IFC Center to Launch TV-Focused Split Screens Festival
New York’s IFC Center is set to launch the Split Screens Festival, adding another entry to the growing roster of TV-focused festivals.
Split Screens will run June 2-8. The emphasis will be on showcasing “the best of the year’s scripted originals” and some pilot premieres. Matt Zoller Seitz, author and TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture and editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, will head the programming team.
“There is no better time to take a close look at television as an art form,” said Seitz. “Split Screens Festival will offer an intimate venue to examine the medium’s Platinum Age, which has perfected new storytelling techniques and created characters that seem as vivid to viewers as the flesh-and-blood people they know and love.”
The roster for Split Screens will be unveiled later this month.
IFC Center is also home to the annual DOC NYC documentary film festival.
“The accomplishments of artists working in television have long been undervalued and that’s why Split Screens couldn’t be better timed or more relevant,” said John Vanco, general manager and senior VP of IFC Center. “Our mission for this festival, very much like our fall film festival, DOC NYC, will be to provide a destination for audiences not only to consume but to connect with and celebrate brilliant work—but in the field of television instead of cinema.”
Split Screens joins the parade of TV festivals that have cropped up in recent years, notably the ATX fest in Austin, Texas and the aTV fest, run in Atlanta by the Savannah College of Art and Design. New York is also home to the annual New York Television Festival in October.
(Pictured: John Vanco)
Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter
