That was at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in about 1989. There were 6,000 women there, and they were out in a meadow, and I offered the tuning meditation and they did it.
I'm looking forward to seeing more of the US, and hopefully spending some of the summer in Europe playing festivals. It's early days though, so who knows.
We couldn't afford test screenings. This is a relatively low-budget movie [Don Jon]. But what we did have was the festival circuit.
I know sometimes when I go to a convention or a film festival occasionally people bring me really valuable and really rare memorabilia that I have never seen before.
Festivals are weird, you never know what to expect so it's a bit more nerve wracking then playing your own show.
There was a producer from the Aspen Comedy Festival who happened to be there, as a friend of a friend, and she said, "I'd like to book you into the Aspen Comedy Festival," and we said, "Well, there isn't really a show to book in, this is just a little showcase and it's really our workshop." And she said, "No, it's great, I love it, just do exactly what you did."
Katie Paterson introduced the project [ Future Library ] to a handful of writers at a very fine international literary festival in Denmark at the Louisiana Museum, I sent her an e-mail when I got back to Iceland, saying, "It's a wonderful project.
My career has been a slow burn, so waiting to do the Edinburgh Festival was a smart move. If I'd spent a month there 10-15 years ago, there's no way anyone was gonna remember me.
All these women had directed movies that I loved on the film festival circuit, but couldn't get a job making television. That's how locked down TV is.
You can argue about violence. It's destructive, but people are inherently violent in a lot of ways. Abusing drugs is always bad for people and bad for society, but the whole notion of festival is tied up with intoxication.
I feel engaged with young people in Pakistan. But that said, it's still a small minority that reads novels, literary fiction. But it isn't necessarily a small minority of the wealthy elite in the city of Lahore. It can often be and I often do meet at literary festivals students who've ridden a bus 12 hours from a very small town just to hear some of their favorite writers come and speak.
There were some things I was going and doing in Europe a little bit. Some festivals that brought me over. That was good. Some touring I did over there. But there was nothing major [from 22 to 29].
I had played some festivals with people and met and been around some good people, for sure. But what I say to my friends and students, anything like that with a grant or a competition, it involves a great deal of luck.
I was able to go over [Saxophone Competition] and work a little more in Europe. I'm thankful that those of kinds of things. Simultaneously, some nice things did come in. I got a nice festival that came in, in Virginia through that. There was a club that opened in DC in the famous Willard Hotel near the White House. And the club was called The Nest. I played there a few nights. Some musicians in Philly and D.C. kind of brought me down and got me on a couple things. So things opened up a little bit.
Just be comfortable. Sometimes, when open up for a bigger artist at a conventional concert, you can feel unwelcome. But when you're playing a festival, people come to see music in general - so don't be fearful. The people are there to enjoy and discover new music so approach the show with confidence and optimism.
When there are rock festivals where there are sometimes 120,000 people and they're all sold out and they're epic, I think rock is alive and well, and hopefully it stays that way.
I actually remember getting asked when we were at the Cannes Film Festival, what I expected to do next. I remember feeling like there was no way I could've imagined that something like Tetro would have happened to me.
I love playing the CMA Music Festival each year because it's one of the very best audiences you could hope for. It's one of the places you can perform where you know everyone there is a big Country Music fan.
My stories were translated and had many reviews before I had an interview with any international or Arab newspaper. If the stories hadn't succeeded, you wouldn't have asked me my position on Arab festivals and I wouldn't have been interested in the festivals anyway, because I would be in seclusion, writing.
I make films, and festivals, museums, and academia are embracing the work. It will be heard. It's bound to happen because cinema is universal. You create it, some people will notice it, some people will watch it.
It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience.
About my work, my first film, Écoute le Temps (Fissures), was positioned by distributors as a thriller because they thought that it would sell more easily. But it was surely a mistake, as that kind of viewer did not take the bait, and it drew away its potential core audience, those whom I met in festivals and in various Q&As who seem to appreciate that particular kind of cross-over arthouse film.
...As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries.
In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film.
For some reason at Sundance, more than other festivals that I'm aware of, you find filmmakers rushing to screen works that sometimes aren't completed. In my seven years of programming at Toronto, I'm not aware of any documentaries that went back for serious editing after their premiere - other than those presented as works-in-progress. But at Sundance every year there seems to be a few films that push the deadline so hard that they get taken back to the edit room afterwards.
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