Sundance film festival is an important event that is organized in the month of January every year in Park City, Utah. It is a premier film festival that features popular films made both in the United States as well as in several other countries across the world. The festival was originally instituted as the United States Film Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah. It showed old films and held seminars for film makers. It also held a national level competition with the intention of promoting films made outside Hollywood. Later on documentary films were also included in the festival and its venue was shifted to Park City, Utah which continues to be its host till today.
The festival, since its inception, has, over the years, grown into a wide platform for a comprehensive critical appraisal of the U S and international films. The festival shows film of various genres, holds panel discussions, cultural events, youth programs, exhibitions and live entertainment performances. Online exhibitions are also held for the benefit of those audiences who cannot come to witness the festival at the spot.
The Sundance film festival runs for ten days and attracts more than 45,000 spectators from across the world every year. The online viewership, however, exceeds 1,000,000. The total audience along with the artists, critics and organizers of the festival has blossomed into a unique international community of film lovers. While the 2008 Sundance Film Festival was scheduled for January 17 through 27, the next year event is scheduled to be held from January 15 through 25, 2009.
