This month I had the privilege of attending the 2018 Sundance film festival, I say privilege, because it was something I had always wanted to go to. I used to have a book on cinema, and there was a section on film festivals, where sundance was covered in it! And… bing just like that the idea of it began,
If you don’t know what sundance is, then here’s a little break down on it!
- The Sundance film festival was set up in 1978 by Actor Robert Redford’s company, and has since risen to be one of big festivals (along with Cannes, Berlin and Venice)
- The main branch of it takes place in park city, Utah every year in January
- every few years (I think its around 5?) Sundance makes its way to London for a fabulous season of cinematic brilliance! (am I a film nerd or what?!)
- the main aim of the festival is screen smaller indie films compared to somewhere like Cannes where they choose to screen bigger names and larger productions.
- Sundance has also made appearances in Hong Kong, and Brooklyn.
- http://www.sundance.org/festivals/sundance-film-festival#/ here is the festivals website for more info/films/history 🙂
and so onto what my wonderful day at Sundance was like…
The festival was held in London’s, picture house central. This is located just off of Piccadilly, on shafts-bury avenue. Picture house doesn’t just screen hipster movies with Sundance, all year round there is events and panels there, so please check it out if you are near, even for a coffee its good! here it is in all its summer wonder:
So as the excited bumble bee I was, I went into the cinema and presented my ticket, and was met with this look
I mean, they went all out with the decorations, no one was going to be asking “am I in the wrong place?” they were going to be saying “Oh damn would you look at that!” (I think) anyway, I saw the brilliant ‘Never Goin back’. Directed by Augustine Frizzell and staring Maia Mitchell (Angela) and Camila Morrone (Jessie), the films film follows two underage best friends as they attempt to save enough money to travel to the beach for a weekend getaway. With out spoiling the film (because no one likes that) I will just say that the film made me laugh constantly! and as I went by myself to it, that might have looked a little weird. But in all honesty it was so funny, there were some gross parts so if you are sensitive to vomit/poop and in one scene mass amounts of it, then um don’t watch it? Other than that it was a really comical if not honest look at a coming of age story, that was slightly exaggerated. If anyone here has seen the florida project then this is a film for you! I was lucky enough to go to the first international premiere of the film, and I am defo going to see it when it’s released to the public.
So what made this sundance good? well its on a smaller scale to the one in Utah, never the less, picture house central still provided a great location and environment for the festival to shine in. For the directors/actors/writers there was a press area, with a small wall, along with a section in the members cafe where you could watch interviews with your pass. In my excitement I also managed to get one of the last T shirts they were selling there (£20) so um that will probably be graded as a pj top.
Anyhoot I really hope that some of you go and see ‘Never goin Back’ it was truly funny and honest, and we even had a skype call with the director before it! (now hows that for a cinema experience?) here are some photos from the day! including some flowers in Fortnum and Masons that I took a sneaky trip to afterwards for some wine… aaaaand I must say if you love reading about cinema, on the third floor in the Piccadilly Waterstones, there is the most amazing section!
I can imagine that was an exciting event to attend, Heather.
Just for info, if I click on your name in WP notifications, it comes back as ‘Blog Deleted’. I had to find it by clicking on a reference in the separate email notification that you had followed my blog.
Many thanks for doing that, by the way.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thank you! Will look into that it’s been messing up this last week
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