Attendance at the Ogden venue of the Sundance Film Festival was up in 2010 over the year before.
According to information released Thursday by the Sundance Institute, Ogden's 800-seat venue, Peery's Egyptian Theater, was filled to 57 percent capacity on average during the January festival.
That's up from an average of 49 percent of seats filled in Ogden during the 2009 festival.
The highest attendance in Ogden this year was for "Get Low," where patrons filled 100 percent of the seats.
Festival spokeswoman Brooks Addicott said several factors could account for the increase this year, including new discounts for military patrons. In addition, public interest varies based on specific films shown in any given year.
This year, Ogden benefited from strong Dramatic category programming, and a higher than usual number of star-studded Premiere category films, including "Get Low," said Addicott. That film, starring Bill Murray and Robert Duvall, opens in commercial release on July 30.
The Sundance Film Festival managed to book more premiere films at Peery's due to a new digital projection system installed there, Addicott said.
Premiere films are usually submitted by their makers in a digital format that requires late-model projectors, she said.
The overall festival, including Park City venues and satellite sites Ogden, Salt Lake City and Sundance, did fairly well this year, according to the financial report, which was prepared by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business.
Attendance held steady, but patron spending was down.
Of the festival's 41,221 attendees, 60 percent were from out of state. Attendees spent nearly $25 million on accommodations, a drop from recent years. They spent roughly $2.4 million on transportation, $6.9 million on sports and recreation, $10.6 million on meals and $4.9 million on discretionary items, the report stated.
The tourism industry has taken a hit the past two years, according to the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis, Sundance officials noted. Sundance's drops in patron spending mirror a tourism industry trend, which included a significant drop in 2008, and a leveling off since the second quarter of 2009.
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