When it was announced earlier this year that the Sundance Film Festival would move to Boulder from its longtime home in Park City, Utah, film studies students at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts Department celebrated.

The Denver Gazette talked to Erin Espelie, chair of the department, after the news of 89-year-old actor/director Robert Redford’s death. As the founder of Sundance, named after his character in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Redford’s example shines for students, she said.

“I think what Redford offers us is an example of someone who didn’t stay in one place, who didn’t conform to one idea,” Espelie said. “We he came to CU, it was on a baseball scholarship. That’s a great reminder for students to say ‘You start in one place when you enter the university … but you can stay flexible and adaptable and responsive to what’s changing around you.”

Redford’s respect for the environment and climate issues resonates well with Boulder students. So, too, did his respect for independent filmmaking and shedding the often shallow underpinnings of Hollywood.

“What he wanted was not fame and celebrity,” Espelie said. “He wanted the opposite. As he watched some of the changes that were out of his control, of how Sundance was descending into something of an industry market that was moving away from his vision of an artist-led and artist-forward film festival, he was disappointed. So many others might have embraced the money and celebrity, but he felt the opposite.”

That, in part, fueled the festival’s move from Park City.

“He was hoping the move to Boulder would be a reset for it,” she said. “It was initially a place, a safe harbor, for independent, experimental visionary artists and not the well-trod territory of studio productions.”

The school worked hard to communicate to Sundance officials that CU would be a perfect academic institution partner for the festival. It had a festival course as part of its curriculum for years, she said, but it was mostly tied to the Telluride Film Festival and Denver Film Festival.

Just last weekend, one of the first Sundance films rolled on campus – a 35-mm print of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” as an homage to Redford, she said.

And earlier this semester, Sundance Director Eugene Hernandez spoke to an “Introduction to Cinema” class of students.

“It was amazing because he took the time to answer lots of student questions,” she said.

He imparted to students “How can I help” and “What can I do.”

“The excitement and the buzz in this room of 150 students at the start of their filmmaking career – it was just electric,” Espelie said.