Geoffrey Gilmore MA '79 leaves Sundance for Tribeca

UPDATED with an exclusive interview with Geofrey Gilmore.

An announcement on February 17 sent shock waves through the world of American independent cinema:

TFT professor and Dean’s Alumni Council Member Geoffrey Gilmore MA ’79 will be leaving his position as director of Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival to accept a post as Chief Creative Officer at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises.

The news prompted excited commentary from media outlets covering the indie scene.

“A major shift in the festival world this morning,” said IndieWire. “The big change comes after Gilmore spent 19 years at Sundance, serving as the festival's director. Prior to Sundance, he served as head of the UCLA Film [&] Television Archive's programming department for 15 years. … Gilmore will be responsible for "Tribeca's global content strategy and lead creative development initiatives and expansion of the brand." He will also join the board of directors of Tribeca Enterprises.”

“…as Sundance has expanded—and may have peaked,” suggested the Thompson on Hollywood blog, “Gilmore now takes on a film fest that has room to mature and grow, having never really found its identity. … “I think this is a great move for Geoff,” said Fox Searchlight’s Tony Safford, who preceded Gilmore as Sundance Fest director. “It’s a big stage in a big city.”

Film Independent’s Dawn Hudson agrees that Gilmore can now “play on a very big canvas at Tribeca,” she says. “He’s such a big thinker and cinephile. He fits into Tribeca’s ethos.”

We spoke exclusively with Gilmore in February:

I've always felt that film and film culture are among the most important things on earth. The idea of how film and film culture can be preserved and how it will exist in the future has always been of extraordinary interest to me. Archival preservation is one part of that, looking out for the films that fall between the cracks, that don't find distribution, that play at festivals and then kind of disappear. It's somewhat the same model as literature or other kinds of art, which offer high visibility to a certain kind of work but then so much of it ends up disappearing.

Part of my job at Sundance, too, has always been trying to showcase work that I think deserves broader visibility. Festivals can't just be platforms for sales. I think film organizations also have to commit themselves to other kinds of activity. Sundance did that to some degree. I'm interested in working in an organization such as Tribeca that could maybe do even more.

What are some of those other kinds of activity?

Everything from the question of alternative distribution to issues of working in a global network, actually trying to find viable ways in which films can be distributed.

It could be said that one of your legacies at Sundance was helping to make independent film viable, helping it to find and reach an audience, to find a market niche for them that was sustainable.

I think what we were able to do was what [Dean Robert] Rosen calls "expanding the sense of the possible." We proved that film didn't have to be limited to what was coming out of the studios. Now it seems its finally moving into a different phase after 30 years, from the late 70's to now. I think the financial models and the distribution models are about to take a big leap, in part by finally taking some of the digital options seriously.

There are people who say that independent film, especially the aspects represented by Sundance, is no longer a true alternative, that it's become part of the establishment.

It has. It's become mainstream. Years ago the Slumdog Millionaire's of the world would once have been considered marginal. That doesn't mean there aren't still films out there that deserve greater visibility than they are getting. But if the critics who used to give visibility to this work are gone, and if the platforms and art houses who used to give visibility to this work are gone, and if the distribution companies who used to be behind all this work are disappearing, or becoming more mainstream in their focus, then I'm not so sure we're heading into an era where things will be tremendously rich.

There seem to be many smaller niche audiences, now, rather than one big audience, even on the art house side. How do film festivals remain useful in this climate?

I think festivals can still serve as platforms — providing visibility for work, serving the culture in terms of making films available, being useful for marketing and promotional purposes. Films get launched out of festivals and get discovered. But if festivals start to feel as though they are really just events for an elite, for an industry that you already have to be a part of, then they cease to be doorways that people can walk through. That is something that really concerns me.

The issue is, can the challenges the industry is going to face in the near future perhaps only be solved by different kind of models other than the ones you find at a traditional festival like Sundance. I think there is an opportunity to discover those new models in another arena. That's what I'm trying to do. It's a huge challenge, but I have to be blindly optimistic about it, because if I wasn't, I wouldn't be foolish enough to do it.

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