PARK CITY — Sundance Film Festival veteran volunteer Sandria Miller has just about seen — and photographed — it all since signing on in 1982 when it was the United States Film and Video Festival.

She has a simple answer for why she comes back year after year.

"I like to see movies," said Miller, who lives in Ogden. Documentaries and shorts are her favorites, including the current claymation animated feature "Mary and Max."

This year 928 other Utahns joined Miller as festival volunteers. Sundance added a theater and needed more volunteers, bumping the number up from the annual average of 1,200 to 1,500 volunteers to 1,607 for 2009.

The volunteers come from Canada, France, Australia, Mexico, Ireland, Great Britain, Italy, Columbia, Japan, Chile and Germany, to name a few places. This year 868 people are return volunteers.

But there's no one like Miller, known for bringing volunteers cookies she buys in Ogden or perennial bulbs to share her love of gardening.

"She's just ever willing," said Emily Aagaard, who this year for her first time is in charge of managing all those volunteers. "She's really dedicated to what Sundance is all about."

The reason for Sundance's beginnings has been and still is, despite how it's changed over the years, to promote independent filmmaking, Miller said. The festival has obviously gotten bigger, more crowded and harder to get into movies.

"You can take the good and the bad with that," Miller said. But one thing remains the same. "It's really all about the filmmakers."

But the festival hasn't always been successful. Miller can remember back to 1984, when it was still the U.S. Film and Video Festival.

"The festival almost died," Miller said. "If Sundance (Institute) hadn't picked it up, it would have died."

In 1985 Robert Redford's Sundance Institute took over the festival, back when Miller recalls volunteers sleeping on the floor, stuffing envelopes, answering phones and doing whatever it took to make the festival happen. Back then, she said, a seminar for filmmakers might have been merely a meeting in a room with people sitting on a couch listening to someone talk.

Along the way, Miller has photographed the interesting and intimate moments many people don't see. Aagaard recalled a Miller photo that shows Quentin Terantino looking into a mirror while getting ready for an interview.

"She's just really kind of seen it all," Aagard said. "I'm grateful for that."

Miller's photographs can be seen in the festival guide and at the Kimball Arts Center. Every year she shoots a group shot of staffers and volunteers.