CU Boulder Now Teaches a Class About Running Film Festivals, Built Around Sundance’s Move
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CU Boulder’s Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts now offers a course called Film Festival Cultures, taught by Associate Professor Kelly Sears and created ahead of Sundance’s move to Colorado. It’s open to all majors, capped at 60 students with a waitlist, and offered every spring semester. This is a campus and academic story, separate from the formal CU Boulder and Sundance Institute partnership we’ve covered elsewhere.
Last verified: August 26, 2026
What’s confirmed
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Course name and department | Confirmed: Film Festival Cultures, Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts |
| Instructor | Confirmed: Associate Professor Kelly Sears |
| Structure: festival history, programming and curation, then designing a festival | Confirmed |
| Enrollment cap and eligibility | Confirmed: 60 students, all majors, waitlist |
| Schedule | Confirmed: offered every spring semester |
Coursework includes watching and debating short films and hearing from industry professionals, including people connected to Sundance and the Denver Film Festival. Sears has described the course as, in her words, “a real opportunity to think about” how festivals work for students, created specifically with Colorado’s Sundance era in mind.
How this differs from the CU Boulder and Sundance partnership
We’ve previously covered the formal CU Boulder and Sundance Institute partnership, which covers student ticket access, an on-campus volunteer program, and a small internship pilot for the 2027 festival. Film Festival Cultures is a separate, ongoing academic course rather than a festival-specific program: it existed as a curriculum decision by the Cinema Studies department, timed to Sundance’s arrival, but it isn’t part of that formal partnership’s confirmed offerings.
Why it’s worth knowing about if you’re not a student
It’s a small, concrete sign of how deeply Sundance’s move is reshaping campus life beyond the festival week itself, alongside the academic-calendar overlap we cover in our post on whether CU Boulder is in session during the festival. For the broader story of why Boulder was chosen at all, see our why Sundance moved to Boulder page.
What we’re watching
We’ll update this post if CU Boulder expands the course, ties it more formally into festival programming, or if students from the class end up involved in the 2027 festival itself.