Sundance fest promises films on race, sexuality, violence

SHAPIRO: That’s NPR’s Mandalit del Barco speaking with us from the Sundance Film Festival, which starts tonight in Park City, Utah.

Redford, the Sundance Institute president and founder, spoke to an audience at Park City’s historic Egyptian Theatre, along with Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam and Film Festival Director John Cooper. To borrow a line from my friend Peter at /Film, “the Sundance Film Festival isn’t just a film festival, but a look into the future of cinema”. Sundance, since its inception over 20 years ago, has served to showcase films from an ethnically diverse pool of film-makers who have gone on to become powerful forces in the industry. The festival lasts until January 31.

He’s most excited for the audience’s reaction.. “People aren’t aware of the pressures”.

The festival’s documentary slate continues to expand.

“I can see the headline: ‘I don’t like Oscars, ‘” Redford joked.

“Diversity comes out of the word independence”, said Redford. We look at some of this year’s films through the lens of the books that served as their source material.

“Basically that’s the principal word that we operate from”.

“We just put the spotlight on the artists who bring them up”.

While the original film was live-action, filmmakers chose to make “Snowtime!” animated but maintained the important themes portrayed in the original film, such as friendship, responsibility and coping with the loss of a loved one.

“Together with a lot of organizations like ours whose job it to support and find new storytellers, we do provide a really great pipeline of talent into the mainstream”, she said. “I believe that’s why they won’t talk about it”. “The technology may be driving us to smaller and smaller things, but you can’t replace the value of gathering in community space in the dark on a big screen and being transported if you are”.

Kenneth Lonergan, whose 2000 film “You Can Count on Me” won the grand jury Prize and was nominated for two Oscars, is already attracting attention for “Manchester by the Sea”, starring Casey Affleck as a Boston handyman suddenly in charge of his teenage nephew.

He humorously clarified: “I can hear the headlines now: ‘[Redford] Hates Oscars”.

“No! That’s for Donald Trump to say”. What I mean is I’m not focused on that part. Whatever reward comes of it that’s great.

“We wanted to be weird and keep things off beat, it’s more interesting”. To discover more of the award-winning products you love with Samsung, please visit www.samsung.com and for the latest Samsung news, please visit news.samsung.com/us and follow on Twitter @SamsungNewsUS. “The idea was, why not bring the festival here, because it’s weird?” Maybe some people would like to ski – wouldn’t that be fun?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Two little clowns I know took a fancy to her. So I think she might be sticking around for a bit.

“It wasn’t the place you’d expect a festival to come”. Three of my favorite films of 2015 I saw for the first time at Sundance (Brooklyn, James White and The Witch, for those keeping score at home), during that frantic week of running around in the cold mountain air, which more than makes up for the minor challenges of the location.

Robert Redford relies on independent filmmakers to candidly address society’s ills in movies.

“It’s always been tough for indie film…it’s tough for film in general cause there’s threats in distribution that take away from what used to be a simple equation”. Check back with the Herald, online and in print, for festival updates. Money is at the core, changing times is at the core, and other threats that didn’t exist before.