The Sundance Movie Competition is Boulder certain, leaving its dwelling of 4 a long time in Park Metropolis, Utah, for a brand new chapter in neighboring Colorado.
Organizers introduced their resolution Thursday after a yearlong search wherein quite a few U.S. cities vied to host the nation’s premiere unbiased movie pageant. The opposite finalists have been Cincinnati, Ohio, and a mixed Salt Lake Metropolis and Park Metropolis bid.
Competition leaders stated politics didn’t affect their transfer from conservative Utah to liberal Colorado. They did nonetheless make “ethos and equity values” certainly one of their standards and referred to Boulder of their announcement as a “welcoming environment.”
Why was Boulder chosen?
Boulder stood out to organizers as an artsy, walkable and medium-sized metropolis near nature. It has one of many highest concentrations {of professional} artists within the U.S. and is dwelling to the College of Colorado, the place the movie program contributes to a vibrant artwork scene, Sundance leaders stated. They famous the big pupil inhabitants and campus venues will create new alternatives to have interaction younger folks within the occasion.
Close by nature within the Rocky Mountain foothills affords room for guests and artists to stretch their legs and draw inspiration from excessive nation surroundings. It is also simply over half an hour from downtown Denver and never a lot farther to town’s worldwide airport.
When Sundance leaders started their seek for a brand new dwelling, they stated the pageant had outgrown the charming ski city of Park Metropolis and developed an air of exclusivity that took focus away from the movies. Boulder, a metropolis of 100,000 folks, has area for a extra centralized pageant. However it’s not all that extra inexpensive for attendees. The price of residing is estimated to be 31% larger than the nationwide common, versus Park Metropolis’s 33%, based on the Financial Analysis Institute.
What’s Boulder recognized for?
Actor Jonah Hill, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and — maybe most importantly — Sundance founder Robert Redford all attended the College of Colorado in Boulder. The varsity has a heady occasion tradition that generally spills into the encompassing streets. The town can also be dwelling to a non-public Buddhist school.
Redford, 88, gave the pageant’s relocation his blessing.
Simply exterior Denver’s suburbs, Boulder has its personal id — and a long time in the past a really distinctive, hippie vibe. Properly earlier than Colorado voters legalized leisure marijuana in 2012, 1000’s of College of Colorado college students and others would collect on campus to smoke pot each April 20.
At the moment, Boulder retains its attraction on the foot of the sandstone Flatirons, a foothill vary crisscrossed by mountain climbing trails that start on the Colorado Chautauqua, a cultural and performing arts hub courting to the 1800s. The pedestrian-only Pearl Road Mall with its close by theaters may present the same central hub to Park Metropolis’s Important Road.
It’s not superb for hippies, nonetheless. The college kicked the 4/20 weed fest off campus and hovering housing prices — the median dwelling value is now $1.1 million — make residing there unattainable for many.
A historical past of movie in Boulder
Movies have been proven in Boulder since 1898, when the primary kinetoscope, a tool co-invented by Thomas Edison, confirmed transferring footage to at least one particular person at a time on the Chautauqua Auditorium.
Apart from Redford, Hollywood names who attended the College of Colorado embody Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter for “Spartacus” and “Roman Holiday” who was among the many Hollywood Ten blacklisted for suspected communist sympathies within the late Nineteen Forties and Fifties.
Within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, Boulder places featured as backdrops within the Woody Allen movie “Sleeper” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” And Boulder was the fictional setting of the TV present “Mork & Mindy.”
At the moment, it is dwelling to greater than a dozen smaller movie festivals, together with the Boulder Worldwide Movie Competition and Chautauqua Silent Movie Collection.
What’s the pageant’s historical past in Utah?
Sundance has known as Park Metropolis dwelling for 41 years. Previous leaders of the pageant stated Redford selected the mountains of Utah as an area to foster unbiased filmmaking away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood. Utah’s iconic pink rock landscapes have served as a backdrop to many movies, together with “Thelma and Louise,” “Forrest Gump” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” for which the pageant is known as.
This yr, 1000’s of festivalgoers affixed vibrant yellow stickers to their winter coats that learn “Keep Sundance in Utah” in a last-ditch effort to persuade its leaders to maintain it native.
Sundance may have yet another pageant in Park Metropolis in January 2026 earlier than transferring to Boulder in 2027.
What sort of financial increase does it present?
Over 4 a long time, Sundance helped rework its quaint mountain hometown right into a famend winter vacation spot. Residence costs skyrocketed, luxurious resorts emerged and a few native companies shuttered whereas others thrived.
Out-of-state guests spent an estimated $106.4 million in Utah in the course of the 2024 pageant. Its whole financial influence that yr was estimated at $132 million, with 1,730 jobs for Utah residents and $70 million in wages for native staff. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox stated he was unhappy to see Sundance go, however the state’s financial system may maintain the loss.
Utah supplied Sundance $3.5 million to remain. Colorado lawmakers proposed $34 million in tax credit over 10 years to lure it away.
