Strug, Kerri, and John Lopez.Landing On My Feet:
A Diar y of Dreams.Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews
McMeel, 1997.
Nicholas Birns
See also Olympic Games of 1992; Olympic Games
of 1996; Sports.
Sundance Film Festival
Identification A film festival in the United States
Place Park City, Utah
During the 1990’s, the Sundance Film Festival became the
premier showcase for aspiring filmmakers and established it-
self as the largest independent cinema festival in the United
States and as one of the leading international film festivals.
When it began in September, 1978, in Salt Lake City,
Utah, the annual Sundance Film Festival was called
the Utah/U.S. Film Festival. Conceived by the Utah
Film Commission as a way to attract both filmmakers
and tourists to the state, the original festival pre-
sented a retrospective of classic American films,
panel discussions, and some independent (indie)
films, works by unknown filmmakers outside the
Hollywood structure. Heavily in debt, the festival was
renamed the United States Film and Video Festival
and moved to the ski resort of Park City for the third
festival in January, 1981. In 1985, Robert Redford’s
Sundance Institute, founded in 1981 to help inde-
pendent filmmakers, took over the management of
the festival. With the new financial support, staffing,
and Redford’s celebrity, the festival began to flour-
ish and gain prominence. The 1985 festival included
international films for the first time.
A turning point came in 1989 with Steven
Soderbergh’s debut film, sex, lies, and videotape,
which won the inaugural Audience Award (Dra-
matic) and received sensational promotion and
press. It was the festival’s first film to become a com-
mercial success, earning over $25 million at the box
office. In 1990, the festival changed its name to the
Sundance/United States Film Festival. That year’s
event included Jane Campion’s feature debut,
Sweetie, Michael Moore’s documentaryRoger and Me,
and Hal Hartley’s debut film,The Unbelievable Truth,
all released the year before.
In 1991, the Sundance Institute celebrated its
tenth anniversary, and the festival was renamed the
Sundance Film Festival. Todd Haynes’s Poison
(1991), an early independent film with gay themes,
won the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic). Sundance
1992 presented Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature,
Reservoir Dogs(1992), a violent heist movie that set
the tone for his subsequent films. Other highlights
included Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (1991),
which starred Denzel Washington and Sarita Choud-
hury, and Errol Morris’s A Brief Histor y of Time
(1991), a documentary about physicist Stephen
Hawking. Highly acclaimed films shown at the 1993
festival included Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi
(1992) and Paul Thomas Anderson’sCigarettes and
Coffee(1993).
By 1994, the business aspect of the festival had be-
come obvious, as agents, attorneys, filmmakers, dis-
tribution companies, publicists, and others in the
film industry crowded into Park City. The 1994 festi-
val screened ninety feature films, including Mike
Newell’sFour Weddings and a Funeral, Ben Stiller’sRe-
ality Bites, Steve James’s documentaryHoop Dreams,
and Kevin Smith’s cult filmClerks(all released in
1994), which won the Sundance Filmmakers Tro-
phy, as well as awards at the Cannes Film Festival.
The huge overflow of rejected films led to the cre-
ation of Slamdance, the first of numerous alterna-
tive festivals. Sundance 1995 showed over one hun-
dred feature films and seventy shorts. Ed Burns’s
debut filmThe Brothers McMullen(1995) won the
Grand Jury Prize.
Sundance 1996 had about 10,000 attendees and
heavy snowfall of ten feet in ten days. The Grand
Jury Prize winner was Todd Solondz’sWelcome to the
Dollhouse(1995). By 1997, the festival was generating
over $20 million of direct investment into Park City.
However, the huge crowds were overwhelming the
facilities, and the entire telephone system crashed
regularly, so the new 1,300-seat Eccles Center was
built in time for Sundance 1998. Marc Levin’sSlam
(1998), a prison drama about a jailed black poet,
won the 1998 Sundance Grand Jury Prize (Dra-
matic) and also the Cannes Film Festival Camera
d’Or prize.
The decade ended with more excitement, com-
mercial success, and hype than ever before, with the
screening of the independent horror filmThe Blair
Witch Project(1999) at the 1999 festival. The film fol-
lows three Montgomery College film students who
disappear in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland,
while shooting a documentary in October, 1994, and820 Sundance Film Festival The Nineties in America