UNITED STATES 15-25 Jan 2009 Protests could mar 25th Sundance Film Festival

The 25th Sundance Film Festival will be thinly attended if gay activists upset over the Proposition 8 vote in California have their way. They are urging stars and film makers to boycott the festival, one of the biggest celebrity-studded events of the year, because it takes place in Utah. The state is the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormon church strenuously backed the proposition to end same-sex marriage in California. Gay activists have signalled plans to protest at the event.

The festival films will be screened in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance in Utah for the benefit of some 50,000 attendees. Up to two hundred films will be selected from more than 9,000 submissions.

Mary and Max, a clay animation feature film from Academy Award-winning short film creators Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs has been chosen to open the 2009 festival.

The Sundance Institute, founded by actor Robert Redford in 1981, presents the annual festival. It is promoted as the premier showcase for US and international independent film.

It began in Salt Lake City in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival. In 1991 it was renamed the Sundance Film Festival after Redford's character, the Sundance Kid from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Many now-famous filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, got their start at Sundance. Sundance also introduced to audiences successful films such as Saw, The Blair Witch Project, Better Luck Tomorrow, Primer, Reservoir Dogs, Little Miss Sunshine and Napoleon Dynamite. Dec/08

RELATED READING:

Sundance Film Festival 2009
http://festival.sundance.org/2009/

Celebs Urged to Boycott Sundance Because of Proposition 8 (Hollywood Scoop 9 Dec 2008)
http://movies.hollyscoop.com/film-festivals/celebs-urged-to-boycott-sundance-because-of-proposition-8_1205.aspx