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January 11, 2013
The New York Post is reporting that Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival might expand to the DUMBO region of Brooklyn (The other end of the Brooklyn Bridge, also 
where the Barclays Center is located). This would throw a wrench in the works of the Tribeca Film Festival, hosted by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal every April.
The Tribeca Film Festival has struggled since the financial collapse of 2008 and the advent of new digital film venues that make the “festival” concept less necessary. When film festivals were started, there was no good venue for an independent film. But now, there is almost no distinction between independent films and big budget films.
For the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, few of the films were sold to distributors. In contrast, The Sundance, Canne, and other festivals are the market places where many successful independent films were first licensed to larger studios.
According to the Post, “The Sundance Brooklyn buzz arrives on the heels of the city’s October announcement of a Made in New York Media Center in DUMBO, backed by Mayor Bloomberg and designed to be a “Silicon Alley” incubator for advertising, film, media and video-game development. The Independent Filmmaker Project will manage the center at 20 Jay St., due to open this spring. Sundance and the IFP are in “very early conversations” about doing a project together, an IFP rep said. Sources say the possibilities range from a screening series to a full-blown festival. Sundance is about to kick off its main Utah event Thursday, with films starring Daniel Radcliffe, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Shia LaBeouf and Amanda Seyfried.”
