Redford, Sundance Officials Talk About Guns in Film

PARK CITY, Utah â€" Does Hollywood play a role in gun violence Asked that question on Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival’s opening-day press conference, event officials, including Robert Redford, were reticent to wade deep into the debate.

“It’s good that the dialogue about gun control is happening on a national level right now,” Keri Putnam, executive director of the nonprofit Sundance Institute, said carefully. “I don’t think I have anything to add to that really.”

John Cooper, director of the festival, shifted the conversation toward “Valentine Road,” a documentary about a 2008 school shooting in California that has its premiere here on Saturday. After the Newton, Conn., school massacre, he said, that film “all of a sudden has a new resonance.”

Mr. Redford, whose liberal political views are well known, initially stayed silent. Pressed by a reporter, he told a story about how he had noticed a number of movie billboards in Los Angeles recently that prominently eatured guns.

“Does my industry think that guns will help sell tickets I don’t know,” he said. “But it seems like a question worth asking my own industry. It seems fair.”

He added, “I notice how often guns are used in ads as though there’s something that translates in a positive way.”