Sundance Film Festival
20th to 30th January 2005
Sundance Institute presents the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, an exhibition of work that showcases the best of independent cinema. This year, the programming staff viewed nearly 5,000 submissions to select the approximately 125 feature-length documentary and dramatic films and 80 shorts for presentation at this year's Festival.
Widely considered the premier showcase of U.S. and international independent film, the Sundance Film Festival has its origins in the Utah/U.S. Film Festival which began in 1978. The Festival originally focused primarily on the presentation of retrospective films and filmmaker seminars. However, it also featured a national competition aimed at drawing attention to emerging American films made outside the Hollywood system. In 1981, the Festival moved to Park City, Utah, and grew to include documentaries and short films along with its program of dramatic features.
In 1985, the Film Festival added international films to its programs and became a part of Sundance Institute, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1981 by Robert Redford to cultivate new work in film and theatre. The move provided the Festival with year-round administration, financial backing, and a network of contacts, and Sundance Institute gained a powerful vehicle for the presentation of new work by U.S. and international independent filmmakers. In 1991, the Festival was officially renamed Sundance Film Festival.
The Sundance Film Festival is universally regarded as the foremost showcase for American independent films. The Festival culminates in the live broadcast of the Sundance Film Festival Awards, where kudos for excellence are bestowed by a jury and by audience vote. Past Festivals have included films that have literally charted the history of independent cinema: Sex, Lies and Videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hoop Dreams, Memento, The Full Monty, Shine, The Blair Witch Project, In the Bedroom, The Good Girl, Dogtown and Z-Boys, American Splendor, Capturing the Friedmans, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Thirteen, and The Station Agent.
The Sundance Film Festival programming team views thousands of films from around the world to create, each January, a slate of features and documentaries that inspire, challenge, delight, startle, move, and thrill festivalgoers. Archival gems from early independent filmmakers, works by indigenous artists, animation of every kind, cutting-edge experimental works, midnight cult films, and the innovative Sundance Online Film Festival make the Festival a complete film experience that celebrates the art and community of filmmaking.
For full details - www.sundance.org
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