For the last handful of decades, Hollywood has made the pilgrimage to Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, where filmmakers, agents and young turk execs seek undiscovered fame and the next indie phenomenon with Academy Award potential, descending on the resort town as what locals refer to as “PIB”s, – the People In Black. But in 2013, the blackbirds can hang in their own town, because the Sundance Festival is coming to Hollywood – or at least what might be called in the parlance, a “baby” festival. In 2010, the Sundance Institute launched a section of the long running event called the NEXT section, to feature films which take risks with visual and narrative style, as defined by new audacious filmmakers, with films like Craig Zobel’s divisive thriller “Compliance”, Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk With Me” and Alexandre Moors’ as yet still to be released “Blue Caprice”.
Now that Robert Redford has bought the former Laemmle Sunset 5 Theaters and rebranded them as the Sundance Sunset Cinemas, the Sundance NEXT Weekend NEXT Festival will launch for four days this summer. Running from August 8 through 11, the fest will be headquartered at Sundance Sunset Cinemas in West Hollywood, but will have additional screenings around the city at assorted venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art, with an opening outdoor screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
According to Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford, “The best part of independent filmmaking is the freedom to tell your stories your own way, to take risks and not be beholden to convention of any kind. At the core of NEXT Weekend are artists that are taking risks and pushing boundaries. It’s fitting that Sundance Cinemas will be the home for this festival and these films”.
The Los Angeles NEXT summer festival lineup is still growing, and the new event will follow June’s Los Angeles Film Festival, which previously had a home at the Sunset Location before moving west, and now downtown, and July’s gay festival, Outfest.
The Sundance Sunset Cinemas is located at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood, a location filled with old Hollywood history, upstairs in a mini-mall built where the famous Schwabs Drugstore once stood and across the street from the location of the infamous 40s starlet lodging, The Garden of Allah, featured in the recent Sean Penn movie “Gangster Squad” – now a McDonalds.
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