Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 16th to 28th.
Festival Day 5
A busier day today, with the first of our Indie Episodic premieres, and the last of the Spotlight section premieres that we can actually attend. I was in the office from 10:00am until noon, when I was able to step out to attend Telefilm Canada’s annual luncheon. I didn’t see as many familiar faces as I expected but did briefly talk to Hot Docs’ director of programming Shane Smith, filmmaker Trevor Anderson, Brenda Lieberman of the Calgary International and Calgary Underground film festivals, Dorota Lech (TIFF and Hot Docs programmer), and Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin from Montreal’s Eyesteelfilm. I also met Caron Nightingale from APM Music, an LA-based music licensing company with an office in Toronto.
Then back to the office for a couple of more hours until I joined Priya at the brand new Ray Theatre for the premiere of Steve James’s (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, Life Itself) new series America to Me. Despite the large size of the entourage, the load in went really smoothly and we started right on time. Accompanied by Shannen from the Press Office, Priya and I grabbed food at Burger King and then made our way to the Library Theatre, where we loaded in the film team from The Rider, which included director Chloe Zhao and the co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics. Another smooth screening had us finished for the day by about 9:30pm.
Since tomorrow is our busiest day, with Priya and I handling separate screenings all day at the Park Avenue (formerly the Yarrow) Theatre and The Ray, I came straight home to catch up on my blog posts and am now heading for bed by 11:00pm. Tomorrow night is the Shorts Awards, and I’ll be disappointed to miss them, so I sent off a bit of a Hail Mary pass of an email to the shorts liaisons, Syd and Romina, to see if I might be able to grab a ticket. My day should finish around 7 and although I’ll be tired, the opportunity to go the best party at Sundance should energize me. But I’m prepared to miss out if they have too many filmmaker ticket requests. We’ll wait and see…