CINCINNATI — As Hollywood celebrated its biggest night with the Oscars, Cincinnati underscored a key part of its bid to host the Sundance Film Festival: a vibrant film community.
Local filmmakers gathered at a watch party hosted by the Cindependent Film Festival Sunday evening. The ticketed event at the Contemporary Arts Center downtown was a fundraiser for its partner organizations: Women in Film Cincinnati, OutReels Cincinnati, and the Black Cincinnati Cinema Collective.
Allyson West, founder of the Cindependent Film Festival, said its collaborative nights like these that show the power of the local community.
“It brings some of the key leaders in different parts of the community together so that we're very readily available for people who might have questions about storytelling,” West said. “If you look at the community as a resource, you will find people who get you one step closer to your next step, basically in anything."
The watch party was a few weeks before the Sundance Film Festival is set to announce which one of its finalist cities will host the festival beginning in 2027.
Check out the Hollywood glitz and the glamour of the Cincinnati watch party:
Cincinnati is in competition with Boulder, Colorado, and Salt Lake City/Park City, Utah, the current host city.
Last fall, Cincinnati City Council allocated $5 million to support the bid. It will be allocated over 10 years.“City leaders have said they want Sundance, and now we’re putting our money where our mouth is,” council member Seth Walsh said in October. In January, Mayor Aftab Pureval personally attended the Sundance Festival to emphasize the city's commitment. "I’m out here because we take this opportunity very seriously,” Pureval said.
He dismissed concerns that Cincinnati’s landscape could not compete with the picturesque mountains of the other finalists in the West. He told a Rotary Club group that Sundance was interested in the city because of Cincinnati’s “density, preservation of Italianate architecture, and walkability of Over-the-Rhine.”
On Wednesday, the city's hopes received a boost from veteran producer Christine Vachon, who praised Cincinnati’s vibrant film community to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Cincinnati feels very young, very diverse,” she said. “It’s a very arts-focused, arts-forward city with a great orchestra theater. Local casting is terrific because they have such a strong repertory theater."
Filmmaker Vernard Fields, president of the Black Cincinnati Cinema Collective, believes that hosting Sundance would provide valuable opportunities for local filmmakers. He said he has told those in his collective to prepare.
“You may not have a film right now, but go ahead and start preparing yourself, because even if it doesn't get picked, at least there will be directors here, distribution labels and stuff like that. So it's just opportunities galore,” Fields said.
Jaime Meyers Schlenck, president of Women in Film Cincinnati, echoed that enthusiasm.
“Our city is ready to go to the next level, as far as filmmaking and that community. And I think Sundance would be the perfect step to that,” Schlenck said, reinforcing the collective hope for a favorable outcome.
Sundance Film Festival said they would make the announcement in late winter or early spring.
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