Lawrence, Kansas-based filmmaker Kevin Willmott says that the 2004 Sundance Film Festival changed the trajectory of his career.
The festival debuted Willmott’s film “CSA: The Confederate States of America” that year. “It was quite an experience,” Willmott recalled.
The film is a mockumentary that tells an alternate history of the United States – one where the South won the Civil War.
The film was controversial. “This is before everybody acknowledged that this, the Confederate flag, was not a good thing,” Willmott said.
But because it premiered at Sundance, interest in Willmott’s work spiked. A few days later, he sold the film.
The Sundance Film Festival has long been known as an incubator for filmmakers’ careers. It was founded by Robert Redford, who starred in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.” Redford died Tuesday at the age of 89.
Redford’s commitment to the independent film scene, which included the film festival and the Sundance Institute, is considered by many to be his greatest contribution.
“I think he understood that to do what he wanted to do, he had to have some distance from the machine,” Willmott said of Redford. “And that distance from the machine in creating something like Sundance allowed not just him, but then thousands of others to define their voice.”
- Kevin Willmott, filmmaker
