Robert Redford, who died at the age of 89 on Tuesday, will rightly be remembered as one of Hollywood’s finest leading men, a true-blue movie star and assured actor who was, to quote my mother and surely many others, “very, very handsome”. His many iconic performances – in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Way We Were, The Sting and more – certainly left an indelible mark on American movies. But he should perhaps be remembered more for his work behind the camera, as the country’s greatest benefactor of independent cinema.
Through his Sundance film festival and non-profit institute, Redford lent his considerable star power and funds to American independent film, and created what is still its most secure and enduring pillar of support. He provided maverick, cutting-edge film-making with a freewheeling marketplace and crucial buzz, helping to launch the careers of a true who’s who of critically acclaimed directors across generations. With Sundance, Redford played the role of mentor, patron, champion of the small and scrappy, benevolent godfather of independent cinema. It’s through Sundance, rather than his films, that Redford became, as the Black List founder Franklin Leonard put it on X, “arguably the film industry’s most consequential American over the last fifty years”.
