Where should the Sundance Film Festival be hosted next?

iheartthed · #1 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 1:33 PM**

The Sundance Film Festival is looking at a potential move and has identified three locations being considered for the festival's future home:

Boulder, CO
Cincinnati, OH
Salt Lake City/Park City, UT (current home)

Which location should be the next home of the Sundance Festival? The Sundance Institute is evaluating locations based on this criteria:

Quote:

As part of a thorough evaluation of each potential location, the Sundance Institute assessed each city’s infrastructure, ethos and equity values, event capabilities to host the Festival, and how each finalist could sustainably serve and support the ever-growing Sundance Film Festival community of independent artists and audiences. Each finalist was required to demonstrate how they would welcome and continue to foster the diverse Sundance community and culture of independent creativity that is an integral part of the Institute and Festival experience.

Steely Dan · #2 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 1:37 PM**

Take a risk, Sundance.

Don't go the safe route.

AaronPGH · #3 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 3:14 PM**

Born and raised in Ohio.... I truly do not understand Cincinnati on this list. Lovely city, but it's such a curveball. It has always felt like an underdeveloped, more politically backwards Pittsburgh with barely a whiff of counterculture/queer arts. Is there a historical film connection I am missing? I guess you can say the same about staying in Utah, but it is a festival that was born in the Mountain West and has been there since the beginning. I spend part of my year in SLC, and while it's not an incredibly inspiring city either, the counterculture pushback against religious Mormon nuts is very real and omnipresent when you're in the city.

Then again, maybe this is exactly what Cincy needs...

galleyfox · #4 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 3:29 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

Born and raised in Ohio.... I truly do not understand Cincinnati on this list. Lovely city, but it's such a curveball. It has always felt like an underdeveloped, more politically backwards Pittsburgh with barely a whiff of counterculture/queer arts. Is there a historical film connection I am missing? I guess you can say the same about staying in Utah, but it is a festival that was born in the Mountain West and has been there since the beginning. I spend part of my year in SLC, and while it's not an incredibly inspiring city either, the counterculture pushback against religious Mormon nuts is very real and omnipresent when you're in the city.

Then again, maybe this is exactly what Cincy needs...

Infrastructure.

They’re clearly looking for a medium sized city with lots of existing theaters in the core downtown with access to nearby hotels and an international airport and experience hosting conventions.

It’s also a day trip for Chicago, Detroit, Indy, Nashville, Columbus, ect which have more than enough interest in film to attend a film festival.

sopas ej · #5 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 3:50 PM**

It never made sense to me why they hold the Sundance Film Festival in the dead of winter in a snowy mountain town. I had a co-worker who attended it back in 2007 or so and he said it was bitingly cold. Though he enjoyed it.

MayDay · #6 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 4:21 PM**

I truly do not understand Cincinnati on this list. Lovely city, but it's such a curveball. It has always felt like an underdeveloped, more politically backwards Pittsburgh with barely a whiff of counterculture/queer arts.

Might want to read up on a little bit of Cincinnati's history and role in counterculture/queer arts. If counterculture/queer arts is your vibe, the CAC/Mapplethorpe exhibit is something you should be aware of (and grateful for).

Crawford · #7 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 4:55 PM**

Obviously Boulder or Park City.

Why would a festival rooted in downhill skiing and alpine delights move to Cincy? Sounds like they just threw in a random city to extract benefits from Park City.

These film festivals are usually place-specific. You can't just move Venice or Cannes to Columbus or Tulsa and expect it to be the same.

Docere · #8 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 4:57 PM**

Winnipeg.

AaronPGH · #9 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 5:50 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MayDay

Might want to read up on a little bit of Cincinnati's history and role in counterculture/queer arts. If counterculture/queer arts is your vibe, the CAC/Mapplethorpe exhibit is something you should be aware of (and grateful for).

Sure, this is a major moment in the culture war censorship battle and something we should be grateful for. It doesn't say anything about what's happening in Cincy right now on a larger scale or as part of the city's overall queer cultural identity.

Buckeye Native 001 · #10 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 6:00 PM**

I'm not sure it should be in Cincinnati (I think it should stay in Utah), but that city and its film commission have bent over backwards recently trying to entice production companies to shoot movies in Cincinnati.

dktshb · #11 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 9:19 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopas ej

It never made sense to me why they hold the Sundance Film Festival in the dead of winter in a snowy mountain town. I had a co-worker who attended it back in 2007 or so and he said it was bitingly cold. Though he enjoyed it.

The whole downhill skiing apre ski culture. Well to do people go to ski towns in the winter. It makes total sense to me.

dktshb · #12 Posted **Sep 13, 2024, 9:25 PM**

Keeping it in Park City makes the most sense. If their going to move it though they should go to another resort mountain town. Aspen or Breckenridge would make more sense than Boulder CO.

craigs · #13 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 6:08 AM**

Park City.

jmecklenborg · #14 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 3:17 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

I'm not sure it should be in Cincinnati (I think it should stay in Utah), but that city and its film commission have bent over backwards recently trying to entice production companies to shoot movies in Cincinnati.

The local blue bloods woke up to the fact that low taxes, cheap homes, and being "a great place to raise a family" aren't the best corporate recruiting tools for people who aren't ever going to have kids and that "the-best-and-brightest" pretty much just like to take photos of themselves, eat at restaurants, and be semi-famous. This is compounded by the fact that P&G is usually among the largest advertisers on the planet, and young women in marketing really like to to take photos of themselves.

Enter the grand plan to create a music/cultural festival on par with Bonnarroo/Coachella/Burning Man on this site of the former Coney Island Amusement Park and the recruitment of this film festival to Downtown. It has already been identified that the Taft Theater and former Masonic Temple (which is big and crazy on the inside), which sit directly opposite P&G's world HQ, would be the hub of a relocated festival. Here is the block: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1019...oASAFQAw%3D%3D

The blue bloods are up to other wild stuff like trying to build a retort/corporate retreat at Red River Gorge (about 90 minutes south in Kentucky) and do the same in Adams County (home, curiously, of Afroman), which is a bit closer, and lacks rock climbing but is nevertheless pretty scenic.

craigs · #15 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 8:47 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The local blue bloods woke up to the fact that low taxes, cheap homes, and being "a great place to raise a family" aren't the best corporate recruiting tools for people who aren't ever going to have kids

Oh, noes--not the childless! They are the worst! Hardly people at all, amirite? Animals!

mrnyc · #16 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 9:53 PM**

well …

Louisville, Santa Fe, and Atlanta are out of the running. A final decision won't be announced until after next year's festival in Q1 2025.

umm, ok.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/festi...ti-1235046965/

xzmattzx · #17 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 9:57 PM**

It shows you how much I know about things out west, because I always thought it was in Idaho.

If it's not in the town that it's always been in, and near or at the ski resort that it bears the name of, then why keep the name? And if it's being moved, why not just go full throttle and move it as far away from any ski resort as possible?
Why not Key West, or Provincetown, or Myrtle Beach, or Scottsdale, or the Punta Cana?

mrnyc · #18 Posted **Sep 14, 2024, 10:01 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

It shows you how much I know about things out west, because I always thought it was in Idaho.

If it's not in the town that it's always been in, and near or at the ski resort that it bears the name of, then why keep the name? And if it's being moved, why not just go full throttle and move it as far away from any ski resort as possible?
Why not Key West, or Provincetown, or Myrtle Beach, or Scottsdale, or the Punta Cana?

cinci is fine, but des moines is better. centralize.

iheartthed · #19 Posted **Sep 15, 2024, 1:37 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

It shows you how much I know about things out west, because I always thought it was in Idaho.

If it's not in the town that it's always been in, and near or at the ski resort that it bears the name of, then why keep the name? And if it's being moved, why not just go full throttle and move it as far away from any ski resort as possible?
Why not Key West, or Provincetown, or Myrtle Beach, or Scottsdale, or the Punta Cana?

Is the ski resort named after the festival? I think the festival is named after the Native American ritual?

JManc · #20 Posted **Sep 15, 2024, 3:58 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Is the ski resort named after the festival? I think the festival is named after the Native American ritual?

Sundance? It's named after (founder) Robert Redford's character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.