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.

Telluride has an incredible history and reputation, and I've long known of it as a unique entity that makes a place for writers - one more aspect of this exceptional film festival in the Colorado Alps.

In 2007, when my husband Damian Woetzel took on the artistic direction at the Vail Valley International Dance Festival, we both felt it was important to offer the entire Vail community access to dance.

For a writer, the Book Festival is interesting because you bump into all these other writers whose work you know, whose names you know, and you have a chance to put a person with the name and the work.

Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don't need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero.

I've signed autographs as Natalie Portman. I was at a Film Festival party where someone asked if I was her, and I didn't want to embarrass them, so I signed the autograph as her. I hope she doesn't mind.

When most kids were doing summer camp, I was doing the Arkansas festival circuit, passing out push cards, and shaking hands and tagging along with my dad to every nook and cranny in the state of Arkansas.

Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe.

I can play the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in front of 10,000 people and do all the gigs and stuff I want to do. Then I can go home and get toilet paper on a Sunday morning and not get hassled.

It's surreal. Here I was, a bhangra champion who had performed at an Indian festival in the U.K. and Germany, a television theatre actor who barely made Rs 1,000 a day working like a donkey all year round.

The first play I ever did was with Michael Langham, Brian Bedford, and Colm Feore, at Stratford Festival. That was my first professional job, and I got to work with Garland Wright and so many great artists.

Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival.

When I was seven, I wanted to be Esther Williams. I was drummed out of Brownies because I snuck off to the cinema to watch an Esther Williams festival - my greatest wish if I get to Hollywood is to meet her.

I saw the Dead in '73 at Nassau Coliseum, and that same year, I saw them at the crazy, big Watkins Glen festival. It was just outrageous. It was amazing to see the reciprocity between them and their audience.

This worldwide spread of recognition is insane. I was brought up in a small country. If you made a Swedish film that just got into a film festival somewhere, that was like the biggest thing you could wish for.

It was 1988, I believe, that I met Grit. We were both appearing in a Canadian Folk Festival and as we sat backstage he handed me his guitar. I played it, loved it, and then found out that he'd made it himself.

In starting to learn about film festivals and what were good ones - 'cause there are five billion of them - it was just a really good East Coast festival. And I thought this little movie was an East Coast film.

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 did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.

In L.A., I played with Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo. Mick Goodrick plays guitar in the Liberation Music Orchestra, and he's a real special player. Then I did a duet concert with Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Festival.

Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.

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.

My fourth birthday, I was given a violin, and my fifth birthday, a guitar. I didn't start to play until I saw Hendrix on TV. They showed him setting his guitar on fire and burning it for the Monterey Pop Festival.

Bonnaroo has kind of become the granddaddy of all American festivals. The thing I love about it most is that it wasn't born out of picking the top ten bands off the Billboard chart and creating a festival around it.

I think Ross Noble is the only person that I've seen really storm a stand-up slot at a festival, and that was when he led 3,000 people on a conga out of the tent and across the entire site to a vegetarian food truck.

One time, this guy at this music festival would not let me off the hook that I was Percy Jackson. He was like, 'Quit lying to me, bro, I know you're Percy Jackson.' I was like, 'I swear to God, I'm not Percy Jackson.'

I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship.

When the fearsome foursome of rock music, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, decided to show up in Toronto for a rock and roll festival, I knew we had to go there to try to get them all on film.

When I started work with LucasArts Computer Division back in 1984, I went to the Palace of Fine Arts and saw the Festival of Animation for the first time. I loved the diverse collection of animated films the festival held.

I probably get a bit more backlash in Australia than I do in America, to be honest. I was never invited to the Melbourne Comedy Festival because I was too gross, things like that. Which never happened in any other country.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American.

If you're going to a show that we're providing support for, or a large festival, you're obviously going to see a condensed version. We have to shave off some fat from the show, so we have to stick to the so-called 'bangers.'

I did a tour down South someplace, and it was an all-day festival, and there were about 2,000 people. It was pouring down rain, and I went to grab the mic, and I got electrocuted. I felt the electricity flow through my body.

The premiere of Lynne Ramsay's film of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' at the Cannes film festival provides an apt juncture at which to celebrate the miraculous power - not of film but of fiction. Lo, I have created a monster.

I personally adore the festival of Dussehra, as its a celebration of our culture and mythological legacy. I celebrate, almost, all my festivals with Life OK, be it Holi or Diwali or Dussehra. It's like a festive home for me.

I can't play the guitar, so the thoughts of playing one onstage at a festival makes me quiver, but I've been blabbering away in front of people since I was a child, so talking for a living isn't the most daunting thing to do.

We played a festival in Ireland once, and in the middle of 'New Slang,' the Scissor Sisters kicked in across the field on this mega stage. It was a little distracting. It was hard to keep track of what I was supposed to sing.

But you just don't know where any film is going to go, or how it's going to end up. Films so often don't get the love and attention needed to get to the right festival, or find the right distributor, or get seen by the world.

I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.

It's very exciting to have a festival in the heart of Boston. It's an amazing experience to be in a city and to be able to walk in and out of a festival. I think that's part of what's going to make Boston Calling really special.

I am deeply honored that my team is being recognized by H.S.H. Prince Albert II and the Festival de Television de Monte-Carlo for Disney/ABC's role in creating television that inspires and captivates audiences wherever they live.

We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.

We always had a sense that we were the underdog. There's lots of competition and niche players. But we have every type of event on Eventbrite, whether you're a consumer or you're organizing a bacon festival. Our identity is our users.

When I graduated from Brown after majoring in women's studies, I made my first PBS documentary, 'Women of Substance.' My first feature documentary was called 'American Hollow,' which I did for HBO and was at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 1987, I had no idea who Steven Isserlis was. We met at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was originally just an Italian summer festival, but for the past 14 years, there's also been a spring festival in America.

People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year.

I never imagined in my wildest dreams when I was 17 watching Van Halen at a Donington Park rock festival and seeing Sammy Hagar later on when I was in the United States playing that I would end up with a band of guys I bought albums of.

Chhath Puja is very close to my heart. Few years back, I did a movie titled 'Chhathi Maiyya.' After acting in this movie, I came to know more about the festival. Since then, I always wanted to perform Chhath Puja like other devotees do.

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.

Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.

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