The Sundance Film Festival's "Howl"

On Thursday evening, the Sundance film festival opened with the premier of "Retrespo", a war documentary and the biopic "Howl".

This was a proclamation of return to risky and rebellious film making . The 2010 festival had a line up of documentaries for audiences to sense risks filmmakers encountered in order to get the true pictures out.

The Sundance film festival, initiated in 1978 takes plac e annually in Utah, United States at Salt Lake City, Park city, Ogden and the Sundance resort.

The initial aim of the festival was to showcase and premiere work of American independent filmmakers.There are competitive and no competitive programs for dramatic, documentary, feature and short films. The non-competitive programs include, "New frontier", "Spectrum", Park City @ Midnite.It was Founded initially by Sterling Van Wagenen (when he was the head of Robert Redford's company "Wildwood",) Hampton Catania and John Earle from the Utah film commission.

The chairperson (Robert Redford) with assistance of Utah governor Scott Matheson aimed at showcasing American films and highlighting independent film potential to increase filmmaking visibility in Utah.Competitions, presentations of retrospective films and panel discussions for filmmakers as well as celebration of the Frank Capia award, highlighted the work of filmmakers out of the Hollywood system.The 1976 Sterling Van Wagenen began the pilot Sundance institute program.

Robert Redford's involvement propelled the growth of the festival.In 1984-85, the Sundance Film Institute was well established. The festival was managed by the non Profit organization, the Sundance film institute and was officially renamed the "Sundance film festival" after the character Robert Redford played "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid".
Famous Filmmakers made their first breaks at Sundance including Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodrigeus, Edward Burns, James Wan, Steven Soderbergh and James Jamusch.

The Sundance film festival brought wide attention to many films including Super troopers, Saw, Garden State, Blair Witch project, Reservoir dogs, Better luck tomorrow, Little miss sunshine, Clerks, El Mariachi, Thank you for smoking, Napoleon dynamite, sex, lies and videotapes and Brothers McMullen. "Three seasons" was awarded the audience award and Grand Jury award in 1999 as well as Quinceanera near and "Tired of Us" in 2006 and in 2009, "Precious". From 2006-2008, the Brooklyn Academy of music and the Sundance Institute collaborated with film screenings, panel discussions, performances and special events.

The 2010 the Sundance film festival includes a new category "Next" for films that are extremely low budgeted, and the program "Sundance film festival USA" that showcases 8 Sundance films in eight US theaters.