Time was when the Sundance Film Festival was an unknown event.

"At one point we were so grateful if we could interest anyone," remembers Saundra Saperstein, press supervisor for the annual affair and marketing director for the Utah Film Commission."The first year I had a little recipe box with names and phone numbers. Now it's turned into this major, major undertaking."

Today - 13 years later - film types from both coasts flock to Park City during the last 10 days of January to attend the independent-film showcase. Its success is credited to many, Saperstein among them.

With the yearly influx of directors, producers and screenwriters come 200 or 300 journ-alists, all of whom look to Saperstein and her 10-member staff for tips on everything from what movie to see to which restaurant to frequent.

High-profile as it is, the festival is just part of Saperstein's job. She spends a good part of the year traveling, promoting the state as a filmmaking venue to movie investors in New York and Los Angeles.

Sophisticated and cultured to a fault, she circulates easily in the industry, carrying with her an almost New York air and a firm pitch on what makes Utah cinematically different from the rest of the world.

Her dual roles are complementary. "When I go out promoting Utah, I also go representing Sundance. That gets me in doors I might not otherwise get into."

Educated in the late 1950s at the University of California-Berkely, where she earned a dual-major degree in speech-communications and public policy, Saperstein returned to Utah for one reason.

"I fell in love with my husband," she says matter-of-factly, remembering the summer she was back home visiting her parents in Ogden when she met a young lawyer named Herschel Saperstein, who now has a practice in Salt Lake City.

"He was the only other Jewish person of eligible age," she says, laughing.

The Sapersteins today have three grown children: a son who is a Wall Street investment banker, a daughter who teaches in a San Francisco bilingual program and another son with a local records-retrieval business.

Saperstein taught in the graduate division of the University of Utah's theater department for eight years, dabbled in travel-industry marketing for two years and briefly considered being a realtor.

"But I'd always loved the movie business . . . if I still had my set of autographed movie photos from my childhood I'd be a wealthy woman."

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When the Sundance window opened, Saperstein jumped.

As much as she likes the film industry, Saperstein harbors no ambition to join the Hollywood rat race.

"My life is essentially here," she says. "I love my work and want to keep doing it and stay connected to the film business, but I'm at the point where I want to balance it out.

"My husband and I want to travel more, I love my garden and I like having free time to go to the movies."

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