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      Sandie Crisp, ‘Goddess Bunny’ of the Underground Scene, Dies at 61

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostSandie Crisp, ‘Goddess Bunny’ of the Underground Scene, Dies at 61She became a muse among the Hollywood avant-garde, appearing in movies, music videos and photographs. She died of Covid-19.Sandie Crisp in 2016. She appeared in music videos, movies and stage shows.Credit…Chuck GrantFeb. 4, 2021Updated 6:20 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Sandie Crisp, a transgender actress and model who, under her stage name the Goddess Bunny, served as a muse to generations of artists, gay punks and other denizens of the West Hollywood avant-garde, died on Jan. 27 at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 61.Her death was confirmed by Mitchell Sunderland-Jackson, a friend. The cause was Covid-19, he said.For decades, Ms. Crisp was a familiar presence on the sidewalks of Santa Monica Boulevard and in the hustler bars that once lined it, where she dressed like a grungy diva and lip-synced songs by Donny Osmond, Judy Garland and Selena.In the 1980s and ’90s, she became a popular subject for artists who frequented that scene as well as their collaborator. Directors cast her in underground movies, and she appeared in music videos by Dr. Dre and Billy Talent. A nude photograph of her sits in the permanent collection of the Louvre.Her aesthetic, which blended the Hollywood noir of David Lynch with the punk offensiveness of GG Allin and Lydia Lunch, knew few boundaries. For one performance she dressed as Eva Braun alongside a man dressed as Hitler. An audience member leapt to his feet and punched her in the face.“Being able to shock and offend as a way of avoiding co-option by corporate capitalism — she was the muse for people pursuing that sensibility,” said the Canadian filmmaker Bruce La Bruce, the director, most recently, of “Saint-Narcisse” (2020).Ms. Crisp was equally renowned among drag performers, especially those of a rawer sensibility.“If you’re an actual drag queen, you know about the Goddess Bunny,” said Simone Moss, the founder of Bushwig, an annual drag conclave that started in New York and gave Ms. Crisp a lifetime achievement award in 2017. “She’s a part of drag history as much as Divine,” she said, referring to the actress made famous by John Waters in films like “Pink Flamingos.”Sandie Crisp was born on Jan. 13, 1960, in Los Angeles to John Wesley Baima, a lawyer, and Betty Joann (Sherrod) Baima, a secretary.Their child contracted polio, causing limited use of her arms and legs. Doctors prescribed a variety of surgeries and medical devices — Milwaukee braces, Harrington rods — but they caused only further physical damage. She used a wheelchair to get around.After the Baimas divorced, Sandie spent several years in foster homes around Los Angeles, at times subjected to abuse by doctors and at least one foster parent, according to Sandie’s account and that of her half brother, Derryl Dale Piper II.She returned to live with her mother when she was 11, and by 14 she was beginning to present herself as a woman, Mr. Piper said, a turn that brought conflict with their mother, who was deeply religious.Ms. Crisp left home after high school, moving to West Hollywood and joining a small community of punks, artists, homeless teens and hustlers. She made her mark almost immediately. Foulmouthed and dressed in sequined gowns that she often sewed herself, she insisted on being treated like a celebrity. Her penchant for telling wild tales about herself — like how she had appeared in off-Broadway musicals and dated celebrities — only made her more intriguing to her peers.Sandie Crisp was equally renowned among drag performers, especially those who lean toward a raw, edgy sensibility.Credit…Gibson Fox“She was such a visually extreme person,” said the photographer Rick Castro, one of many artists who hired Ms. Crisp to appear in their work in the 1980s and ’90s. “The way she carried herself, like she was a movie star, like old-school Hollywood royalty — she didn’t carry herself like someone who should be ashamed,” he said in an interview.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With Tradition

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With TraditionThis time, the field won’t be swarming with fans crowding the stage. In fact, the stage won’t be on the field at all, but in the stands.The Weeknd in concert. He will be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa on Sunday.Credit…Hayoung Jeon/EPA, via ShutterstockJulia Jacobs and Feb. 4, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETWhether it stars Al Hirt, Michael Jackson or Beyoncé, the Super Bowl halftime show has always taken center stage on the field.But for the first time in the 55-year history of the game, the Weeknd, who is headlining this Sunday in Tampa, Fla., will perform on a stage set up in the stands in keeping with strict coronavirus protocols intended to limit contact with the players and coaches; his act may, however, include a brief interlude on the field.In a typical year, a massive stage is rolled onto the field and hundreds of fans pour out to surround it; this year only about 1,050 people are expected to work to put on the show, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 most years. Performers and crew members will receive Covid-19 tests before rehearsals and before the performance.When he strode to the microphone Thursday at a news conference, the Weeknd took in the room and noted, “It’s kind of empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of how the stadium might look to people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be in the stadium — less than half its 65,000-person capacity — joined by thousands of two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of fans provided by the N.F.L.)The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), is a 30-year-old Canadian pop star known for hits including “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy.” His concerts often have a brooding feel and a dark, avant-garde edge. (The music video for his latest hit, “Blinding Lights,” opens with the Weeknd laughing maniacally, his face covered in blood.) He said that his halftime show would incorporate some of his trademark artistic themes but that he plans to be “respectful to the viewers at home.”“The story will continue,” he said, “but definitely we’ll keep it PG for the families.”This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and his entertainment company, Roc Nation, who were recruited by the N.F.L. in 2019. At the time, performers were refusing to work with the league, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      In the Ozarks, the Pandemic Threatens a Fragile Musical Tradition

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn the Ozarks, the Pandemic Threatens a Fragile Musical TraditionThe older fiddlers and rhythm guitar players don’t rely on sheet music, so their weekly jam sessions — now on hiatus — are critical to passing their technique to the next generation.Gordon McCann in October quit making the hourlong trek from his home in Springfield, Mo., to the McClurg jam because he got “spooked” by the virus.Credit…Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesFeb. 3, 2021Updated 11:00 a.m. ET‘Old Indiana,’ from the album ‘The Way I Heard It’The tune was popular in the 1930s and ’40s in the southern Missouri Ozarks.McCLURG, Mo. — In an abandoned general store along a nearly deserted country road, Alvie Dooms, 90, and Gordon McCann, 89, played rhythm guitar. Nearly a dozen more musicians, many of them also older adults, joined in on fiddle, mandolin, banjo and upright bass. Their tunes had names like “Last Train Home,” “Pig Ankle Rag” and “Arkansas Traveler.”The old-time dance music — merry and sweet, or slower and wistful — evoked the lively jigs and reels of the Scots-Irish pioneers who settled in these rugged hills generations ago. A precursor to bluegrass, their sound was unique to this particular corner of Missouri.The McClurg jam, as the Monday night music and potluck fest was known, endured for decades, the last gathering of its kind in the rural Ozarks. But the coronavirus pandemic has silenced the instruments, at least temporarily. And the suspension has led to worry: What will become of this singular musical tradition?The McClurg jam, as the Monday night music and potluck fest was known, endured for decades, the last gathering of its kind in the rural Ozarks.Credit…Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesAlvie Dooms holds a rare fiddle at his home in rural Ava, Mo. A longtime member of the McClurg jam, Mr. Dooms owns hundreds of instruments that he fixes and collects.Credit…Terra Fondriest for The New York Times“Because it’s ear music, it’s a little bit fragile,” said Howard Marshall, 76, a retired professor at the University of Missouri and a fiddler himself. “I’m not playing it exactly like the next chap will play it.”In other words, the McClurg old-time fiddlers and banjo players have mostly learned the tunes by listening to one another rather than reading from sheet music, passing the tradition from one generation to the next. Many of the musicians who know the songs best are growing old and, for now at least, have been sidelined.“I’m one of the younger ones, and I’m 74,” said Steve Assenmacher, a bass player who lives just up the hill from the McClurg Store and acts as its caretaker.In normal years, the store, still crammed with faded boxes of bras and women’s pumps left from a generation ago when the business shut down, is revived once a week for the jam. Musicians stream into McClurg, about 240 miles southwest of St. Louis, on Monday nights, performing for friends and spouses. They play sitting in a circle, stealing glances at Mr. Dooms’s callused fingers to gauge where his rhythm guitar might go next.Behind them, wives of the mostly male musicians and a handful of regulars snack on pot roast, quiche and pies. Occasionally, someone rises to their feet to dance.Sometimes called “mountain music,” the old-time genre has survived hundreds of years because of gatherings like the one in McClurg. Here, sheet music is referred to as “chicken scratches,” and formally trained musicians are at grave risk of being reviewed as “stiff.” Children with an aptitude for music have, for generations, picked up a family instrument and played along, rather than taking formal lessons.“I’m one of the younger ones, and I’m 74,” said Steve Assenmacher, a bass player who lives just up the hill from the McClurg Store and acts as its caretaker.Credit…Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesMcClurg, a crossroads more than a town, is home to a particular strain of old-time music that is not played in precisely the same way anywhere else.Credit…Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesMr. Dooms can still recall shivering in the back of a wagon as a boy, as his parents drove through the Ozark hills after dance parties, a fiddler’s music reverberating through his head to the rhythm of a horse’s feet striking dirt.“That was back when they had dances in people’s houses,” Mr. Dooms said. “You know, they’d move the furniture all out in a couple of rooms. The musician would sit in the doorway between them and they could dance in both rooms.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Sonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostSonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95He was not a comic or a clown, just a smart and genial TV host who for almost a decade spoke to children, not at them. He died of Covid pneumonia.Sonny Fox in an undated photo. “Wonderama,” the popular New York children’s TV show he hosted from 1959 to 1967, was a dazzling mixture of cartoons, games and many other elements.Credit…BettmannJan. 30, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETSonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, Calif. He was 95.The cause was Covid pneumonia, his son Dana said.Mr. Fox was a veteran of television when he was hired for “Wonderama” by the New York station WNEW-TV (now WNYW). He had hosted a live local educational program in St. Louis and “Let’s Take a Trip,” on CBS, on which he took two youngsters on a field trip each week.In 1956, CBS named Mr. Fox the M.C. of “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was fired a few months after accidentally giving a contestant an answer. He was not embroiled in the scandal that emerged two years later when it was discovered that several quiz shows, including “Challenge,” had been rigged by their producers.No such problems existed at “Wonderama,” where Mr. Fox’s mission was to tack away from the silly show it had become under previous hosts. But he was too serious at first, focusing on subjects like space exploration. Ratings began to fall.“I became so ponderously educational that the kids who had been watching turtle races” — under the previous hosts — “had no idea what I was doing,” he said in a Television Academy interview in 2008.The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, soon found its footing. It became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games like “Simon Says,” joke-telling (by the children), contests, dramatizations of Shakespeare plays and magic. In 1964, the show held a mock Republican convention. Mr. Fox also interviewed newsmakers like Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and opened the floor to questions from the children.“Do you think all the money that we’ve been spending on this nation’s space program should be spent on this or on poverty bills and such?” an earnest boy with glasses asked Senator Kennedy in 1965.“We can make the space effort,” Mr. Kennedy said, adding that both could be done: “If there’s ever an unknown, man will search the unknown.”Mr. Fox was not a comic performer like Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker or Soupy Sales — stars of their own daytime children’s shows on WNEW at the time — and did not wear funny costumes. He was a smart and genial host who wore a suit and tie.He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of “Wonderama” but as integral to it, whether they were trying to stump him with a riddle or delivering news segments.Mr. Fox with two members of the “Wonderama” audience in 1961. He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of the show but as integral to it, Credit…Wagner International PhotosHe said Mr. Becker and Mr. Sales resented his popularity because he was not a performer.“I did nothing, apparently!” he told the online Observer in 2017. “That’s the contrast: For them, the kids were the audience; for me, the kids were the show.”The popularity of “Wonderama” meant children waited years for tickets to tapings at its studio on East 67th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Fox’s mother, Gertrude (Goldberg) Fox, sent him notes each Monday insisting that tickets be set aside for certain children.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostJerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82Energizing Manhattan night life, he opened the Electric Circus in 1967 and the Ritz 13 years later. He died of Covid-19.The promoter Jerry Brandt, right, with Tina Turner and Keith Richards in 1984 at the Ritz, the East Village club Mr. Brandt opened in 1980.Credit…Bob GruenJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:52 p.m. ETJerry Brandt, a promoter and entrepreneur who owned two nightclubs, the Electric Circus and the Ritz, that were attention-getting parts of New York’s music scene in their day, died on Jan. 16 in Miami Beach. He was 82.His family said in a statement that the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967 on St. Marks Place in the East Village, it was psychedelia. With the Ritz, opened in 1980 a few blocks away, it was the exploding music scene of the MTV decade, with the shows he staged there — Parliament-Funkadelic, U2, Tina Turner, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and countless others — reflecting the exploratory energy of the time.Not all his big bets paid off. Perhaps his best-known debacle was Jobriath, a gay performer whom Mr. Brandt backed with a lavish promotional campaign in 1973 and ’74, hoping to create an American version of David Bowie’s androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona. The concertgoing and record-buying public soundly rejected the attempt to manufacture a star, and Jobriath, whose real name was Bruce Campbell, faded quickly.But Mr. Brandt’s successes, especially with the Ritz, caught their cultural moment and propelled it forward. At the Ritz, he not only booked an expansive range of bands; he also brought new technologies into the mix.“The Ritz opened May 14, 1980, with a video screen the size of the proscenium arch it hung from,” the WFUV disc jockey Delphine Blue, who was a Ritz D.J. for five years, said by email. “On it were projected cartoons, movie bits, psychedelic montages, while the D.J.s played records and jockeyed back and forth with the V.J., who played music videos. This was over a year before the debut of MTV in August of 1981.”There was, she said, a rope dancer who was lowered from the ceiling. There was a cameraman lugging a huge video camera around the dance floor, capturing the dancers and projecting the images on the big screen. The club was often packed and the chaos barely controlled. Sometimes it was not controlled at all.“A full house at the Ritz began throwing bottles at the club’s video screen two weeks ago when the British band Public Image Ltd. performed behind the screen, refused to come out from behind it and taunted the audience,” The New York Times reported in the spring of 1981. “Several fans then stormed the stage, ripping down the screen and destroying equipment. There was a moment of near-panic on the crowded dance floor, though apparently no one was hurt.”Mr. Brandt was the center of it all.“Jerry,” Ms. Blue said simply, “was the P.T. Barnum of nightclubs.”Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967, it was psychedelia.Credit…Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesJerome Jack Mair was born on Jan. 29, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Jack and Anna (Cohen) Mair. His father, Mr. Brandt wrote in his memoir, “It’s a Short Walk From Brooklyn, if You Run” (2014), left when he was 5. When his mother subsequently married Harold Brandt, Jerry took his stepfather’s name.After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, he served in the Army from 1956 to 1958. Back in New York, he eventually got a job as a waiter at the Town Hill, a Brooklyn club that featured top Black performers like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington.“It was a dream come true,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could see great performers and make money at the same time. It made me realize that I wanted to be in the music business.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Cannes Film Festival Is Delayed Until July Because of Pandemic

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCannes Film Festival Is Delayed Until July Because of PandemicThe 2021 edition of the event, which was canceled last year, is now set to take place two months later than planned.The scene in Cannes the last time the festival was held, in 2019.Credit…Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 27, 2021Updated 4:29 p.m. ETThe Cannes Film Festival, one of the movie world’s most renowned events, has been postponed, showing the continuing impact of the coronavirus pandemic.The festival was meant to run May 11-22, but has now been rescheduled to July 6-17, the organizers said in a statement on Wednesday. “As announced last autumn, the Festival de Cannes reserved the right to change its dates depending on how the global health situation developed,” the statement said.The decision had been expected. Last month, Aïda Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, told The New York Times that the event might be shifted because of the pandemic, as cases were then surging across Europe. Whatever date the festival took place, she said, it will be “a ‘classic’ Cannes,” including stars on the Croisette.Since then, the situation has only gotten more complicated in Europe. Case numbers are flattening in some countries, but deaths have surged and restrictions on daily life have been extended.In France, there is a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew and cultural venues including movie theaters are shut with no reopening date in sight. Daily Covid-19 cases and deaths appear to be stabilizing, but more than 22,000 new cases were announced on Tuesday, with 612 deaths.Some 74,000 people in the country have died of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.The French government is rolling out vaccines, but its drive has been hit by production delays and a growing row between AstraZeneca, the European Union and Britain over scarce supplies. There is also widespread skepticism of vaccines in the country.It is the second year Cannes has been affected. Last year, the customary May festival was canceled. It had been set to include the premieres of Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and Pixar’s “Soul” with a jury led by Spike Lee. (The Anderson movie has not debuted yet; “Soul” was released on Disney+ in December.) In the end, Cannes was only able to hold a “special” edition in October featuring a handful of films and little of the usual red-carpet glamour. The event received next to no media attention.Movie fans had hoped some major festivals could be staged this spring, especially given vaccine rollouts. But Cannes is only one of several major cultural events in Europe that have now been postponed or canceled, showing that the pandemic’s effects on cultural life will be felt throughout the year. In December, the Berlin Film Festival, scheduled to start Feb. 11, was postponed, and organizers said they wouldn’t stage public screenings until June.Last week, the Glastonbury festival, Britain’s largest pop music event, scheduled for June, was canceled. The same day, Art Basel announced that its flagship trade fair in Switzerland would be postponed until September, providing a major blow to the international art trade.Cannes will have to wait and see if the new July dates are possible. “If the festival takes place, it means the global health situation allows it, and people will be able to travel again,” Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, said in an email. “The industry, the film teams, the journalists, they all want to come,” she added.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sundance Film Festival Forges Ahead, Led With 'Warrior Spirit'

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixTabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexWith ‘Warrior Spirit,’ a New Leader Pushes Sundance ForwardSince taking over as the film festival’s director, Tabitha Jackson has had to figure out how to hold a cinema showcase during a pandemic. Her virtual solution starts Thursday.Tabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 27, 2021Updated 2:28 p.m. ETShortly after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, was hosting the annual opening reception for documentary filmmakers at the festival in Park City, Utah. The British Ms. Jackson, who is mixed race and gay, took the stage, knowing many in the audience were unsettled by what had happened and what was ahead.She struggled to find the words to convey what people were feeling. Instead, in a reverse Samson moment, she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski (“Trembling Before G-d”) to start chopping off her dreadlocks, which she had been growing for 20 years. The crowd went wild.“It was a release of energy,” she said in a recent interview. “A nonverbal expression of something needing to change around me leading this program and around us as a community. A little warrior spirit and also a slight howl, since we didn’t know what was going to come.”Ms. Jackson, 50, now finds herself as a leader in another moment of wider uncertainty. She took over as the director of the Sundance Film Festival in February, right before the pandemic truly took hold in the United States, and has spent the past year pivoting over and over again in order to get ready for the 37th edition of the independent cinema showcase.Set to begin Thursday in a mostly virtual setting (in-person screenings will happen in some art-house theaters in 28 cities with lower virus numbers like Atlanta, Houston and Memphis), Sundance 2021 is a lofty experiment. It will allow those who have never been able to share in the snowy ski-town extravaganza — because of either cost or the remote location — to experience it for the first time. With screening times set for each film, and live question-and-answer sessions to follow, Ms. Jackson and her team are trying to recreate the unique energy of Sundance, which has been the premier destination of American independent film for close to four decades.“It was initially depressing when we realized we couldn’t put on the festival in the way we had before,” Ms. Jackson said. “But as we began to plan, it became liberating when we thought, ‘Well, what can we do this year that we couldn’t do before?’”Ms. Jackson received roars of approval when she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski to cut off her dreadlocks at the 2017 festival, when she led Sundance’s documentary program.Credit…Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Sundance Film FestivalThe decision to not hold the festival in Utah was made in June. But the organization had to change direction yet again in December when rising coronavirus numbers in California prompted the cancellation of a large number of drive-in screenings that had been set for the Rose Bowl.“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but the rails that are keeping us stable and secure are our purpose around independent filmmaking,” Ms. Jackson said. “We know why we are doing this.”Ms. Jackson joined Sundance in 2013, after spending more than 20 years in London working for the BBC and Channel 4 and producing works like Nick Cave’s “20,000 Days on Earth,” a quasi-documentary that purported to show a singular day in the indie musician’s life, one filled with invented events filmed at fictitious locations.Those who know her often describe Ms. Jackson as curious, open and possessed of a quick wit. She is also committed to helping filmmakers.“She could actually host one of the top late-night talk shows, she’s that funny and witty,” said Diane Weyermann, chief content officer at Participant and a former director of the Sundance documentary program. This year, Participant will debut two films at Sundance: the documentary “My Name Is Pauli Murray” about a nonbinary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the Warner Bros. film that chronicles the story of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party.The documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) is bringing three films to the festival with his Concordia Studio. He said Ms. Jackson was bringing welcome change to an institution that had not evolved much over the decades.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few — the few people who could go, the few people who could get tickets,” he said. “It’s a brave new world, and she’s being brave.”When she took over the documentary program, Ms. Jackson recognized that she did not want the genre to become “the preserve of the elite,” open only to those who could spend years raising money and making films.Sly Stone in the opening-night film, “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.Credit…Mass Distraction MediaIn 2015, Ms. Jackson conducted a question-and-answer session with the first-time filmmaker Nanfu Wang in front of a slew of investors. Ms. Wang was looking for funds to complete her film “Hooligan Sparrow,” which follows activists protesting the case of six elementary-school girls who were sexually abused by their principal in China. Ms. Wang had been forced to film surreptitiously and smuggle the footage out of the country in order to complete the movie.Normally, filmmakers have a producer on hand to address the financial needs of their project, but since Ms. Wang didn’t have one, Ms. Jackson led the Q. and A. in order to introduce her to the proper financiers. The discussion led to her receiving the funds she needed to finish the work. Ms. Wang will debut her fourth feature documentary, “In the Same Breath,” which tracks the spread of Covid-19 from Wuhan, China, to the United States, at this year’s festival.“Tabitha speaks like a philosopher,” Ms. Wang said. “I felt like she saw me, not only because I was making this film about the Chinese human rights activists, but she cared as much about my background and how I became who I am today.”That ethos to try to give voice to those not always permitted to participate is personal to Ms. Jackson. A mixed-race girl adopted by white parents who later divorced, Ms. Jackson was raised in a village in rural England and learned to move between groups.“I’ve come to enjoy inhabiting the edge of things, the in-between space,” she said upon receiving an industry award in 2018. “What began as a survival mechanism is now my most comfortable place.”The programming of this year’s truncated seven-day festival illustrates those in-between places. With 72 features, down from the usual 120, Sundance will highlight movies from a diverse group of creators: 50 percent are female directors, 51 percent are filmmakers of color, 15 percent are directors who identify as L.G.B.T.Q., and 4 percent are nonbinary.“Passing,” starring Ruth Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson, is one of the more anticipated films that will debut at Sundance.Credit…Eduard GrauThe opening-night film comes from Ahmir Thompson, the Roots drummer known as Questlove. Titled “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” it is a documentary that tracks the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, an event held to celebrate African-American music that happened the same summer as Woodstock.“Twenty minutes after Tabitha saw the film, she said not only do we want the film, we want it for the opening night and we want it for the U.S. competition,” a producer, Jon Kamen, said. “Usually, you don’t know right away. Usually, it’s all a little wishy-washy.”Ms. Jackson said she and her team, led by the director of programming, Kim Yutani, had to re-pitch the festival to many creators who were wary that the virtual environment wouldn’t be a great way to debut their work. One person they didn’t have to convince was the producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, who with her partner Forest Whitaker has had movies in competition at Sundance five out of the last seven years.They will be there this year with “Passing,” from the actress-turned-first-time-director Rebecca Hall. The film, set in 1920 and starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, tracks the story of two African-American women who can “pass” as white.“When I looked at the screen and saw Tabitha and Kim — two inclusive, diverse women — telling me and my team that our film is loved and embraced and to please come be a part of this, that meant a lot,” Ms. Yang Bongiovi said of the Zoom call when the film was accepted.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few,” one filmmaker said of Ms. Jackson’s leadership.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesDespite the challenges of the past year, there have been some benefits. Ms. Jackson has been able to quarantine for most of the time in Connecticut with the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson (“Dick Johnson Is Dead”), whom she married last year at Sundance, on the first day of the festival. They recently bought a home with the filmmaker Ira Sachs and the artist Boris Torres, who co-parent Ms. Johnson’s 9-year old twins.That has given Ms. Johnson a ringside seat to Ms. Jackson’s process.“What’s interesting about Tabitha is she has so many perspectives given where she comes from and what her life is,” Ms. Johnson said. “She is endlessly curious about the permutations of racism around the world and the ways we struggle with identity. I think there is a real sense of how do we keep pushing for this new landscape and not be blinded by simple solutions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More