Digital Archive

1991 Sundance Film Festival: From Slackers to Dreamers

The Festival presented retrospectives on Michael Powell and Robert Altman and featured special sections for Japanese cinema, Latin America film, and the history of character animation. Panels included topics on women directors and art and politics. Notable films included Stephen Frears’s The Grifters, John Sayles’s City of Hope, Todd Haynes’s Poison, Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn, and Hal Hartley’s Trust. Barbara Kopple’s documentary American Dream swept the Audience Award, Filmmaker Trophy, and Grand Jury Prize.

Fun fact: The Festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival, and the Park City at Midnight section was introduced.

Euzhan Palcy: Trailblazing black female filmmaker

After French West Indian filmmaker Euzhan Palcy’s debut film, Sugar Cane Alley, earned her France’s distinguished César Award for best first work in 1984, an impressed Robert Redford personally invited her to attend the 1985 Sundance Institute Filmmakers Lab. There she workshopped her adaptation of the novel A Dry White Season, about South Africa’s then still-prevalent apartheid. A few years later MGM would produce the movie, making Palcy the first black female director to helm a major Hollywood studio title. Her dedication to an unrelentingly accurate portrayal of apartheid in the film drew Marlon Brando out of his self-imposed, years-long retirement to accept a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, and made Palcy the first black director—male or female—to direct him to an Oscar-nominated performance.