I’ve said it forever now — there are waaaaaay too many film festivals. Every little town in America has a film festival now! I’m pretty sure my neighbors hold film festivals in my living room when I go out of town! And by “film festivals” I of course mean “meth parties”! But that’s neither here nor there …
Anyway, Robert was asked by some intrepid reporter whether he thought there were too many film festivals these days. Here’s what he had to say:
Yeah. That’s a tricky thing for me to be saying — it could look pretty selfish — but I do think there’s such a thing as too much of certain things. Look, I think there’s now festivals for neighborhoods. If that satisfies people and they continue to grow and everyone’s happy, so be it. My gut says there’s such a thing as too much information, but I don’t know.
When we started there was very little out there; now, there’s a lot. My feeling is when the day comes when we’re no longer providing the mission we started with — not creating something new for audiences, not creating opportunities for new artists to have a place to come and develop — then we shouldn’t be here, and we won’t. As long as we continue to create new advantages, we will continue, but not just to be continuing.
The Sundance Film Festival — which was founded by Redford and was one of the first of its kind — kicks off on Thursday for its 25th year.
he is very correct, a man from the actual old school! I love his so down to earth attitude.
~LIA~
hey wasn’t the new beet writer supposed to be unveiled yesterday?
we tend to dilute whats special in this world. keep doing your festival….it is special.
He is just pissed because the Toronto Film Festival is more important than his little festival.
Toronto is the best, they played “Sounds like teen spirit: a popumentary” :D
Ive been to the Tribeca film festicrap and it sucked so hard.
Its always freezing and man Tribeca in general is a bland ass place anyway. The only thing you would gothere for is if you had a big ass loft to live in. The movies arent shown in your own big ass loft now are they? Nope. They are in other venues sometimes not even near Tribeca.
Long story short BOOOOO TRIBECA “Film” Thingie!
Also Sundance is kind of “whatever” now isnt it? I thought Hollywierd was gonna boycot that because of the prop 8 Mormon hate issue?
Are you kidding Donkey Punch?
He is one of the greatest actors of all time.
And one of the most famous.
And Sundance is still considered one greatest festivals there is.
I totally agree with him.
There’s 200 film festivals every single year.
It’s over the top and just down right ridiculous.
what a smart statement from an amazing talent. it’s nice when a celebrity can speak well enough on his own without alienating half the world, when his publicist has the day off.
It’s how I feel about award shows.
Robert Redford is totally awesome. I do think it looks weird, though, when old people dye their hair a really strong colour that obviously isn’t their natural colour any more. (See also: recent pictures of Sting.)
Umm…I don’t really think it was the first of it’s kind.
The first film festival was the Venice Film Festival which began in 1938…Sundance didn’t start until 1978, or close to it….and there have a been a lot in between.
I agree that Film Festivals are cropping up everywhere now, but that shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing. There are lots of talented filmmakers out there that will never be able to showcase their films at a prestigious festival such as Sundance. I worked for a really awesome Film Festival this year that was made entirely of documentaries that raised awareness about issues in developing countries.
Redford is right in his assumption that Film Festivals can be of little value if they don’t produce original works or help to promote taleneted, young, filmmakers…but to trivialize all new, small Film Festivals isn’t fair. The one I worked for is a really small one that goes on in Ottawa and we really need the word to get out.