The relationship did not stop with just the festival. The two organizations decided to offer a venue for independent films that otherwise would have very little opportunity to be viewed by a larger audience. To that end, Sundance has dedicated one of the screens in its San Francisco complex to independent films that are booked into the theater by The San Francisco Film Society, which is the governing non-profit that runs the San Francisco International Film Festival.

While mainstream films booked into the theaters are touted by substantial marketing and advertising machines, these smaller films have no such advantage. The Hollywood films will run for as long as tickets sell. The Film Society films, by contrast, are placed on a calendar and given a set period of time to be shown, no matter the length of the line waiting to see them. Each film is shown for a period of one week, seven days a week, five shows a day.

“We do our business person to person, with close and frequent interaction with our audience," Mr. Leggat says. "It’s a different way of going about things than Sundance normally employs, but there are significant similarities in our goals, which make this arrangement such a good one.”

“We like it because it fits so well into the Sundance philosophy of assisting emerging filmmakers,” Ms. Gribler adds.

Robert Redford himself is actively involved in the initiative. “This year we achieved a long standing goal,” he writes, “to offer artists the opportunity to exhibit and patrons the opportunity to watch in their own communities, the finest independent entertainment in first class, state of the art cinemas on a daily basis, not just for the ten days in January [of The Sundance Film Festival]."

Sundance Cinemas plans to open more of these state-of-the-art facilities in many major cities.