Moving Sundance online was ‘very hard’ emotionally, but ‘very easy’ when looking at the COVID-19 data, the festival’s director said.
Sam Green appears in his VR work "32 Sounds," an official selection of the New Frontier section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.Even though it is happening — again — in cyberspace rather than Park City, Tabitha Jackson is ready to get theJackson, the festival’s director, told media assembled for a video news conference Thursday that the festival is about “convergence, coming together, our presence.
It is the second year in a row that Sundance has gone online only, save for some in-person screenings at a few venues around the country — none of them in Utah. The reason is the COVID-19 pandemic, with this year’s case surge due to the omicron variant the deciding factor to cancel in-person Utah events just 15 days before the festival’s launch.
The decision to cancel in-person events “was very hard because of our disappointment of not being able to be back in Park City, expressing the festival fully and being together in person,” Jackson said. “Once we had the data about the public health implications of a festival taking place in Park City, with the levels of transmission of omicron and the impacts on the local infrastructure, it was very easy … to know that it would be irresponsible to continue in person.
Senior programmer Shari Frilot, who also curates the festival’s New Frontier program of virtual reality and augmented reality artworks, cited the success of The Spaceship, a mixed-reality gathering space that allowed festival attendees from around the world to mingle as if attending the same big party.