Robert Redford is a two-time Oscar winner and founder of the Sundance film festival, which often serves as a launch pad for future award-winners. It was therefore no surprise that Redford was pressed to comment on the lack of diversity among this year’s Oscars nominees during the festival’s opening day press conference on Thursday in Utah.
Redford deflected the question with the words: “I’m not into Oscars – not into that.”
Later, concerned at how his remark might be interpreted by the press in attendance, Redford elaborated. “What I mean is I’m not focused on that part,” he added. “To me it’s about the work. Whatever reward comes of it that’s great. I don’t think about it. There’s nothing more important than the work when you’re doing it. So once that work is done, I back off. It’s just not something that occupies my thinking.”
Redford, however, stressed that he values diversity in film. Sundance, since its inception more than 20 years ago, has served to showcase films from an ethnically diverse pool of film-makers who have gone on to become powerful forces in the industry. Recent examples include Ryan Coogler, who won the Grand Jury Prize at the event in 2013, before going on to make Creed; and Ava DuVernay, who collected the director award for Middle of Nowhere the previous year, which she followed up with the Oscar-nominated Selma.
“Diversity comes out of the word independence,” said Redford. “Basically that’s the principal word that we operate from. It’s a word I’ve operated from personally most of my life: the value of the word independent. It’s an automatic thing: if you’re independently minded, you’re going to do things different from the common form. Therefore you’re going to have more diverse products.”
Redford said he was proud of how Sundance has become a haven for film-makers from all backgrounds, but didn’t take credit for the often timely topics the directors address in their films.
“We don’t bring them up,” Redford said. “We just put the spotlight on the artists who bring them up. Artists are making films about what’s on the public conversation. Because we’re in support of the artist, we say: ‘Well, what are they going to come up with? They come up with those diverse points of view. We don’t personally take a position of advocacy in that sense.”
Redford also used the conference as an opportunity to “straighten something out” about how he believes he’s come to be viewed by many industry members for so closely aligning himself with the independent film movement.
Said Redford: “I want to make it clear: I’m not against the mainstream. I’ve very happily been a part of that – a lot of films I’ve been a part of have been mainstream films.
“The idea of running an independent film festival was not meant to be like insurgents coming down from the mountain to attack the mainstream. It was meant to broaden the category is all. We use independent film to expand the category, so it’s a fuller picture.”
Redford said he created Sundance in the ski town of Park City, Utah, in 1978, to simply “create a path for artists to show their work”, admitting that he initially assumed it wouldn’t thrive.
“What happened when more and more people came,” said Redford. “I realized people were coming up here of all places – Utah! – to see stuff they couldn’t see in the marketplace. That’s when I realized we were creating opportunity to have more viewership.”
Asked at the beginning of the conference what he was most looking forward to at this year’s edition of the festival, Redford dryly said: “The wrap party.”
- The 2016 Sundance film festival runs 21 January - 31 January.
