When Sundance Film Festival organizers arrived in Boulder last year to assess the city’s suitability to host the event for a decade starting in 2027, their first stop, according to Sundance programmer Sudeep Sharma, was the University of Colorado campus.

“We love this community and its small-town charm, the engaged (people), the natural beauty and the vibrant arts scene. This is a place where we feel that the city and the festival can grow together,” Sharma said Wednesday during the CU Night in Downtown Boulder event at the Boulder Theater. “But what was really exciting for us about Boulder being the new home for the festival is the university. The university is such a special place. We share values … in terms of independent thought, artistic expression and social imprint.”

Leaders with the Sundance Institute, founded by Hollywood legend Robert Redford, chose Boulder this spring as the festival’s new homebase. Boulder beat out finalist bids by the festival’s long-time host city of Park City, Utah, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Sundance Film Festival, which has been hosted by Redford and the institute every winter in Park City since the late 1970s, brings together thousands of film lovers, filmmakers and celebrities to celebrate cinema and uplift artists.

Redford is no stranger to Boulder, having attended the University of Colorado for a year in the 1950s, during which he worked as a janitor at The Sink, an iconic restaurant in Boulder’s University Hill district. His son Jamie and daughter Shauna both graduated from CU, from which Redford received an honorary degree in 1987.

Sundance organizers say the world-class cinema event is likely to be focused around the city’s downtown and Pearl Street Mall areas, with the nearby University of Colorado campus playing host to many of the festivities.

“We really are excited about the venues and spaces that are so beautiful and prestigious,” Sharma said, “… and we’re excited about collaborating with (CU) faculty and staff” to develop on-campus programming and events that dovetail with the festival.

Part of the purpose of Wednesday’s CU Night, which each year brings scores of university students, graduates and faculty together with local leaders to celebrate CU’s connection to the broader Boulder and regional community, was to “recognize the transcendent power of art and music and nature to enrich our lives in ways that build human connection,” CU chancellor Justin Schwartz said during the event, which was followed by the Bands on the Bricks concert series held on Pearl Street just a stone’s throw from the Boulder Theater entrance. “Music, art, film, storytelling, creativity, innovation — these are core values in Boulder and they are the connective tissues that unite and uplift us as people.”

In that spirit, the CU community is “overjoyed to celebrate the arrival of the Sundance Film Festival to Boulder,” he said. “… The event will be monumental to our community members, our local businesses and to our CU students, our faculty and our staff,” some of whom are visual artists who have submitted films to Sundance in the past. “The festival will add truly new dimensions to a campus where the arts already thrive.”

Sundance’s decision to decamp Utah for Boulder highlights the importance of institutions such as CU and city government working in tandem toward a shared goal, Boulder mayor Aaron Brockett said. “Our town-gown relations are at a decades-long high — the partnership (between the city and CU) is incredibly close and collaborative.”

Sundance organizers look forward to hosting crowds of “young, diverse, excited and engaged audiences that will hopefully be coming to the festival from the university,” Sharma said.

Despite Sundance’s reputation as a star-studded mountain getaway for Hollywood insiders, “it’s for the public, it’s for people to come,” he said. “… It’s open for everyone. It isn’t just an exclusive party for fancy people.”

Sharma said he also expects the CU community to be a source of the volunteers that Sundance relies upon to put on the week-long movie festival.

Festival organizers have declined to specify what the Sundance Institute’s year-round presence in Boulder or on CU’s campus will be, but Sharma said, “We are looking to not just drop in 10 days (each year for) the festival. We’re looking to be part of the community as our relationship (with Boulder and CU) grows.”

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