Playing a room, it’s a real dictator-type situation – you can really move the crowd the way you want to. In a festival, there’s a sea of people, and it’s harder to lock in on any one group.
Way back in 2008, when the iPhone was new and Instagram was a gleam in Kevin Systrom’s eye, I was involved in creating a service called CrowdFire. It was a way for fans at a festival (the first was Outside Lands) to share photos, tweets, and texts in a location and event specific way.
You can’t host an Italian film festival without Marcello Mastroianni. It just doesn’t feel right.
The Cannes Film Festival is the biggest, most prestigious film festival in the world. This is where filmmakers are discovered, where futures are made, and the most important films premiered.
We no longer sing and dance. We don’t know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.
I really love the festival circuit.
My favourite festival experience is a show at midnight with the moon blazing and a crowd full of open hearts ready to dance.
When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I’d eat ten daily – marvellous.
But I really felt that, something about the lights going down, and the sense of community. I saw this movie at one festival, and there were 1700 people.
Unlike in the past, when acting in parallel cinema entailed hitting film festival circuits even not fully comprehending the story thread at times, directors are more intent to tailor present day films for the audiences, while introducing fresh concept and craft.
‘Hum Dono’ was accepted in a very big way. It was the official entry at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival.
Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.
Adding C3, the leading festival portfolio in North America, to our global portfolio of Insomniac, Festival Republic and Country Nation provides Live Nation with the world’s largest festival platform.
I feel best in a ragged pair of red Honda Motorcycle pants. I have taken them to Machu Picchu, to the Knob Creek Machine Gun festival, and backstage to Cirque du Soleil – just the right touch to make you untouchable. No one quite dares to throw you out, because perhaps you are a world class motocross racer.
There is absolutely nothing better than gorging on delicious Rabdi and Jalebi during the festival of Holi, which only makes the festival a lot more special for me.
I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn’t pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.
It is because of the blessing of Lord Ganesha that the event has become so popular among Puneites. Kalmadiji also plays a very important role in the growth of the Pune Festival. It is because of him that we are able to enthrall the audience with good performances.
In New York, I’ll walk down the street and someone will say, ‘Nice show,’ and that’s it. If I’m at a food festival, it’s open season.
For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we’d start in St Tropez. I’d collect my bikinis from my home there and then we’d go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy.
Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter.
Usually, when I’m at a festival with a movie that I’m in, I’m in and out in 24 hours.
At a festival, a lot of people came to see other artists, so you have to put on a signature set and performance: ‘This is what I do, this is why I’m here.’ At solo gigs, I’m a DJ – I’ll play two-and-a-half hours, and not just my own music, also my favorite songs by other artists.
What they did was to make a pilot and it may well go to series at the next festival but I don’t have any news on that. It’s already been on Paramount actually, but as it’s on Paramount it’ll probably be on several more times… hopefully.
Bonnaroo is the most significant festival in the country. I can sometimes just get caught up in the moment and listening and say, ‘Oops, I gotta go sing now.’
Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperm trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.
Comic-Con has become more of a pop cultural festival, and to not be included feels like you’re missing the biggest celebration of the year.
One thing we’ve always wanted to do is just do things our way, and we’ve always talked about having our own festival.
Many have asked me, ‘Why have a film festival in the middle of a war?’ But they have it backwards. The question is, ‘Why have a war in the middle of a film festival?’
Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.
The worst parts of playing a festival are walking. Not a fan of walking. The mud, I can handle. But the walking? No, ta.
I think one of the things the writers’ festival does that is very good is that it brings writers from around the world and around the country and locally and puts them all in the one spot together, and that’s what a lot of the world’s great writers’ festivals do.
If you get to bring a little movie on the festival circuit, it’s a nice experience because you get to see it with an audience. People who go to festivals to watch films are usually a little more eager to enjoy them. It’s exciting because it’s like you’re going to the film’s opening night at every festival.
Although I have been doing plays since I was 8 years old, it was only when I started doing Shakespeare at age 19 at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival that I felt like my career started.
The first play I ever did was with Michael Langham, Brian Bedford, and Colm Feore, at Stratford Festival. That was my first professional job, and I got to work with Garland Wright and so many great artists.
It probably wasn’t until Nine Inch Nails played the first Lollapalooza that I actually went to a festival.
I’m honored with the success of ‘Omerta’ at the Toronto Film Festival.
Ganesh Chaturthi is very close to my heart. The festival brings with it joy, love, and happiness for everyone.
First, I only get earthen lamps during Diwali, and I urge everyone to do so, so that people who make these diyas can earn money and have a good Diwali. Also, I celebrate the festival with special children. I take homemade sweets for them like halwa or jaggery and spend some time with them.
I saw the Dead in ’73 at Nassau Coliseum, and that same year, I saw them at the crazy, big Watkins Glen festival. It was just outrageous. It was amazing to see the reciprocity between them and their audience.
After all the hard work, today, ‘The Villain’ songs are creating records with online views and are being played at pretty much every festival. That gives me immense satisfaction.
Back in the mid ’90s, I went to a film festival, and they were airing ‘Central Park West’ at the same time as this cute little romantic comedy movie called ‘French Exit,’ and I got to go from one theater where I was goofy, falling over myself, to this kind of evil vixen kind of character.
Festival culture is all about evolving consciousness and generating a sense of unity, hope, and possibility.
The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.
We are a multicultural family. My mother is Hindu, my father Muslim. We celebrate every festival, be it Diwali or Eid.
I started a festival of short films produced for television, and as the secretary of the organisation that ran it I used to work very closely with the state government.
There are different milestones in my career. Playing a festival at 16 was a milestone and I was really happy when I played my first show.
I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn’t work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.
My first film festival and my first film that I’ve ever been in, ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene,’ that was at Sundance.
I have seen many festival films and I will be blunt, I don’t think ‘Madras Cafe’ was ready for festivals.
But you just don’t know where any film is going to go, or how it’s going to end up. Films so often don’t get the love and attention needed to get to the right festival, or find the right distributor, or get seen by the world.
There’s nothing like a music festival. People are ready to have a good time. I don’t think anyone comes to a festival going, ‘I’m gonna be a complete bummer today.’
I got heckled off stage in Western Australia at a music festival once.
What I see for the band by the end of this year is the Complex live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I want my guys to be comfortable. I’m certainly not in this for the money, but I’d really like to see my guys make some money off of this stuff.
