Legacy comes in all formations and structures. That was the unofficial consensus during the last official Sundance Film Festival event held Tuesday afternoon at the Egyptian Theatre. Four creatives — filmmaker Alex Gibney, award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates and actors and directors John Turturro and Olivia Wilde — tossed around the concept of legacy during a discussion titled, “Power of Story: On Legacy.” During one moment, moderator Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the essay collection “Trick Mirror,” confessed she looked up the word legacy because she didn’t know its origin. “Earliest uses have to do with a delegation or delegate, and then an act of bequeathing something and a thing that, itself, is bequeathed,” she said. “These are all tangible things, and it’s interesting now (that) we talk about legacy as something intangible. But it still carries a sense of all of those things.” Wilde, who directed and appears in “The Invite” and appears in Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex,” which are screening in this year’s festival, said her family’s legacy of seeking the truth has informed her craft. “I am always inspired by my family who are all journalists — my grandparents, my cousins, my uncles, my parents, everybody,” she said. “What they do is speak truth to power, and I have certainly learned to tell the truth through what I do.” Being truthful is one of the reasons why Wilde decided to make “The Invite” independently, outside of the studio system. “I wanted to make a film that felt made by the artists (who) had the control to say what we wanted to say and bring it to this festival that has a long legacy of films doing that,” she said. Since the film’s Saturday premiere, Wilde has been thinking about other types of legacies that have touched her life. “There have been long conversations of filmmakers who inspired this film — a lot of talk about Mike Nichols, who’s my hero,” she said. “It made me think about the ideas of the films that are only possible and inspired to make because of the filmmakers and storytellers who came before us.” The genre of independent film has also created a legacy, Wilde said. “It’s been so interesting to look back at all the films that created the language audiences are now fluent in because they have experiences with these other great films,” she said. Gibney said the word legacy is complicated when it comes to his documentary, “Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,” which premiered at the festival on Sunday. The film is about the 2022 public attack on the best selling artist and his subsequent recovery, which spawned a memoir of the same name. The reason why legacy is difficult to bring up when talking about the assailant is because he wasn’t even born when “The Satanic Verses” was published, Gibney said. “The Satanic Verses” was deemed blasphemous by then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa, a high order of Islamic law, for the author’s assassination and promised the killer $3 million. “But the long tail of the violence that was unleashed by virtue of online comments inciting him to do something (is a) thing,” the filmmaker said. “He went from being a kid who had never committed a crime to (attempting) the worst crime, murder. So, there’s that legacy.” Gibney’s interest in making the film came from something Rushdie said in the book. “He said, ‘The story is really a love story,’” Gibney said. “It’s going from a place of hate to a place of love. And (I feel) the legacy of Salman is that he’s always resisted the attempts of the state to eradicate culture, to make him stop speaking.” Another part of Rushdie’s legacy is perseverance, according to Gibney. “The movie is also about recovery, spiritual recovery, and that’s really what got me invested in wanting to make it,” he said. “Salman has been the victim in a sense of state-sponsored violence for 35 years, and this is how important it is to retain your principles to exist but also maintain your humanity and decency and love for others.” Sometimes legacy can be something ugly, said Coates, an executive director of Dawn Porter’s documentary, “When a Witness Recants,” which is about the Harlem Park Three — students who were convicted and imprisoned for a murder they didn’t commit. Coates was 7 at the time of the murder. “There was deep community sadness and deep community rage, (and) the police effectively came into that community and they used that rage and they directed at three other boys who had done nothing,” he said. “This is how you begin to develop, how shall we say, a skeptical relationship with the state. It has profound implications for people to know they pay their taxes for the duty they’re paying for — to protect their very lives — (and) are effectively victims of a societal con. This is how you begin to feel kind of not shocked when you see things like what is happening in Minneapolis.” Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez sentimentally greets a full house on Tuesday for the festival’s “Power of Story” discussion at the Egyptian Theater. Because the festival moves to Boulder, Colorado, next year, Tuesday’s event marked the last Sundance Film Festival panel that will take place at the Egyptian Theatre, the first venue to screen films when the festival opened in 1981 Park City. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Sundance Institute Tolentino had mentioned that city at the beginning of the discussion, right after the panel took the stage. “I want to spend a little bit of time on what has probably been on the backbeat of consciousness for everyone in this room for the last week — Minneapolis. State occupation. The public execution of ordinary people by ICE,” she said. “I feel real lucky to be here with you guys, specifically four artists who I so thoroughly admire and who are publicly invested in our politics and our systems and the flawed and unstable American project. I would be grateful if anyone has anything on their minds.” Gibney remembered attending a 2018 demonstration in Russia. “You had to pass through a cordon of security officials,” he said. “They were all masked, and they all had their IDs taped over. Back then I thought that was something that could never happen here. And then to see the public execution of Alex Pretti, and having been through the premiere of Salman and (his wife Eliza Griffiths) here at the festival, it had an eerie connection that I don’t think I reckoned with when I made the movie.” Coates said it can be easy for artists and writers to feel guilty when things like ICE occupations occur because they don’t think they are doing anything productive while demonstrators put their lives on the line. “Minneapolis of 2026 actually starts with Minneapolis of 2020,” he said referring to the worldwide protest and clashes between police and demonstrators in the wake of George Floyd’s muder by officer Derek Chauvin. “The thing you have to remember is the response from the powers that be was a police response, but it was also a response against writing, a response against books and a response against journalism.” If people don’t understand the world, they can’t act on behalf of it or against it, according to Coates. “Our enemies understand that,” he said. “So I just think it really really is important that the people we oppose get that link.” Turturro took Coates’ point one space further and talked about past writers who chronicled upheavals in their novels and essays. “Whether it was W. E. B. DuBois, Primo Levi (or) Albert Camus, these people were there, and they wrote eloquently about how the people they were up against tried to erase the actual events they would perpetrate,” he said. “I think we’re seeing an example of that — whether it was reconstruction, whether it was fascism and resistance. We’re seeing it and they’re saying, ‘No, this is not what happened.’ (But) we can say, ‘No, this is what we see and this is what’s happening.’” Wilde referred to the misinformation of Petti’s killing and the killing of Renée Good, which were not even three weeks apart, given by authorities as “Orwellian.” “They’re telling you what you’re not seeing is what you’re seeing,” she said. “As storytellers, we can tell the story of what we’re seeing and reject the lies.” The actress feels terrified, but also responsible to make sure the truth is told. “I want everyone to understand that if the next move is that (you) won’t be able to document it and they’re going to stop you from seeing it, it is going to get worse,” she said. “I think it’s (no longer) a matter of saying, ‘It’s horrible. I feel guilty. I feel sad.’ It’s a time to engage in truthtelling through storytelling and communicating. I think we need to be activated because this is a crucial moment when everything will be decided.” Even Sundance FIlm Festival Director Eugene Hernandez took a moment to recognize Minneapolis when he introduced the discussion. “As we gather here today, we’re so grateful and so appreciative to have this space, the Egyptian Theatre,” he said. “This is a nourishing space and beautiful space where we can share and discuss, and yet, we know outside, away from here, there is so much happening in this world. It can feel like a striking cognitive dissonance; at least that’s how it feels to me. I want to acknowledge that feeling and live with it for a moment and look forward to this moment we have together.” Hernandez also acknowledged the fact that the panel discussion was the last Sundance event to be held at the venue, which began screening Sundance Film Festival films in 1981. And it wasn’t lost on the audience that that mention referred to the legacy of the festival’s late founder, Robert Redford, who died last autumn.  “This is a big deal also for us because this is our final event in this venue — where our festival started,” he said. “As I say that, I think about the stories Mr. (Robert) Redford would share about him standing out in front of this theater passing out tickets with his daughter, Amy.” Hernandez thanks Egyptian Theatre manager Randy Barton, and mentioned the venue is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. “Let’s hold that in our minds as we come together to talk about legacy,” he said. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival runs through Feb. 1. For information, visit festival.sundance.org. The post Filmmakers, actors and writers focus on legacy as a ‘Power of Story’ appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less