The Director of the Sundance Film Festival, Geoff Gilmore is a signficant yet surprisingly accessible figure within the world of American independent cinema. Having been responsible for the film selection and overall programming direction since 1990, Gilmore has assuredly steered the Festival through artistic paradigm shifts, industry upheavals, and dotcom booms and busts by remaining focused on the most essential elements of his job: discovering great new films and providing a dynamic and provocative context for them to be shown in. Gilmore and his team of programmers have an unerring track record when it comes to discovering and supporting the key filmmakers of our age. Holly Willis spoke to Gilmore about the Festival, the future, and the press’s “scorecard mentality.”

What has been the happiest thing for you about the growth of Sundance over 25 years with regards to its relationship with feature filmmaking? Well, it’s been very gratifying that the Institute and the festival have reached a certain level of success, the Institute’s mission, which originated with Robert Redford, is a commitment to finding ways of supporting and developing independent filmmakers. The Festival was added as a platform to give their work some visibility.

I believe that the festival has had a major effect on the independent arena in a lot of different ways; it’s been part of the evolution the independent film movement has undergone in the last 25 years. We’ve helped to change the way independent film is perceived, and we’ve helped give independent film a place both inside the industry and with audiences.

We have also helped to define what independent film is, which has affected the entire U.S. film industry. The Festival has changed people’s sensibility towards independent film, which was really marginal when I started this job 17 years ago, to something that is today treated with a great deal more understanding and respect. Today, independent film covers a much broader spectrum, and it’s impossible to talk about it as being defined by one element — financing, for example — without considering the entire range of sensibilities, aesthetics and quality that we are seeing today.

Do you think that range is affected by the festival’s relationship to a global festival network? A lot of people look at Sundance as a festival that has become enormously important and has had an impact on the evolution of film festivals. Which is to say that Sundance is more than just a place for showcasing new work. It is also a place for discovery, but perhaps even more importantly, it is a place that has changed the nature of what is appreciated about a film and film festivals. We’ve had an open-minded sensibility about the kind of work that we felt should be showcased and celebrated, and it isn’t about what I think some film festivals are narrowly focused on, which is art and auteurs, and a certain kind of art cinema. I think that we have developed a perspective that allows us to look at the range of aesthetics of filmmaking, and that involves personal filmmaking, genre filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, and a range of regional and very eclectic sensibilities that we brought to the fore, to say nothing about the ideological and social aspects of what we’ve been able to present. We aren’t the only ones going down this road, but there are a lot of people who credit us as leading this change.

Sundance has been criticized, especially lately, about its relationship to the industry and the encroachment of the industry into the festival... I like to look at it a little differently than most. I think it’s the independent arena that has affected and modified how the film industry thinks. The Festival is a platform for the full range of independent filmmaking, and one of our goals is to build support for independent filmmaking in the film marketplace, to give it visibility, and to give the films at the Festival an opportunity to reach larger audiences. The idea that we’ve helped to develop and expand audiences for the business around independent film is something that I’m proud of. One thing that I keep in mind is something Redford has said, “There’s nothing you can do better for a filmmaker than get him or her out of debt.” So I think we’ve actually expanded the sense of the possible; we’ve opened up independent film, and because of that I think we’ve changed the industry and that’s why it has tried to impose itself on us.

A lot of the focus by the press each year at the festival is on the deals that are made. What do you make of that, and do you think that there are ways of broadening the discourse in a culture that’s so obsessed with money, deal-making and rags-to-riches stories of instant success? I do think there is a scoreboard mentality that some people will always have. That said, the business at the Festival is part of a range of stories that come out of the Festival. It used to annoy me that the trade publications judge and evaluate the success of the Festival by what sold during the ten days in Park City. We evaluate the success of the Festival in many different ways, particularly over the long term. We like to see what happens nine months after it’s over, when we see how many films have made it to larger audiences. I think it’s important to evaluate the accomplishments and achievements over time. We measure our success in many different ways, from jury awards to audience buzz to the discovery of new artists and groundbreaking work. Success is more than just about the big sale.

Big festivals have now become largely “launch” festivals where they’re launching films into the marketplace. Or, they’re pre-buy festivals where you go in and make a lot of deals. Sundance — although we have part of each of those aspects happening — is really neither of those. We’re still much more about the discovery of real talent, of real films.

Let’s talk about programming — many people imagine that you and your team simply review submissions and pick your favorites. But I’m sure it’s much more complex. Do you see trends and respond, or do you decide to make a statement and program accordingly? I guess it’s a little bit of both. I have never seen myself as having an agenda when programming the Festival. I don’t start by saying, This is the message I want to send this year. This would be counter-productive and would in fact run up against any possibility of having a successful festival. You have to react to the films you receive. Once you’ve reacted to them, you may look back at the whole program and see a theme or an aspect of the program that you try to bring attention to as you go through the year, but I don’t impose that kind of thinking when we’re looking at the work. The agenda is set by the filmmakers, not by us.

Are there kinds of films that you used to see in the festival that you no longer see? I would like to see more experimental work from the American independent arena, particularly in terms of formal and visual experimentation. There has been experimentation with narrative and storytelling, but you don’t see as much formal experimentation. One thing that independent film has helped affect is the reinvention of genre films, and reinventing genre in a way that has affected how the industry views genre and deals with it. So now you have work that has a place in the mainstream that 10 years ago would have been seen as something that was quite marginal. If you’re going to think about nodal points over time, I think the realm of independent aesthetics has very much affected studio films, particularly with regards to genre and the aesthetic schism between reality and fiction.

The festival has programmed online work to varying success, and that realm seems to have undergone dramatic changes in the last six months. Does that arena interest you at all in its possible relationship to Sundance? Absolutely. I’m fascinated by it. I’m not sure that the actual manifestation is as interesting as the concept. But everyone from people writing TV episodes for themselves or the people responsible for Lonelygirl15 — it’s very interesting to us. Our online initiatives last year included streaming — for free — over 50 short films from the Festival and it attracted over 1 million visitors. We are going to continue to explore the ways we can utilize various delivery systems to bring independent films to larger audiences around the world. Stay tuned.

Is there any particular limitation that you regret the most? I would have to say that in no way has the war that we’ve fought to give independent film visibility been won in the sense of the independent film arena having achieved what it should have achieved. I don’t think overall the film industry is in healthy shape right now. I think it’s going through a period of greater change now than it has at any time in the last 50 years. That change has to do primarily with home entertainment, different ways for people to access films, and with what’s going to develop on the Internet — there is a lot in flux right now and we’re going to have to respond to it in some way. We’re not simply a platform for dealing with the theatrical world anymore; we’re also very much a place that’s going to be a leader in sorting out the next step in film delivery.

What do you see coming in the next five years? I think for us, a lot of it will continue to be trying to strengthen an ongoing relevance to a broader spectrum and marketplace. The one thing that Redford didn’t want us to become is complacent, and the one thing that I guess I am too anxious about to ever feel self-satisfied about is the feeling that we’ve achieved what we set out to achieve and now we can sit back. If we don’t keep evolving, in 10 years film festivals will be irrelevant.