Robert Redford and Sundance Cinemas' new Kabuki

By Johnny Ray Huston

It’s a premiere night at the new Sundance Kabuki, and a lot of people — publicists, reporters, and lobby loiterers — are looking for Robert Redford. After driving into the city from a stay in Carmel, he’s here … but a few seconds later he’s down the hall, and then he’s disappeared around the corner. Before speaking with the 71-year-old Redford, I’m already struck by his lightning-quick ability to move in and out of social situations in order to allow himself some necessary space and time. After a TV interview in one of the Sundance Kabuki’s renovated and restyled theaters (where I have a chance to place my notebook and recorder on one of the tables that rest between every pair of seats), the man who kickstarted the ever-spreading world or word that is Sundance is ready for a quick Q&A.

SF360: You just talked [for TV] about living in the Bay Area. Can you tell me about your activist connections to the Bay Area?

Robert Redford: Well, I have strong feelings, I’m very involved environmentally with Save the Bay and I’ve done a lot of fundraising to help open the Wallace Stegner Environmental Center [of the San Francisco Public Library].

SF360: What connections will there be between the Sundance Cinemas and the large number of film festivals that happen in the Bay Area? The Native American Film fest happens in SF every fall and I was wondering if it might take place here.

Redford: I can’t answer that — I would love it if it could, both from a personal standpoint and from a political standpoint in working to free Leonard Peltier, which hasn’t happened yet, which is a crime. I think the fact that Clinton didn’t pardon him, and yet pardoned Mark Rich, was a complete failure on his part.

Two festivals that I can guarantee we’ll have a strong connection to are the San Francisco International Festival and the Asian American Film Festival.

SF360: I want to ask about your relationship to documentary. Thinking back to the beginnings of the Sundance Film Festival, the profile of documentary at that time was really low, even though there were all these great American documentary filmmakers, such as the Masles brothers and Frederick Wiseman—

Redford: Or Emile de Antonio.

SF360: They’re having a retrospective of de Antonio’s work in SF [at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art] soon.

Redford: Good. I’ve been involved in documentaries since the early

topics: environmental films, kabuki cinemas, native american film festival, sundance, sundance kabuki

12.21.2007