Robert Redford Joins ACLU at Sundance for “Reckoning With Torture”

Our January 29 staging of “Reckoning with Torture” at the Sundance Film Festival got a little more exciting when we learned that the Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford, would be taking the stage.

Redford joined actors America Ferrera, Ellen Barkin and Michael Stahl-David; writers and artists Alex Gibney, George Saunders, Sandra Cisneros, Naomi Wolf, Annie Proulx, Esmeralda Santiago, Marilynne Robinson; former CIA field officer Jack Rice and former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, for a one-of-a-kind performance event combining readings from declassified government documents with video and visuals to expose the scope and human cost of the Bush administration’s torture program. You may recall that the ACLU and PEN American Center havestaged similar events in New York and Washington D.C.

The event at Sundance was directed for the stage by Doug Liman (Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Fair Game), and included original artwork by Jenny Holzer.

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The sold-out event brought an awareness of an incredibly important issue to the star-studded festival and was very well received in Park City, Utah – but don’t just take our word for it. You can read coverage of the event on by the Speakeasy blog of The Wall Street Journal, Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, and by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com.

You can learn more about the project online at www.ReckoningWithTorture.org. Help us spread the word on Twitter, and stay informed by following the project on Facebook!

We’re already planning the next phase of the project, so stay tuned for more information and updates.

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