Park City/Los Angeles  - Outgoing US president George W Bush saw art as a political threat, Hollywood legend Robert Redford said, adding that he believed president-elect Barack Obama will come to the rescue of the US arts scene by increasing support for it.

Redford's hopeful political prognosis was made at the opening of the Sundance Film Festival Thursday night. Redford founded the event 25 years ago and built it into the most important independent cinema festival in the US. This year it is screening 118 features and 90 short films.

"I'm personally excited just because I'm glad to see the gang that couldn't shoot straight get out of there. I'm glad to see them gone," Redford said. "I think that there is going to be some change."

"Obviously with the economics the way it is, there's going to be priorities put in place that might get ahead of art. But I do believe we can't get any worse than we've had. So anything is going to be better."

Redford predicted that filmmakers would find it easier to secure federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). "They were fighting the political machine of the extreme right that saw art as some kind of threat," he said.

"So I think that's going to change. What I would like to see is, a country like ours should certainly be subsidizing, a little bit more than it is, art in general. Other countries do. So I would certainly like to see more coming out of the NEA. They've cut it down to the bone. There's practically nothing left."

Such funding would be needed more than ever during the tough economic times, as major studios were slashing budgets and taking fewer risks on independent films. Further adding to the gloomy prognosis is that the high-profile films that came out of last year's Sundance Festival failed to make an impact at the general box office.

"If you want to come into this business, you need to want it more than anything else in your life, because it's going to be a hard road," Redford said.

"It's going to take things like luck and hard work and diligence and tenacity and bravery and courage. And to be able to go through that, you have to want it more than anything." (dpa)