Ken Brecher Biography

Executive Director of the Sundance Institute Ken Brecher is a passionate advocate for Sundance’s central mission of supporting new artists. His background is diverse having served as the President of the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia the Director of the Boston Children’s Museum and the Associate Artistic Director of the Mark Taper Forum Theater in Los Angeles. Brecher was trained as an anthropologist and he brings to Sundance a keen fascination with the ways that we reveal ourselves and our cultures through the ever evolving medium of cinema. Scott Macaulay spoke with Brecher about Sundance the institution its programs and the future of its audience.
So Sundance is 25. What does that mean to you?I feel so proud to be part of it and I feel our best 25 years will be the next 25. I think we’ve been responsible to artists which is our single goal — to deliver to them in every way. We are still progressive political interested in new voices and more than ever committed to stories that we haven’t seen before on film. “To embrace the new” — that comes directly from Robert Redford. That’s his mantra. One of our board members said at our last meeting that the real issue for any organization is to understand the truth of that organization and we certainly understand what our truths are. We’re about discovery new work supporting artists and encouraging people to experience independent film. I would say one of my strongest feelings on our 25th anniversary is that we have a responsibility to be as vibrant and recognizable with each one of our programs. Understandably what people read about most is the festival and of course there is a skewed view of it because of the celebrity aspect of it but that’s a tiny part of what we do. How many people for example know that we’re collecting the history of independent film at UCLA?

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