Sundance: Redford believes Trump presidency will 'galvanize people'

PARK CITY, Utah — A day before his inauguration, Donald Trump managed to be the most-talked-about celebrity at the Sundance Film Festival without ever stepping foot into Park City.

The president-elect was the focal point of Thursday's opening day press conference, where founder Robert Redford was joined by festival director John Cooper, Sundance Institute executive director Keri Putnam, and filmmakers David Lowery (Pete's Dragon) and Sydney Freeland (Drunktown's Finest).

Responding to a journalist's question about self-censorship out of fear under Trump's administration, Redford, 80, said he is hopeful that artists will find "light" even when it feels as if the "darkness is closing in around them."

"It looks like a lot of things are going to be tried to be taken away from us, and I think what that's going to do is galvanize the people," Redford said. "Those people who weren't interested or figured, 'Why, who cares?' are now going to realize they're directly affected and are now going to step up. I think it's going to be followed by a movement, and a movement is going to go against whatever choice is made to cut things away. ... I think that's very, very healthy."

Asked how the gloomy national mood compares to that of the Richard Nixon era, the All the President's Men actor bemoaned how "there was a time when two sides" — Republicans and Democrats — "did work together. That's what makes you depressed about today."

Otherwise, Redford mostly chose to dance around questions about Trump, saying how "the idea of (Sundance) being involved in politics is just not so. We stay away from that because we feel that it's far more important to support the storytellers and let them tell the stories, and if politics come up in their stories, so be it. But we do not take a position."

Lowery, who made his debut at the snow-covered fest in 2013 with Ain't Them Bodies Saints, is back this year with two dramas: book adaptation The Yellow Birds, which he co-wrote, and A Ghost Story, which reunites Saints co-stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. Posed with how the political landscape could shape his films going forward, he said it's an idea he is "still processing."

"You realize as a filmmaker, you do have a podium," Lowery said. "I don't want to turn it into a soapbox and shout from it — I'm not interested in doing that — but I do realize the things that I say matter and there's some weight to that."

Redford, meanwhile, touted the importance of documentaries such as Al Gore's opening-night film An Inconvenient Sequel about global warming, particularly "as the news media world has shrunk into more of a soundbite world. Everything is so quick and short, it gives you no time to digest, no time to contemplate, it's already moving on to the next event. ... It becomes like long-form journalism."