Redford talks Trump, growth in Utah as Sundance kicks off


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PARK CITY — The usual sights and sounds of the Sundance Film Festival were apparent Thursday.

Cafes and shops were filled to overflowing. Cars with license plates from all over the country circled like vultures, looking for parking spots. Excited festivalgoers met up with family and friends as a light snow dusted the streets of Park City.

But amidst the typical commotion, a major shift in the political leadership of the United States overshadowed the festival's opening hours, as its brain trust was asked frequently to speculate about the impending change.

Robert Redford, Sundance Festival president, obliged by openly musing on the effects of Donald Trump's election and the future of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City as part of the festival's panel discussion.

Redford said the tone of Sundance will not be swayed by a change in leadership under President-elect Trump after he is sworn in Friday, but added that he believes Trump's election will "galvanize" Americans directly affected by new policies.

"In this current dialogue, it looks like a lot of things are going to being taken away, or tried to be taken away from us," he said. "And I think what that's going to do is going to galvanize the people. ... Those people who weren't interested who figured 'why' (or) 'who cares?' are now going to realize that they're going to be directly affected and they're going to step up."

Redford added that while there are people who feel "the darkness is closing in around them," he sees no big changes for the festival's business or artistic decisions.

"Presidents come and go, the pendulum swings. It swings back and forth, it always has and probably always will," he said. "If politics come up in the stories the filmmakers are telling, so be it, but we don't play advocacy."

Director David Lowery, whose film "Ghost Story" will be premiering at Sundance on Monday, spoke with Redford as part of a moderated panel. He agreed with Redford's sentiment about the mixing of politics and film.

"I don't want to go turn that into a soap box," Lowery said, when asked how his filmmaking might be affected in a new United States. "I'm not going to try to make a didactic ... political statement, but every film is political."

Panel member Sydney Freeland, director of "Deidra & Laney Rob a Train," which debuts Monday at Sundance, said she is still "processing" how a new political climate might affect her artistic choices.

"I'm trying to find stories that feel or have a sense of authenticity or truth to them," Freeland said. "My response to this current climate is to find films that ring true."

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Hours after Redford and some of his featured directors mused about the intersection of politics and film, Al Gore — perhaps the festival's most politically influential celebrity — arrived to attend the worldwide premiere of his new documentary, "An Inconvenient Sequel."

The film is a follow-up to to Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," a well-known documentary about climate change that debuted in 2006. Gore, who served as vice president to Bill Clinton for two terms in the 1990s, said the sequel focuses on the business incentives presenting themselves to companies that aspire to be environmentally conscious, as well as the political barriers that he believes stand in the way.

"It's beyond any scale that we're used to thinking about," Gore said of climate change in remarks following the premiere. "This is not a political issue, it's a moral issue, it's an ethical issue, it's a spiritual issue. Who are we? Are we a pathetic, self-interested, short-sighted species whose run on the planet will soon be over because we destroyed ourselves? I refuse to believe that."

Gore also answered questions about his meeting with Trump in December, where the two discussed climate change. He criticized Trump's choice of Scott Pruitt for head of the Environmental Protection Agency, though he didn't mention Pruitt by name.

"There have been a lot of people who have started out as deniers and who have changed over time. ... Whether or not Donald Trump ... will take the kind of approach that continues (climate change) progress, we'll have to see," Gore said. "But let me reiterate — no one person can stop this. It's too big now."

At the opening press conference, Redford also wondered aloud about the future of Sundance Film Festival's relationship with Park City and the state of Utah, bringing up the issues of population growth and development.

"I think you can see the incredible (amount of) development that's going on here. … Are we going to be able to preserve a place for us in the city or not?" he speculated, while adding that his working relationship with city officials is positive. "The question is, with the amount of people and the growth that's going on, at some point there's going to be a clash."

Redford didn't get more specific than that, but Sundance Festival Director John Cooper took the opportunity to call Park City a world leader in environmental stewardship, long known to be an issue close to Redford.

"They have the most rigorous plan for cutting the carbon footprint ... of anybody in the world right now," along with Copenhagen, Denmark, Cooper said. "I really (gained) a lot of respect for this city. So I think they're trying to create something that other people are going to copy."

This year's Sundance Film Festival runs through Jan. 29.

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Ben Lockhart

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