I’ve been trying to get my dear friend Kevin Smokler up to Toronto to host our festival for a couple of years now. It’s bittersweet that it’s going to happen in 2024, when the festival is wrapping up. But I’m so very happy that this human sparkplug of energy and love will be introducing each screening this year. I met Kevin in Austin, Texas, in 2002, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, an event I attended from 2001-2011. I made dozens of friends there, dear people who I still (try to) keep in touch with as much as I can. Kevin is special, though. We both came from the early days of personal weblogs (“blogs”) when you didn’t have to be a UX designer or a Javascript programmer to be an “internet nerd.” Ahead of the 2002 festival, he emailed me (remember email? haha), inviting me to lunch. The substance of his email was something like, “I’ve been reading your blog and you seem interesting, so we should meet up.” Now if you know anything about internet nerds (or me), you’d see how unusual and refreshing this was. It can be hard to make friends as an adult, especially if you’re an introvert. Kevin is definitely not an introvert, and when we’re together, we always have spontaneous adventures and amazing conversations that go all over the place. I can’t wait for you to meet him! Now, here’s his more “professional” bio:
Kevin Smokler is the author of four books about movies and pop culture including Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies (2016) and the forthcoming Break the Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers (Oxford University Press, 2025). In 2020, he co-directed/co-produced Vinyl Nation, a feature length documentary about the 21st century vinyl record renaissance, that screened at film festivals on four continents and won nine awards for directing and cinematography. His next film is a documentary look at coffeeshops as centres of civic dialogue and democracy (2025). As a host and presenter, he has appeared at South by Southwest, New York Comic-Con and universities throughout North America.