The Utah/U.S. Film Festival was the name which the Sundance Film Festival had back in 1989, when Steven Soderbergh made his debut with the feature, “sex, lies, and videotape.” The writer-director came to Park City with no hopes of winning a prize with his theatrical distribution and he recalled that he had low expectations connected to any success, but that he had intended to know some other people “and maybe get another job.”

But the things which happened back then definitely changed the festival’s opinions, as the feature won the big prize. The success story “sex, lies, and videotape” revolutionized the American independent cinema and became the Sundance Film Festival’s sensation.

Released by Miramax, the movie was created and shot with only $1.2 million and gained nearly $25 million at the box office. Soderbergh’s ideas of the feature inspired an entire generation of moviemakers and showed the Hollywood movie industry that the indie movie may be a choice for a commercial success.
The movie also set Sundance as the America’s main showcase for the cutting-edge movie.  

The festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this night and starts out with a screening of “Mary and Max,” Claymation’s feature. The event will also bring into Sundance’s memory a few commemorative scenes from “sex, lies, and videotape” on Monday.

Even if nowadays there aren’t many independent studios out there, many moviemakers wish to have such a dream factory like the one which produced “sex, lies, and videotape.” The feature is believed to have helped many of the important directors from our days to become very famous.

Soderbergh added, while recalling the festival from 1989, that he felt he had been trapped into an anonymous status with his career standing under a big question mark. The really awkward thing he described was that after the festival had ended and his feature won, he had felt disorientated due to such a big celebration.

 Another low-budget comedy made a lot of money beginning from the Sundance Film Festival. Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” from 1994 described his life as a clerk at a New Jersey Quik Stop and opened so many roads to the writer-director that he had felt confused too.

The Utah/U.S. Film Festival started out in 1978 as a regional business whose goal was to give the moviemakers who came from Los Angeles and New York a platform for their efforts. The festival was included by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in 1985 and the organizers began to switch its purpose toward contemporary film.

The Sundance Film Festival has competed with many other festivals, such as Tribeca, Telluride and the Toronto International Film Festival. It has also been the place from which many famous movies took their start-prize. Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” from 1991 together with Darnell Martin’s “I Like It Like That” from 1994 and Darren Aronofsky’s “Pi” from 1998, were among the movies which debuted with their efforts at Sundance.