In the early years of the Sundance Film Festival, Amy Redford remembers standing on street corners handing out free tickets, trying to coax people into screenings. Some arrived in haute couture and stiletto heels dressed for Cannes, and were instead confronted with the nip of a Utah winter.
“You’re gonna want some boots,” Redford said, recalling what she had once told the guests.
More than four decades later, as Sundance relocates from Utah to Colorado, Redford, the daughter of the late Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford, is heading to Denver to revisit the memories, mishaps and formative moments that helped shape the festival along the way.
At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Redford will join writer-directors Rian Johnson and Dee Rees, director-producer Jeff Orlowski-Yang, producer Christine Vachon and Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez for a one-night program at the University of Denver’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave., Denver.
Redford and her fellow panelists will revisit Sundance’s history, founding values and formative films, drawing on archival material and decades of memories, mishaps and odd moments from the festival’s years in Utah where filmmakers, movie obsessives and the winter footwear-challenged converged in the same mountain town.
Sundance wrapped its final festival in Utah in January and will make its Boulder debut Jan. 21, kicking off an 11-day run .
Tuesday’s event aims to offer Colorado audiences a taste of the festival before several thousand credentialed professionals, volunteers, filmmakers, community members and ticket-holders descend on Boulder for the real thing.
Redford said the night will borrow some of its structure from Sundance itself, moving between storytelling, question-and-answer sessions and what she described as a “call-and-response” with the audience.
“Instead of just talking about what we do, itap much more fun and much more accurate to come and experience what we do,” Redford said. “As much as maybe we’re telling you stories, we also want to hear your stories. We want to get to know you as a community.”
The people joining Redford on stage have encountered Sundance at very different points in its history. Johnson, who grew up in Denver, brought his feature debut, “Brick,” to the festival in 2005. Rees premiered “Pariah” there in 2011. Boulder-based filmmaker Orlowski-Yang brought documentaries, including “Chasing Ice,” which won a cinematography award at Sundance in 2012, and “The Social Dilemma,” which premiered at the festival in 2020.
Vachon has produced Sundance titles spanning decades, including “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “Past Lives,” while Hernandez now oversees the whole sprawling operation as festival director and head of public programming. Together, they aim to give the night a wide-angle view of what exactly Sundance is.
“These are people who have experienced the festival through many, many decades,” she said. “They know what it is to be a creator, what it is to make stuff, and how much thatap evolved and changed — and also, how much it hasn’t.”
Redford said festivalgoers still tell her about meeting a stranger while standing in line, or wandering into a film about a person living halfway across the planet and finding something unnervingly familiar there.
She described Sundance as a “relatively algorithm-free” environment, where audiences can encounter stories and perspectives they might not otherwise seek out.
“That experience is what brings people back, not only as filmmakers, but as audiences,” she said.
Redford has watched that experience evolve for most of her life, though her place in Sundance history extends beyond being the daughter of Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford.
An actor, director and producer whose career spans more than three decades, she currently serves on the Sundance Institute board. Her feature directorial debut, “The Guitar,” premiered at Sundance in 2008.
Redford has her own ties to the region, having studied at the University of Colorado Boulder, where her father had also attended decades earlier.
to include internships, student programming, volunteer opportunities and year-round academic and community events. The 2027 festival will use four venues on the CU campus, including Macky Auditorium and Muenzinger Auditorium.
Redford said she is especially interested in what happens when a new generation of students are able to be folded into Sundance’s orbit.
“We have access to all of these incredible students,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to our work being informed by the perspective of a new generation.”
Boulder, she expects, will change Sundance, too.
“Itap healthy to reframe yourself in a new landscape,” Redford said. “A lot of what we do has remained the same over decades, in terms of our why, and I think our why will remain intact.”
Before January, Sundance is spending some time getting to know the neighbors. Redford called Denver and its existing film and arts communities an important part of the larger Colorado picture and said Sundance officials hope events like Tuesday’s will be one of many around the region.
“We don’t want to replace anything,” she said. “We want to continue to enhance a lot of the rich culture thatap happening there already.”
True to the eventap title, “Mostly True Stories From the Sundance Film Festival,” Redford has plenty of festival stories of her own, including an Ogden, Utah, screening where a technical breakdown passed for high art.
After stepping out during the film, Redford returned for the Q&A, where a viewer praised her, saying: “You know, I thought the fact that you had 15 minutes of silence in your film was really innovative,” the viewer told her.
Unbeknownst to Redford, the audio had cut out for 15 minutes while she was outside. The audience, giving the film the benefit of the doubt, simply sat through the silence. “I was like, ‘15 minutes of silence?’” Redford said. “People were so deeply confused… That was completely accidental.”
Redford also remembers a more analog version of Sundance, when filmmakers arrived carrying physical copies of their films and artists with little money crowded into shared accommodations around Park City.
Much has changed. Films are now delivered digitally, the festival has grown considerably and next year it will plant roots in a new city, Boulder. Redford said the new setting should change Sundance, but she does not want the move to erase what made the festival distinctive in the first place.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re going to come in polished, because thatap never been our goal,” she said. “Being slightly rough around the edges was part of our charm.”
“Mostly True Stories From the Sundance Film Festival” runs from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at Gates Concert Hall in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. in Denver. Tickets are $29 for adults, $27 for seniors and $15 for students. For tickets and more information, visit .
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