The Egyptian is a beautiful and spacious theatre, which has a very eclectic feel to it, old movie posters everywhere, odd metal bathroom stalls... it reminds me very much of a downtown New York rock club more than a movie theatre, though there's really nothing like it in New York either. The place was packed with bodies and cameras with three comfy looking easy chairs on the stage for the three speakers.

Robert Redford came out first to open the proceedings with a simple mic-less introduction of "Glad you're here, 'cause this is where we started... but when we started, there were no cell phones." (I think that was a hint to those who always seem to forget to turn theirs off.)

The focus of Redford's introduction was to talk about documentaries, and why the festival was being opened with Brett Morgen's doc Chicago 10, but he also wanted to talk about the festival's constant quest to promote diversity and how this year was going to be different than previous years in that sense.

Redford talked about his personal love and interest in documentaries going back to his days as a youth seeing newsreels which informed him about what was going on in the world. He was always surprised by how "entertaining a sharp-edged truth" could be and was glad that the Sundance Film Festival had succeeded in shining the spotlight on more docs, to the point where they had reached the level of narrative theatrical films. (Good proof of this was the Al Gore doc An Inconvenient Truth which debuted at the festival last year.)

More importantly, he wanted this festival to remind people "who we are and why we're here" since the festival had branched out into so many different areas like music and fashion, much of which came from the success of the festival as a whole. While he understood why the festival was important from a buyer's perspective in trying to find commercial films, he stressed that it was never his biggest concern. This certainly was a noble enough sentiment, even if typically, the movies that bring the most attention to Sundance are the ones bought for millions of dollars or that make tons of money.

Festival Director Geoff Gilmore continued the theme, talking about the sense of change and evolution in indie filmmaking that would be seen at this year's festival, starting with the fact that some of the short films shown at the festival would be available for download on iTunes. The festival also had a new section this year, New Frontiers, which would focus on experimental and avant-garde films. (They used the press conference to open the new venue "New Frontiers on Main" directly across from the Egyptian Theatre, a space that would be used to for screenings, art installations, live performances and special events.)

Director Brett Morgen, whose last two films Against the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture debuted at Sundance in past years, was introduced and he talked a bit about what an honor it was to have his film, Chicago 10, opening the festival, because he always imagined it premiering at Park City's Eccles Theatre (which from what I understand, dwarfs the Egyptian). The documentary is about the trial of a number of protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, made up of archival footage and animated recreations of the trial, read by well-known actors. He talked a bit about the film and his reasons for doing it, but it always seemed strange to have a press conference before anyone has seen the movie, so hopefully we'll have more from Bret once we've seen the movie ourselves (which will be later tonight).