People have been trying to point to the turning point for the hugely popular micro-blogging service Twitter for a little while now. The mainstream media reporting of the attacks in Mumbai being twittered was of huge significance. However, for me it was this year's Sundance Film Festival that really illustrated the potential of Twitter. Granted this is the case because most of the people I follow are film people, but not being in Park City and following these micro reports has been quite illuminating. I wish I was there myself of course, but not being able to go this year, I'm even more grateful that I have an army of eyes, seeing the same event from disparate angles, like a fly’s segmented eyeball.
Twitter was famously launched from the South by Southwest Film festival where it won the web award in 2007, so it's only fitting that now in Sundance it really seems to have blossomed. Here are some people I've been following who are covering the festival:
There is the
Official Sundance Twitter (which I think could be a bit chattier.)
Queen of the online critics,
Karina Longworth is always great to follow and her Sundance perspective has been refreshing.
Kelly Williams, Director of the Austin Film Festival is a relatively new follow for me and I've loved it.
Erik Davis from Cinematical is very funny in 140 characters and I think he has taste similar to mine.
Kevin Kelly from Cinematical is also twittering under the name Gadgetguy.
Eric Snider (also on Cinematical) has been cracking me up with some very punny micro reviews and some great OH conversations.
Film critic
James Rocchi went twitter silent after seeing the documentary WE LIVE IN PUBLIC but he's back now.
AFI Dallas Senior Programmer
James Faust twitters under the alias of Movieforce, he's up there now and I've outed his secret identity so there.
My good friend
Christian Gaines is no longer with AFI FEST but he's up in Park City catching lots of movies and giving us his dryly-comic perspective as well.
My other good friend and blogger
Levi Elder is up there passing along film recommendations via twitter and other important info (like what parties are worth attending.) My favorite tweet from him was: "Uh, just went to the wrong movie, like an amature. And nobody stopped me! What?"
You can tell
Sperling Reich loves Sundance, his Twitter background is a pic of the Egyptian and he changed his thumbnail to his fest credentials!
Matt Dentler of course has the most Twitter cred out here. He's so old school that his handle still has "SXSW" in it.
Tamara Krinski is up there writing for IDA. But it looks like they are keeping her pretty busy since she has not said much since a jubilant arrival. (In fact I bet everyone will start tapering off this week as the festivities take their toll.)
Kevin Rose was even up there for the beginning and he launched some sort of contest with
Ashton Kutcher over twitter that I didn't really follow all the details of.
Peter Sciretta from Slashfilm has been doing great coverage and tweeted this interesting incident: "Sundance security just accused me of video taping a movie, like I would risk my entire career to have a handheld copy of a movie called Dare"
Roger Tinch, the voice of Cinevegas (also an early adopter) has been kicking ass with his bite size festival coverage. Like all good bloggers, he hits a good balance of films criticism with banal/funny stuff.
Agnes Varnum has been covering all things docs as well up there and has been keeping us posted on the Cinema Eye awards announcements this year.
And of course, my friend
Shaz Bennett, who sadly has also left AFI, is in Utah this week also. Her Twitter coverage is been the most enthusiastic of all and makes me the most jealous that I'm stuck peering through these keyholes.
An amazing resource that I've never had before is to follow the festival from a filmmaker’s perspective. Even more incredible is that it's a filmmaker whose work I already know and love, documentarian
Ondi Timoner has been providing great photos all week long.
And of course one of the best things has been watching these people run into each other or have concurrent experiences of the same movie/event. It's been great watching from the sidelines.
I'm sure I've forgotten some important ones, sorry. So please drop a note in the comments if there is anyone I should be following.There are lots of other festival programmer and film critics who are not actually up there in Park City but like me are still writing and reacting about it which is also, you know, interesting.
