Sundance Festival founder Robert Redford hints at retirement

The Sundance film festival may have to continue without its leader after Robert Redford announced his phased retirement from the event he founded in 1981.

The 76-year-old actor and film-maker, in the UK to open the second Sundance London, suggested that his cherished project had outgrown him. "It doesn't need me any more," he said. "I'm slowly stepping back."

Conceived as a riposte to mainstream Hollywood and a showcase for left-field, independent cinema, January's annual festival attracts 50,000 visitors to itsbase in Park City, Utah.

In the meantime, the four-day event in London has helped establish Sundance as an international brand, complete with a base at the O2 arena and a credit for Jaguar cars as its "presenting partner". Yet its expanding girth has led some critics to suggest it may be a victim of its own success.

"Has Sundance got too big? That's for others to decide," said Redford. "Has it got too big for me? Probably, in the sense that I realised I'd been drowning in it. So now I'm content to just step in periodically to ensure it stays true to its original purpose, and make sure it doesn't spend too much time raising money.

"Sundance is a non-profit organisation. It's supposed to be about independent film-makers, about people who don't have a chance. We have to live those values. We can't let it look like Beverly Hills."

Redford was one of the world's most bankable movie stars when he founded the Sundance institute and festival, named after his breakthrough role in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

"The first year we took it to Park City, there was only one ramshackle theatre," he recalled. "I had to stand outside trying to get people to come in, like some guy outside a strip-joint. And then it went completely beyond what I had envisioned. The whole thing mushroomed."

Over the past three decades, the festival has been credited with launching the careers of such film-makers as Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Sundance London runs from 25-28 April will offer 31 films and 15 concerts. Hot tickets include the fugitive drama Mud, the sci-fi romance Upstream Color and the international premiere of Allison Ellwood's documentary on the Eagles, followed by an on-stage audience with Glenn Frey and Don Henley from the Californian band.

Redford's slow retreat from Sundance has allowed him to return to film-making. His latest production, the political thriller The Company You Keep, opens in the UK in June, while he recently played the lead role in the castaway drama All is Lost, written and directed by Sundance graduate JC Chandor.

"It's funny," Redford said. "We've supported all these film-makers for 30-years, and yet none of them ever came [back] and asked me to be in a film. I thought that was pretty weird until it happened this year with JC Chandor.

"The fact that he wanted me was so appealing. Finally I get to be a part of something I created. Finally, after 30 years, they gave one to the Gipper."