Women’s stories have a prominent role at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State and 2016 Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Park City to attend the premier of the Hulu docu-series about her life.
Media legend and Board Chair of the Sundance Institute Pat Mitchell introduced Hillary Clinton saying if not for social inequities towards women, she would be introducing Clinton as President of the United States. This year more than 40% of the films at Sundance were directed by women with more than a third directed by women of color. Just eight years ago, only 17% of Sundance submissions were from women. Mitchell says the series about Hillary Rodham Clinton tells a story about one woman who lead the way for many others.
And she continues to lead the way for an equal path to the White House and to every other leadership position. Why women's voices make a difference. Hillary Rodham Clinton epitomizes an extraordinary life--how one woman does change everything and doing so changes everything for all of us.”
Nannette Burnstein directed the four-hour production. Clinton praised Burnstein’s work joking that there is only one other place she’d rather be than at Sundance. Clinton was interviewed for 35 hours for the Hulu production and while the film is named Hillary, it’s about much more than the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.
“It started off about the campaign and that made the case that it needed to be much more than the campaign and needed to be about my life. But not just the arc of my life, the arc of women's lives, the changes that we've seen during the course of my life both in the women's movement and in politics. And I think she's done a terrific job and I can say that because what I've learned at Sundance is that I am the talent.”
Clinton says diversity in film making is critical because it lifts and reveals truths about the greater society and culture. She says fear and negativity are portrayed in the messages on social media and other outlets where people get information.
“I was particularly taken by the extraordinary description of what algorithms are doing to us. It's not bad enough that we have to figure out how to overcome millennia of human nature and distrust and conflict, now we have to figure out how we are being manipulated on a minute by minute basis because when you turn to a screen whether it be a TV or a phone or anything else you don't see that loving Latino family you see a caravan and you're meant to see the caravan.”
While Clinton spoke to the room of mostly women, she asked the audience to remember how important diversity is to storytelling.
“The creators and the makers and the innovators and the truth tellers and the talent. We need you now more than ever, and the diversity that you represent is one of our strongest assets in trying to take back the story that we should be telling ourselves and our children and our grandchildren about not only who we are but who we want to be in the future that we imagine. So, thank you.”
The Hulu docu-series, Hillary will begin to air on March 6.