nonetheless also validated their decision to part ways. “Geoff did an amazing job,” he said. “He’s passionate and extremely articulate and a great lover of film. But it was simply a time for fresh blood. You have to rejuvenate,” he said, adding that such a decision “just happened to coincide with Geoff’s need to move on.”
With Cooper making his debut as festival director, the news conference wandered into themes that have recurred over the last few months, particularly the creation of the low budget Next section. “We’ve been showing these kinds of films for years, but we thought it was time to carve out a section for it,” he said.
As he laid out the new plans, however, Cooper also offered his own admission. “There’s a schizophrenia to talk about the old and new when I was here all these years,” he said. “If there were problems with the festival I was probably part of them.”
View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about arts and culture