Can Sundance Survive COVID? Festival Director Tabitha Jackson Opens Up About the Tough Decision to Go All-Virtual
variety.comSundance Film Festival director Tabitha Jackson made a decision that she had been assiduously trying to avoid. She did not want a repeat of what happened in 2021 when the Park City festival was forced to go virtual in the face of the raging coronavirus.
At the time, Jackson gathered a group of filmmakers on Zoom for a get-to-know-you call in which they discussed their cinematic influences.
Art, she reminded them, is a way of leaving an indelible mark on the world around us, an acute need that can be traced back to early cave paintings.“Tabitha talked about early people leaving handprints on walls to say, I was here and existed and I made this thing,” recalls Sian Heder, director of “CODA.” “Then we held our hands up to the Zoom screen so we could virtually touch each other.
It was a powerful moment.” This year was supposed to be different, with the connections forged between filmmakers like Heder and other artists solidified over coffee or drinks, at after-parties or in theater lobbies between screenings.
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