Sundance 2019: How was the independent film festival founded and what is screening this year?

Robert Redford behind Utah showcase championing American cinema

The Sundance Film Festival returns to Park City, Utah, this week and runs from 24 January to 3 February.

America’s biggest independent cinema showcase is this year set to make headlines with a number of controversial works being premiered, not least Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, in which Zac Efron plays serial killer Ted Bundy, and Leaving Neverland, a documentary re-examining the child abuse allegations against the late pop superstar Michael Jackson.

Last year, Ari Aster’s shocking debut feature Hereditary starring Toni Colettte was the hit of the Sundance programme, branded “the most traumatically terrifying horror movie in ages”.

What else is showing at Sundance 2019?

This year's line-up includes several strong documentary entries in addition to Dan Reed's four-hour Jackson investigation.

Untouchable from Ursula Macfarlane explores the Harvey Weinstein affair; Where's My Roy Cohn? profiles the feared attorney who once represented Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump; and The Inventor is the latest from Alex Gibney, recounting the extraordinary collapse of Silicon Valley bio-tech company Theranos.

Knock Down the House from Rachel Lears, meanwhile, documents popular congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her shock election victory in last summer's New York Democratic primary while Hail Satan examines the rise of the Satanic Temple.

Another politically minded offering is The Report starring Annette Bening and Adam Driver, while new films from Jennifer Kent and Dan Gilroy, responsible for 2014 hits The Babadook and Nightcrawler respectively, are generating a lot of interest.

Kent returns with The Nightingale, a 19th-century revenge drama, while Gilroy reunites with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo for Velvet Buzzsaw, an ensemble art-world horror that will subsequently arrive on Netflix.

Chinese-American family drama The Farewell, death row polemic Clemency and Honey Boy, written by Shia LaBeouf, are all likewise tipped to create a stir.

You can see the full selection here.

How was the festival founded?

Sundance began life as the Utah/US Film Festival in Salt Lake City in August 1978. It was founded by two members of the Utah Film Commission – John Earle and Cirina Hampton Catania – in partnership with Sterling Van Wagenen, the head of Wildwood, a production company belonging to actor Robert Redford, himself a resident of the state.

Its purpose was to persuade filmmakers to bring their productions to the western state and saw the New Hollywood kicked into life by Easy Rider (1969) using its newfound influence to champion independent directors, producers and actors working outside of the outmoded studio system.

Robert Redord with Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Getty) (Getty Images)

Redford served as chairman on a project that also placed particular emphasis on American filmmaking, screening revivals of such classics as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Deliverance (1972) and Mean Streets (1973) during its inaugural run.

Katharine Ross, Redford’s co-star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), was among the members of its first jury, led by screenwriter Gary Allison.

The festival was a success and quickly grew in stature, relocating to the mountain town of Park City in 1981 and rebranding as Sundance in 1984 when Van Wagenen’s spin-off venture, The Sundance Initiative, took over management, both deriving their name from Redford’s character in the popular western.

As chronicled in Peter Biskind's book Down and Dirty Pictures (2004), Sundance enjoyed its heyday in the 1990s when it brought early works by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh and Darren Aronofsky to the attention of a wider audience.

The many subsequently-acclaimed movies it helped promote include: Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Clerks (1994), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Donnie Darko (2001), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Moon (2009), Fruitvale Station (2013), Boyhood (2014) and Get Out (2017).

Redford opened its first London leg in April 2012.

The Utah Sundance, centered around Park City's historic Egyptian Theatre, sees attendees risk the January snow to queue for a first look at the films likely to set the pace as the American film year begins anew.