I’ve always been interested in showing our films to international audiences. The easiest way is through the festival circuit, a big marketing platform for films that aren’t big enough to be in the mainstream race.
When I’m watching one of my movies in a festival with fans who are just into it and they love it? I end up feeling like my film is more interesting, it becomes more fun to watch and I get a special energy that feeds back into my process.
My mood board says that there should be a G.O.O.D. Music festival. Why not? Like, we haven’t – I don’t think – and I think all of the G.O.O.D. Music artists and affiliates are doing so many different things that we never get to Voltron up. So that would be a thing of mine.
When I do a festival, I want everyone to have a party, I think it is kind of similar to a club where everyone is there to have a good time and celebrate not being at work or just being able to have fun. I love people dancing to my music as well; if I can make them dance I feel happy.
Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.
Cannes is a lot of work, since it’s a market festival and a serious festival, and they really work you, understandably.
All festival food is expensive.
My dad made a film called ‘Willow’ when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards.
I love the funny and sweet moments I have with my cats, Jake and Frank, so I’m honored to be celebrating these moments at the Catdance Film Festival.
My mom helped me get started when I was younger. I started with singing. An agent saw me singing on stage at the Palm Springs Festival, and recommended I get into acting, so I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I just started from there, singing and acting.
I am honored to be one of this year’s Urbanworld ambassadors for the festival’s 20th anniversary, joining my friend David Oyelowo. I have always had a special relationship with Urbanworld, back to my days as a festival publicist to previewing my earlier films and now as an ambassador.
I really enjoy ‘festival life,’ as it were, and I love the reactions when I bring out my guitar on stage. The crowd are always a bit like, ‘What the hell is this urban guy doing with a guitar,’ and that’s what I love – the shock element of it all!
I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the ‘U.K. Sunday Times,’ who championed me as Shakespeare’s Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.
I love the outdoor festival feeling. When I’m on stage, it’s very gratifying to watch people on the lawns enjoying the music with a glass of wine.
Oh, the dilemma of the summer music festival. On one hand, we ladies try very hard to look cute walking around those muddy fields in our cowboy boots and cut-offs. On the other hand, we want to look like we really didn’t try at all and just rolled out of bed looking this way.
Festival line-ups should have all types of music. It’s part of cultural growth.
You just have to have a song that you’re desperate to play along to, and for me it was ‘Turn’ by the Scottish band Travis. I went to see them headline the Scottish T in the Park Festival, so after that festival, I went home and taught myself all of the Travis back catalog with an old guitar and a little chord book.
Throughout history, Hanukkah was a relatively minor festival, but it’s become very popular in America due to its proximity to Christmas.
I had lived in Fukuoka during the mid 1990s, and I was a volunteer with the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival.
I love Pushkar because of the Pushkar Fair, which happens every fall – it’s this camel festival, with ornately-dressed camels, camel races. But the reason I truly love this city is the Hindu mythology behind it.
I really like small, intimate shows, but there’s nothing like playing at a festival. It’s a completely different experience. Everyone is just a little more primal; they can get away with more things.
I was four days old when I went to my first bluegrass festival.
Then when I got to Hollywood, the first musical I did was Festival in 1977.
I love the outdoor festival feeling.
The crowd at Download Festival always welcomes us with a lot of energy so I can’t wait to perform there again!
To have the sound I have, to pretty much close out a festival, it’s something I didn’t see much of in school. It was always pop singers and rappers. It’s so cool to see that space for R&B getting bigger.
When I was a kid, I was roaming through Glastonbury Festival at eight years old, on my own. I say ‘on my own’, but I was probably with my oldest sister Sarah, and she would have been 13 or 14 at the time, so she’d have been walking us around. But I got to go places and meet people, and was trusted a lot, without a doubt.
When we finished ‘Stop Making Sense,’ we went right to the San Francisco Film Festival for the world premiere, and people swarmed the stage and started dancing before the first song was even finished.
