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.
Aaron Dessner
After years of touring you experience music festivals that are mostly the same - where you copy and paste the same experience into a muddy field in California or a muddy field in England.
I think for me to be involved in a festival, there has to be a strong element of songwriting and musicianship.
It's one of the greatest festivals in the world. New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest is the best all-around... It's an honor to be closing it.
Aaron Neville
The first thing I wrote was a one-act play that got accepted at a one-act play festival, and I was in it along with Nathan Lane and a couple of other very good actors.
Aaron Sorkin
Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them.
Abbas Kiarostami
Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.
Abel Ferrara
I worked on the line, I've been an executive chef, I've worked for the Mets, I've worked for various steakhouses, vegetarian restaurants, a lot of Middle Eastern stuff. I've worked my fair share of a lot of different things. I've worked at festivals and street fairs, you know? I've been through it all.
Action Bronson
I like that conventions want me to appear and festivals want me to come speak because they like the climate I attract. It's a good feeling.
Adam Green
I will not do festivals. The thought of an audience that big frightens the life out of me.
Adele
I always think, what I would have thought of something like Gurls Talk would have come into my school? Or how would I have felt if I'd heard there was this one-day festival happening in London? I think I'd have definitely gone, I started Gurls Talk because it was everything that I needed at school.
Adwoa Aboah
At a festival, a lot of people came to see other artists, so you have to put on a signature set and performance: 'This is what I do, this is why I'm here.' At solo gigs, I'm a DJ - I'll play two-and-a-half hours, and not just my own music, also my favorite songs by other artists.
Afrojack
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.
I like the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I've liked what I've experienced of Glasgow's Film Festival too.
Aidan Gillen
Deepavali is my 'favouritest' festival. More than Pongal or New Year's, this is the time we all come together as family and celebrate.
Aishwarya Rajesh
'Kaaka Muttai' has gone places. It's a great feeling. There is respect from family and friends. The film has travelled to international festivals, and I was able to meet big directors.
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.
Aisling Bea
Parklife is one of the festivals I most look forward to. The crowds are wild; I love seeing that energy, those sweaty moshpits.
AJ Tracey
I saw 'Birth' at the Sundance Film Festival with a thousand other strangers, and I couldn't believe that was me in the film. I didn't recognize myself.
Aja Naomi King
I experimented with my own one-man show a couple of years ago in Aspen when HBO used to have their comedy festival there. I called it 'A History of Me.'
Alan Zweibel
My parents weren't involved in show business, but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house. Little film festivals of Westerns and stuff like that when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to be those guys in those movies before I knew what being an actor was.
My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.
My family used to put on a small folk festival.
One of my least favourite gigs was a festival. There weren't many people there and they were all talking.
You know, we've had some pretty rough festival stages.
We've played quite a few festivals now. We can take care of it, no matter where we are.
That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film.
Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment.
Nowadays, a critic has to watch 700, 800 films a year, and I know through experience, being a juror in prestigious film festivals where supposedly the best films are arriving, from twenty films maybe you see two that are good, one that is so-so, and one that is extraordinary. And the other sixteen are terrible.
Festival culture is all about evolving consciousness and generating a sense of unity, hope, and possibility.
Burning Man is a crowning achievement of freedom in festival culture.
I'm that girl - I've never been camping; I don't even go to festivals because I hate the cold and the rain. If it starts to rain, I'm the first one on the training field to go in and get a hat!
When we were shooting in Shreveport, me and a couple of friends went down to Lafayette, because they had a big Zydeco music festival down there. We spent two days dancing to Zydeco music, eating fried alligator... It was one of the craziest festivals I've ever been to in my life, but I loved it.
My school is very good and quite understanding and know I have to take time off for interviews or writers' festivals.
When I was a kid, I was roaming through Glastonbury Festival at eight years old, on my own. I say 'on my own', but I was probably with my oldest sister Sarah, and she would have been 13 or 14 at the time, so she'd have been walking us around. But I got to go places and meet people, and was trusted a lot, without a doubt.
Our films are changing so people across the world can see them - when 'Highway' premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, a Polish lady said to me, 'It has a strong message for women.' So it's good to know our films are connecting universally.
Pagan Romans started their midwinter celebrations with the feast of Saturnalia on 17 December, ending them with a new year festival, the Kalendae Januariae, at the start of January - both were celebrated with parties and the exchange of gifts.
Easter is an ancient festival of rebirth, but it's also an excellent excuse for eating eggs. I really like eggs, of both the chocolate and chicken variety. But the chocolate ones, you must admit, can sustain only a fleeting interest. A sweet, sugary hit - and then it's gone.
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.
We also did something called the Texas Peace Festival, which was actually a better gig both musically, and in the way it was organised.
I once went to Alba, Italy, during their white truffle festival, and I was like, 'Just leave me here!'
Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
I didn't know V. S. Naipaul very well, and to a large extent, my acquaintance with him was limited to meetings at literary festivals.
You just have to have a song that you're desperate to play along to, and for me it was 'Turn' by the Scottish band Travis. I went to see them headline the Scottish T in the Park Festival, so after that festival, I went home and taught myself all of the Travis back catalog with an old guitar and a little chord book.
Well I went to New Orleans to cover the jazz festival for Trio, it's this new arts channel, it's really great.
In our family, and not just us but even with my cousins, uncles and aunts, we celebrate every festival - be it Christmas, Easter, Eid, Diwali or our birthdays.
It's strange to play outdoors, especially in the daytime. But we're figuring it out. The rules are different for festival shows - how you talk to the crowd, how you can try to get them involved. Things are just a little different, and I think we've learned to adapt our show.
SXSW can feel very male, very straight, and very white, and though it's a great festival, when you have a film that's different, it's hard to find your place.
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've done the Hoboken Comedy Festival. It's cool.
