Sundance Institute's London Festival - NYTimes.com LOS ANGELES - This is typically the time of the year when John Cooper, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, catches his breath. The art house spotlight has moved on to New York, where the Tribeca Film Festival started Wednesday. The Cannes Film Festival will take over from there. The next Sundance? Still a safe nine months away. But recent weeks have found Mr. Cooper scrambling to put the finishing touches on a Sundance spinoff event in London that will include screenings of American-made features and documentaries and a live music series, with performances by the British trip-hop artist Tricky, and Rufus and Martha Wainwright. The inaugural Sundance London will begin on April 26 at AEG Europe's O2 complex and will last four days. "It's been pretty intense," Mr. Cooper said. But, he added, "if we're going to do it, we're going to dive in." Sundance London reflects a renewed effort by the nonprofit Sundance Institute to broaden its reach beyond the mountains outside Salt Lake City, where it holds its marquee festival in January and conducts filmmaking workshops year-round. It may amount to the largest expansion of the Sundance brand - Robert Redford, the institute's founder, ardently prefers the word "mission" - since the Sundance Channel was introduced on cable in 1996. Over the last two years Sundance and its partners have started holding directing and screenwriting workshops in Turkey, India and China, adding to more-established ones in Jordan and Kenya. A new venture called Film Forward brings independent cinema to North American outposts like Sulphur, Okla., and overseas spots like Rabat, Morocco. And last summer Sundance unveiled a new service that allows specialty filmmakers to sell and rent movies independently via Sundance-branded areas on sites like iTunes, Amazon.com, Hulu and YouTube. All of this activity comes as the institute's most high-profile component, the Sundance Film Festival, faces increased competition. Sundance still ranks as the pre-eminent showcase for American independent cinema, but other festivals - South by Southwest, Tribeca - have started to siphon away buzz and implement their own aggressive growth strategies. For instance Tribeca, co-founded by Robert De Niro, has started a spinoff festival in Doha, Qatar, and is pursuing an offshoot in South Africa; it also has a for-profit distribution arm. "To me London feels like the latest skirmish in a battle to be the leading brand for a type of American film," said Eugene Hernandez, the former editor of IndieWire.com and now director of digital strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Sundance had to get there before Robert De Niro did. There are also risks to Sundance's growth, including spreading itself too thin (it didn't add any additional programming staff to help with Sundance London, for example) and blurring its identity by pushing deeper into other art forms (music is a big part of the London event). Sundance employs about 110 people year round in New York, Utah and California and has revenue of about $24.3 million. The institute is certainly aware of concerns in the late 2000s that it was resting on its laurels - sitting up on its mountain with an air of self-importance, perhaps to the detriment of its mission: to discover and nurture new voices in the areas of film and theater and to introduce audiences to their work. As part of a shake-up Mr. Cooper took over the festival in 2009 and re-emphasized its independent roots. His predecessor, Geoffrey Gilmore, moved to the Tribeca Film Festival's parent, Tribeca Enterprises, to become chief creative officer. Mr. Redford changed the institute's leadership a year later. Keri Putnam, a former Miramax Films executive, succeeded Ken Brecher as executive director. Mr. Redford said Ms. Putnam, whom he described on Monday as "an express train without any brakes," was largely responsible for Sundance's new momentum. "She's overflowing with ideas, but the most important thing is that Keri understands that we can't move just to be moving," he said. To that end Mr. Redford dismissed the notion that Sundance is feeling pressure to burnish its brand. "We are mission driven; we are not brand driven," he said. "I always seize up when people say "brand." I don't want to be Starbucks. Ms. Putnam, in an interview, played down her role, emphasizing that Sundance has long focused on expansion and noting that the institute even helped stage minifestivals in Beijing and Tokyo in the 1990s. "But it's true that I looked at some of our international programs of the past and felt there was opportunity to deepen those connections, especially now when boundaries are coming down a bit more between cultures because of technology," she said. Sundance London, sponsored by Sony Entertainment Network (among others), is a partnership between Sundance Institute, AEG Europe and Mr. Redford's for-profit Sundance Enterprises; 30 percent of any profit goes to the institute. Ms. Putnam declined to say how many people are expected to attend. A spokesman described ticket sales as "solid and steadily building." Strategizing for Sundance London started more than a year ago after AEG, looking for ways to keep the O2 facility occupied, reached out to Mr. Redford. Detailed planning began in September, Mr. Cooper said, and the final program includes 14 feature-length films and eight shorts that had their premieres at Sundance's flagship festival in January. In keeping with the spinoff's dual focus on film and music, the selections include "Under African Skies," a documentary about Paul Simon's "Graceland" album, and "Filly Brown," starring Gina Rodriguez as a talented but struggling rapper. And the Wainwrights will perform following the world premiere of "Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You," a film by Lian Lunson about their mother, the folk singer Kate McGarrigle. For Mr. Redford music fits comfortably within Sundance's, and his own, independent ethos. "Music has played a huge role in the movies I've made and starred in, all the way back to "Butch Cassidy," " said Mr. Redford, who will participate in an opening-night panel with T Bone Burnett, whose soundtrack work includes movies like "The Hunger Games" and "Crazy Heart." We can go anyplace and maintain our integrity.