Currently Canada’s second largest festival, NXNE, which is celebrating a birthday this year, draws in thousands of fans over the course of its 10 days in downtown Toronto. Christopher Roberts, the North By Northeast Festival Director, let CraveOnline readers in on what’s to come in the areas of music, movies, and more. NXNE runs June 13-22.
CraveOnline: So NXNE is celebrating a big milestone this year?
Christopher Roberts: It’s the 20th year, which is crazy that it’s been around that long.
How did you get involved?
I moved here a year ago and was living in New York for 10 years. I was running a record label there and did all their events and got asked to come up here and run this. It’s been great.
Tell us about some of the highlights of this year’s NXNE Music program?
All of the bands that you see are really relevant and have a sense of urgency toward what they’re doing. These are all bands who are really happening and pulsating in their careers.
And what’s happening with NXNE Film?
What we did this year was we expanded the dates – last year the (film) fest was five days and this year we’re 10 days. It’s the first weekend and it’s just dedicated to film. It gave film a chance to shine. We really wanted to highlight it this year.
Also, in years before, the film festival was just for music documentaries, and I thought that was too narrow of a niche for a film festival that has the potential to have laurels that mean something, and we wanted to open it up to all independent films.
NXNE Comedy is always a big draw…
This year we have Marc Maron, who has the most downloaded podcast on the planet and whom I am a huge fan of. He literally records his podcast in his garage in LA, and he’s that grumpy comedian who’s absolutely incredible. Having him really speaks to what’s happening in comedy right now, who’s making a lot of waves and who is culturally important.
We hear the program for NXNE Interactive has expanded as well.
This is a passion point for me in particular. I had a heavy hand in curating interactive speakers and guests. This year we have Paul Rosenberg’s, Eminem’s manager, who has helped shepherd one of the most iconic musicians in history; Oliver El-Khatib, Drake’s artistic director, and it’s his first talk ever as he has never even done an interview; and Ricken Patell, founder of Avaaz.org, the largest activist network in the planet with 35 million members who strive to change everything from human rights to animal rights and poverty.
And finally, there’s NXNE Art. Anything new there?
Last year we did art but not in a big way, but this year is totally different. We’re doing a lot more culturally relevant stuff. There’s the NXNE art lounge located across the street from the conference center at the Hyatt, and we’re going to have urban takeovers, graffiti art, projection mapping around the city, art after-parties, and music integration.
