Every fall, Sundance Institute’s PR people fan out to meet with Wasatch Front media to renew the film fest’s vows of love for the state and ask how they can get locals more involved in the screenings.
This year they’ll likely be explaining recent hints from Sundance that it’s not delighted with its host state. The Legislature cut funding from the Sundance Film Festival from $1 million in 2016 to $500,000 for 2017. (The fest generates a gross domestic product of $72.5 million in Utah.)
Sean Means at SLTrib.com learned Sundance will no longer screen movies at Ogden’s historic Peery’s Egyptian Theater during the 2017 festival. (Salt Lake City theaters apparently will still host films and a secondary kick-off party.)
And, for what it’s worth, Sundance gave Entertainment Weekly the first look at the 2017 poster, inspired by a Pablo Picasso photography series. “The 2017 Sundance Film Festival design began with the idea of illumination, and the representation of film as painting with light,” according to the Sundance creators.
The circles of light were DIYed, in part, with camping lights and rubber bands. So Utah.
The background, shot from the Sundance Resort in Provo Canyon, is a silhouette of Mt. Timpanogos, an admission that the festival is actually in Utah, which once a year is allowed to become a distant suburb of LA.
Park City’s ten days of cinema glory are Jan. 19-29, 2017.
