By Graham K. Rogers

Robert Redford is an important name in cinema and in cinema history: actor, director and creator of the Sundance Film Festival. He came to prominence early with some memorable films, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with Paul Newman) and later The Way We Were (with Barbra Streisand). Other important movies from a massive career list were The Great Gatsby and All The President's Men.

He directed several major movies, like Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It, as well as producing or co-producing several, such as The Motorcycle Diaries: about the young Che Guevara.

On land he had bought from movie earnings in Utah, he subsequently founded the Sundance Film Festival which has grown to become one of the most important venues for new movie releases, ranking with Cannes in the minds of some.

For me, Sundance is (or should be) one of the must-sees. Along with Burning Man, SXSW (South by Southwest) and Glastonbury, it is on my Bucket List. Alas, I will certainly not be making it this year, nor for the next few years as far as I can see. Fortunately, like the recent Hong Kong Film Festival that I examined last March, there is an app for it: Sundance Film Festival 2013. It is available for the iPhone and for the iPad and it is a free download.

While most people may not be able to attend, such apps allow listings to be examined and schedules to be tracked as well as a considerable amount of other useful information. It is useful as a reference tool, as well as for helping those lucky enough to be there to make their plans. I tried it first on the iPhone and despite the small screen, was able to experience the app and its content quite easily.

This is an extremely rich app with a wide variety of data available. It is complex in the sense that there are so many ways to access the information included. A calendar links to an individual day's events and the films being shown are listed depending on the venue (as well as All), allowing those attending to organise their schedules and check for ticket availability. Already some screenings are sold out.

For those of us unable to go, the information gives us previews of the movies that will be shown. Information displays are in text with some images. There are links to video clips for selected movies.

A historical section provides some useful background and I was interested to see some of the posters from earlier years.

On the iPhone the display is portrait mode, while the larger screen of the iPad all displays are in landscape mode. This use of the wider screen display means that more information can be displayed at the same time (for example listings and a specific movie choice). When some still images are enlarged from their normal display sizes, the full screen image loses some of the sharpness.

It is the movies that are the core of Sundance. As in other years, the content includes many foreign language movies: fiction and documentary. Some of the American made movies are likely to have appeal when they are released, like the movie Mud with Matthew McConaughey.

There is also a political flavour to some of the movies, with examples like The World According to Dick Cheney which is bound to have strong partisan comments (on both sides).

Also likely to be controversial is We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. The app includes the comment, "These people and terms have exploded into public consciousness by fundamentally changing the way democratic societies deal with privacy, secrecy, and the right to information, perhaps for generations to come."

Related to the use of information is the movie, Google and the World Brain, with the comment, "Some argue that Google's actions represent aggressive theft on an enormous scale, others see them as an attempt to monopolize our shared cultural heritage. . . ."

With the wealth of information included, the app provides an interesting browsing experience, if one is not looking for specific items. A search feature brings up information quickly.

On the opening screen, is a logo from HP and from time to time advertisements appear at the bottom of the screen, but did not detract at all from my use of the app. Such advertisements are a small price to pay for access to this type of information and HO are to be congratulated for their backing here.

Users may also want to look at Savvy City (if only for its neat icon), a free app that can be used to set up events around the Sundance Festival.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.