Attention Film Aficionados!

January 24, 2012

It’s that time of year again...time for the annual Sundance Film Festival. Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the U.S., and it runs from January 19th to the 29th in Park City, Utah. Last year, more than 45,000 people attended. In 2011, there were over 3,800 film submissions. The festival began in 1978 and has changed names a few times.

Fun Facts:

• Most people think Robert Redford started it, but it was the head of his company at the time, Sterling Van Wagenen. Redford has been there through it all though, and helped the festival grow.
• The festival was first named the Utah/US Film Festival. It changed to Sundance Film Festival in 1984.
• A few of the featured films from 1978 were Deliverance, A Street Car Named Desire, and Midnight Cowboy.

Check out their website. There are plenty of snippets of all the different films with a PDF version of all the runners for non-competitive and competitive films. They have a great synopsis of each film! It also lists a history of the festival and has many other great links. I always love to see who all the current winners are, and then I try to place holds on them early. MCPL has quite a few of the past nominees and winners. If they’re not in our system, we’re more than happy to order them for you through WorldCat. I’ve received many of them that way too.

Jolene D.
Blue Springs North Branch