Bob takes the stage

The place: 1,500-seat Abravanel Hall, Salt Lake City’s showcase auditorium. Tiers of box seats rise up on all sides, and the wooden main floor is filled with hundreds of seats whose blue covers contrast with the gold trim on the side walls to give the place a refined feel — in a gently garish way.

The moment: This is a special night for Salt Lake, although it feels as if the hall is filled with more Hollywood and New York than with locals. Likely more. In any event, even the jeans-and-jewelry, fur-wearing crowd applauds when the house lights dim. And then Robert Redford enters the room… and applause fills the air.

Bob speaks: Redford asks the indulgence of festival regulars so that he can talk to his favorites, the filmmakers, and newcomers. He runs through the history of the event, back to the days in the 1980s when he envisioned Sundance as a true alternative to the movie-making industry. Then, the true Hollywood liberal, he talks of the enduring need for “freedom of expression” and labels as “utter nonsense” the notion that alternative voices in this post-9/11 era are in an way unpatriotic. “It’s merely the American way,” he says.