Amy Redford shared a story about her late father, Robert, during the last Beyond Film gathering Friday afternoon at the Marquis during the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City.
“He cherished his time at his grandfather’s house in Austin, Texas, and the house, which was built into the rock of the land, was built by his grandfather and another man,” she said. “One day when Dad was about 6 years old, this man was digging a trench, and he looked at my dad, and called to him and said, ‘Freeze!’ Then he said, ‘Bobby, we are going to play a game.’”
The man told the boy that in order to win the game, he had to stay still and focus on the man’s eyes until the man stood next to him, according to Redford.
“When the man finally reached my dad, he took the shovel and severed a coral snake that was coiled between my dad’s feet and ready to strike,” she said. “That man saved my dad’s life. Without that man, there is no dad. Without that man, there is no Sundance Resort or the institute or any of the films he made that we all love and made his vision possible.”
The man was a Mexican immigrant whom Redford’s great-grandfather employed.
“People told him to fire him and let him go, but he refused,” Redford said. “The choice was a singular decision that helped my dad do his part to change the world — to protect the land, to amplify the storytellers who have shared their works with us over the past 10 days, whose works help us understand the world we live in with new eyes and fresh hearts.”
The story, Redford said, isn’t just her father’s story.
“(It’s) the story of the rich tapestry of this country,” she said. “It’s what made my dad such a passionate American. So many of us make our voices heard through our work, but it’s also time to call your tribe. It is time for action to support the immigrant and refugee communities, whose contributions will change our course for the better.”
That story was one of many during the event, which was fittingly titled, “Everyone Has a Story,” culled from a phrase Robert Redford told the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival administration and employees a few months before his death in September, said Festival Director Eugene Hernandez.
“It’s been such a grounding and clarifying statement,” he said. “We knew this would be the framing for this year’s festival. As we reflect on 43 years here, there are so many stories, so many memories, so many endearing moments — first screenings, first encounters, moments of inspiration, moments of elation, moments of sadness.”
Some of these stories are poignant, and others are small and even sometimes mundane, according to Hernandez.
“But these are the stories that we take back home with us every year after this festival,” he said. “Isn’t that part of what brings us back here, together the following year?”
John Nein, the festival’s senior programmer, took up the task to curate a cast of 13 in-person characters and a few recorded appearances from the Sundance Film Festival’s four-decade history to tell their stories.
The stories were told by Sundance Institute Artist Programs Founding Director Michelle Satter, Sundance Film Festival alumni filmmakers Richard Linklater, Celine Song and Jared and Jerusha Hess, producer Effie T. Brown, Salt Lake Tribune editor and former movie critic Sean P. Means, IndieWire Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson, former Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper, former Sundance Film Festival Managing Director Sarah Pearce and lawyer and documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter.
A few of those appearing in pre-recorded video included Geoff Gilmore, who directed the Sundance Film Festival from 1991-2009, and filmmakers Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao.
Hernandez also shared his memories of The Marquis, which was known as Harry O’s when he first attended the festival in 1993.
“It was the place where we would gather in the evening to hang out and meet each other, and then we would stand out on the sidewalk in the front and ask, ‘What are you doing now?’ and end up at someone’s condo at a party and then end up at someone else’s condo,” he said. “This was the central hub, and it makes so much sense for us that we would gather here once again, today.”
Satter, who has been with the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences, from its beginning, said the institute would continue to build the future when the film festival moves to Boulder, Colorado, next year.
“Even though our festival will take place in a new location, the Sundance Institute will continue to be the home for independent voices to engage and connect with audiences and build the future of independent storytelling,” she said. “And our labs are going to stay in Utah (at) the Sundance Resort, which means the world to me.”
Brown took the microphone and remembered a time in 2002 she heard and saw the late film critic Roger Ebert stand up for filmmaker Justin Lin after he and his film “Better Luck Tomorrow” were criticized by an audience member for portraying Asian Americans in a way that didn’t adhere to tropes.
She also talked about the predominantly white audience’s emotional reaction to a film she produced, “Real Women Have Curves,” which is about a Latina’s coming-of-age experience.
“I remember when the movie came up and looking around us, seeing the tears, seeing the laughter and seeing the audience was 100% with us as they stood up and clapped,” she said. “I said, ‘This is it. This is how movies and stories can change the world.”
The Hesses talked about how their 2004 breakout film, “Napoleon Dynamite,” which they described as a “goofy comedy about an Idaho teenager in Moonboots” got into the festival.
During the editing process, producer Jeremy Coon, without even telling the Hesses, submitted the rough cut without any music to the festival.
“(I said), ‘My career is over,’” Jared said. “I was like, ‘Friggin’ dang. Couldn’t you have waited until the film was finished and polished?”
But the film charmed Trevor Groth, the festival’s senior programmer at the time.
“Lo and behold, Jerusha and I were driving up to my home in Idaho for Thanksgiving, and we got a call. That was the best phone call I had ever gotten,” Jared emotionally said before he stopped to gather himself. “Then it was like, ‘Holy crap. We we’ve got to finish this thing.’”
Jerusha thanked Sundance and the fans of the film for their support.
“Jared and I might never win an award,” she said. “Our movies are pretty dumb, but the day we got into Sundance, we won the biggest (award) ever. It’s the audience. You guys gave us that, and we are forever grateful for this festival.”
Means shared his story, “The Day Jackie Chan Kicked My Ass,” and remembered when he interviewed Chan at a restaurant in 1996, when the martial-arts pioneer’s film, “Rumble in the Bronx,” premiered at the festival.
“I started with a question about how he choreographed a fight scene,” Means said. “And he said, ‘We sit, and we think.’”
Then Chan picked up a ketchup bottle and mimicked squeezing the condiment into Means’ face.
“Then he’d (tell me that I would) knock the Sweet ‘n’ Lo in his face, and he sort of imagined the fight would get to the point where I’d be on my back on the bar.”
Chan described the fight so well that Means actually pictured himself all bloody and lying on the bar.
“So when people ask me what my favorite Jackie Chan fight scene is, it’s not from ‘Project A’ or ‘Drunken Master,’” he said. “It’s from when he beat me up.”
Cooper and Pearce enjoyed their time at the microphone recapping a partial list of festival highlights that included things they learned and people they endured.
They laughed as they talked about building state-of-the-art cinemas in hotel ballrooms, promising the Temple Har Shalom rabbi that Kim Basinger would show up if they turned the temple into the Temple Theatre, the 1994 opening night screening of Mike Newel’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral” on the day the United States bombed Kuwait, marking the start of Operation Desert Storm.
“We were excited for that film, except the first 17 lines in the film are (the word) ‘F—,” Cooper said. “So about one-third of the audience, who were part of the Mormon contingency, stood up and left the theater.”
Song wrapped up the presentations and said she considers the Sundance Film Festival her birthplace as a filmmaker.
It happened in 2023 at the Eccles Theatre right after her debut feature, “Past Lives,” premiered.
“I wrote the script in 2019, and we were going to shoot in 2020, but of course, what happened was COVID,” she said.
Song was able to shoot the film in 2021 in the United States and Korea, and finished it in 2022.
“I remember learning the incredible honor that I got into Sundance for the year 2023, but there was a part of me that was so stressed out that it took four years to work on this movie,” she said.
Still, she took on a positive facade.
“I remember telling my cast and crew, ‘The movie’s a banger,’ because it was a banger to me,” she said. “I remember introducing the film and going to sit down in the audience.”
By the end of the film, Song, her cast and crew, watched as the audience gave two standing ovations while crying.
“I knew I was being born into a filmmaker,” she said.