{"id":22976,"date":"2025-03-27T13:42:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T19:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-wins-sundance-film-festival-bid\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T19:42:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T19:42:50","slug":"colorado-wins-sundance-film-festival-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-wins-sundance-film-festival-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado wins Sundance Film Festival bid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"FILE
FILE \u2013 The marquee of the Egyptian Theatre appears during the Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 28, 2020, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Arthur Mola\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span>(Photo by Arthur Mola\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It\u2019s official: Boulder and Colorado will host the world-renowned Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

The festival will have one more year in its current location before starting up in Colorado 2027. Colorado\u2019s bid beat out Cincinnati and Sundance\u2019s home of more than four decades, Park City, Utah.<\/p>\n

The festival\u2019s board voted Thursday morning to move the marquee event to Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis and other elected leaders and officials are expected at a news conference at the Boulder Theatre in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoulder is an art town, tech town, mountain town, and college town. It is a place where the Festival can build and flourish,\u201d said Amanda Kelso, Sundance Institute Acting CEO in a release announcing the decision. \u201cWe can\u2019t imagine a better fit than Boulder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The release cited Boulder\u2019s \u201csmall-town charm\u201d and \u201cengaged community,\u201d as well as its values as \u201ca community rooted in independent thought, artistic exploration, and social impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who lives in Boulder, swiftly celebrated the festival\u2019s decision, saying in a statement, \u201cHere in Colorado we also celebrate the arts and film industry as a key economic driver, job creator, and important contributor to our thriving culture. Now, with the addition of the iconic Sundance Film Festival, we can expect even more jobs, a huge benefit for our small businesses including stores and restaurants, and to help the festival achieve even greater success.\u201d<\/p>\n

The festival will be centered around the Pearl Street Mall and CU campus in Boulder, but will involve an array of venues in the region, potentially including the Stanley Film Center in Estes Park.<\/p>\n

\"The
The art deco style Boulder Theater on Feb. 2. (Lauren Antonoff Hart\/CPR News file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

John Taylor, president and CEO of Boulder Chamber, called the decision a \u201cmilestone for our state and local economy.\u201d But beyond the potential economic impact from the event, he was also excited about the artistic implications of hosting Sundance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt represents as a cultural beacon to the rest of the world in terms of Boulder\u2019s and Colorado\u2019s leadership as a place of innovation for cultural creativity and for cinematic expression \u2026 What an immense responsibility this is for us to carry on the tradition that Sundance represents in terms of the storytelling that they are facilitating and the magic of it for the folks involved in the film industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Taylor also expressed confidence in Boulder\u2019s \u201ccapacity to handle the film festival and to accommodate it comfortably\u201d in light of the festival\u2019s record of pulling in a large number of visitors every year.<\/p>\n

A move a year \u2013 and millions of dollars \u2013 in the making<\/div>\n

Sundance Institute, the nonprofit that organizes the annual star-stuffed event, announced last April that it was weighing whether to move to a new host city. Its current contract with Park City is slated to end in 2026, and the nonprofit said it was accepting proposals from other cities interested in welcoming some 140,000-plus eager cinephiles every year.<\/p>\n

To sweeten its bid, Colorado is preparing to give the festival up to $34 million in refundable tax credits over the course of a decade. The bipartisan bill is in the final steps at the state legislature, but has met with some opposition from Republicans who consider it a poor use of state funding. The legislation also makes $500,000 in tax credits available for smaller, homegrown festivals.<\/p>\n

While the festival\u2019s announcement contained no mention of politics, Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, one of the bill\u2019s main sponsors, said she thinks the Sundance move sends a larger message about what\u2019s happening across the country. Titone is Colorado\u2019s only transgender state lawmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of changes going on in the federal government and in state governments around discrimination and picking on groups of people, especially the LGBT community and the film industry really is not about that. They are really about inclusivity and promoting the ideas about people being different,\u201d she said in an interview with CPR News.<\/p>\n

\"State
State Rep. Brianna Titone on the opening day of the Colorado Legislature on Jan. 8. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Utah has moved to ban the gay pride flag from state buildings and schools, while Colorado has ramped up protections for LGBTQ residents<\/p>\n

Titone said Boulder is the perfect place for the festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Colorado getting the film festival is kind of karma,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause this film industry and this film festival, which celebrates all of the vibrant diversity in people, has to have a home where it\u2019s welcome and celebrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boulder Democrat Steve Fenberg, who led the state Senate when Colorado launched its bid, said so many people from the state, the city, and the community worked very hard to illustrate to Sundance why Colorado is the perfect home for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled that my two girls will grow up being able to have a first row seat at experiencing Sundance\u2019s rich, life-changing storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican Sen. Mark Baisley of Woodland Park was another main sponsor of state incentives to help entice Sundance to Boulder. He said the festival will bring tremendous economic benefits for all of Colorado, with both tangible and intangible blessings.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunities across the Front Range will benefit from the annual trek that will delightfully overwhelm Boulder\u2019s hotel and restaurant capacities. Film industry visitors will boldly go where they had not gone before: to our ski slopes, our mountain towns, our unique Western slope communities, he said.<\/p>\n

\"Republican
Republican state Sen. Mark Baisley at the Capitol on Feb. 25. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR Newsn file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The financial impact could be significant. Sundance reportedly delivered a $132 million total economic impact to Utah in 2024.<\/p>\n

However, some lawmakers object to the state offering so much tax money to land a single film event.<\/p>\n

Most of the objections have come from Republicans, but Democratic Rep. Bob Marshall of Highlands Ranch, the only Democratic no vote in the House, said it shouldn\u2019t be a priority given the state\u2019s $1.2 billion budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want this elite group to show up and they want the rest of the Colorado taxpayers to subsidize it rather than subsidizing and trying to put a bulwark on Medicaid while we\u2019re cutting that to the bone this year,\u201d he told CPR News.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boulder worked to woo one of biggest independent festivals in the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1060,28,1107],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-headlines","tag-movies"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22976"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}