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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

Redford's Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival was a monumental contribution, changing the film industry for the better, a boon to indie filmmakers. IMO this is Redford's most important legacy.

This is so essential now especially as Hollywood has become more consolidated and corporate.

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I heard the late Roger Ebert once say that Robert Redford had done more for independent cinema than anyone.

Indeed. I read that movies like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Napoleon Dynamite" got their break at Sundance.

Quentin Tarantino went through Sundance Lab while preparing Reservoir Dogs. There is some test footage of him and Steve Buscemy he shot there reciting some dialogue.

He also met Terry Gilliam there, and he always recounts this first meeting fondly, so the festival led him into meeting an important mentor.

Outside of Quentin, Paul Thomas Anderson, a lot of people are called the Sundance Generation. Sundance changed cinema.

Yup! He was a huge part in giving so many filmmakers a shot at becoming household names. Not a lot of people know about this.

I'm sad about his passing. I've always been such a huge fan of his.

Had Redford passed some 30 years ago, your remarks would have been true. By the early 2000s, Sundance became nothing more than a marketplace for a formulaic film type (quirky dramedies with offbeat characters) that big studios (a.k.a. Hollywood) would bid over. Sundance ultimately commodified "independent film".

I just realized this is probably from the sundance kid in some way

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