Redford hails 'different and diverse voices'

PARK CITY — The irony that the Sundance Film Festival — an event linked to several supposed liberal causes — opened the same night as the inauguration of President Bush wasn't lost on the festival's spiritual leader of sorts, Robert Redford.

In fact, according to Redford, "I'm here tonight because I wasn't invited to another event," he said, clearly referring to the presidential inauguration.

The comment garnered resounding laughs from the clearly sympathetic audience that packed Park City's Eccles Center for the Performing Arts Thursday night.

But Redford didn't stop at that joke. His remarks, which opened the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, were in praise of the "different and diverse voices" of the filmmakers with works in this year's event, especially in a world that he says is "depending on your point of view, chaotic, divisive, fearful, unstable or . . . perfect."

Whether that last bit was meant to be taken humorously or not, it, too got laughs as the soft-spoken actor, filmmaker and activist smiled at the consistently warm response to his comments.

This year's group of Sundance filmmakers have also used their cinematic voices to "really reflect more accurately the world we live in," he concluded.

Redford then left it up to festival director Geoff Gilmore to introduce the night's other featured attraction, the comedy "Happy Ending," which stars Lisa Kudrow, Tom Arnold, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Steve Coogan, who were in attendance with some of their other co-stars.

But first Gilmore thanked Park City, the festival's longtime host city, and its residents for allowing it to change the population, in his words, "from 7,500 to 45,000 overnight" and reaffirmed the event's commitment to staying in Utah.

As always, the featured film received an ovation after the screening, which was followed by another showing of the movie for the general public — well, those who were holding Sundance tickets at least. From there, the festivities headed up to the Deer Valley resort for a gala party that included musical entertainment.

The screening and gala Thursday night were the kickoff for 10 days of parties, symposiums and especially movies — 120 feature-length films and 82 short works. The majority of screenings will be held in a variety of Park City and Salt Lake City locations.