The Sundance Institute and the film festival it ignited have reigned as preeminent voices in independent storytelling for more than 40 years. Soaring in its rustic mountain retreat, Sundance has routinely sidestepped Hollywood’s gatekeepers, bringing feverish attention to new voices and unsung films, defiant in its distance from the major studios and their executives.
The news of its Chicago arrival — Sundance Institute x Chicago 2024 from June 28 to 30 — is not only exhilarating, but it also further validates, on a national stage, the significance of Chicago’s increasingly robust cinema culture and filmmaking prowess. It is the first domestic venture of this sort outside of Utah.
Sundance is in the business of cultivating talent and building audience. Its choice of Chicago, an option made viable through a thoughtful partnership with the Chicago Film Office at the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and Choose Chicago, was not made in spite of the more than 50 local film festivals, industry conferences and talent incubators that have fought hard to flourish here. It was made largely because of them.
In a city rich with clever, curatorially savvy, politically astute, and highly entertaining festival and art house offerings, we are uniquely fortunate. Few cities can make the same claim. Ours is an increasingly diverse collective, led by the eldest of the bunch, the Chicago International Film Festival, North America’s longest-running competitive film festival soon to be celebrating its 60th anniversary this fall. They and their fellow festivals and exhibitors are why Chicago is such a fertile environment for what Sundance has championed in service of independent cinema like no other: heat.
Big brands get attention. They’re built for it. And make no mistake, Sundance is big. It expects, of course, that its enduring spotlight will accompany it here to Chicago. And based on the event and programming partnerships being discussed and brokered by the Chicago Alliance of Film Festivals, there are legit expectations for collateral benefits to be realized across the local festival, art house and filmmaker ecosystem.
The Sundance Institute x Chicago weekend also punctuates another local first. The Independent Film Exhibition Conference, a national trade event organized jointly by the Art House Convergence and the Film Festival Alliance, will bring 500 industry stakeholders to the Siskel Film Center and the Chicago Cultural Center during that last week in June to debate strategies and share methods for advancing the impact and sustainability of film festivals and independent exhibitors. And it all kicks off with Filmscape Chicago (June 21-23) at CineCity Studios, a free event featuring filmmakers, industry specialists and vendors designed for practitioners at every level, including students.
Local thought leaders and film industry advocates have long called for and led efforts to cultivate Chicago’s film culture and filmmaking communities. We envision Chicago as an epicenter where film in all its disciplines is broadly recognized as artful storytelling and creative vocation. And it’s happening! Record production levels, hit TV series, workforce development and training programs, new soundstages, a burgeoning independent scene and the import of industry heavyweights: This is what success looks like. It’s an evolution we all should be proud of. Sundance’s inaugural weekend, brief as it may be, only broadens those aspirations and elevates the possibilities. For Choose Chicago to join the city in throwing its collective weight behind these efforts says a lot about our film community’s relevance and the appreciation Chicagoans and our government officials have for it.
Film festivals have the capacity to deliver the world to our doorstep, or better yet, to Facets, Siskel Film Center, Music Box, Chicago Filmmakers, Logan Center for the Arts and other independent exhibitors, in ways that are vivid, enlightening and, at their best, inspiring. All that for the price of a ticket and maybe a bucket of popcorn.
Let this local addition of Sundance remind us of that good fortune.
Rich Moskal is a film industry consultant and the former director of the Chicago Film Office.
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