The SXSW Film & TV Festival has a new head as Janet Pierson passes the baton

After 15 years heading the South by Southwest Movie & TV Pageant and rising the annual Austin, Texas-based occasion into a significant participant, competition director Janet Pierson is passing the baton to longtime deputy Claudette Godfrey, SXSW introduced right now.

“Main SXSW Movie (now SXSW Movie & TV) beginning in 2008 on the age of fifty was an exquisite, and fairly surprising, journey,” stated Pierson in an announcement. “It’s been wonderful to current a lot nice work at our distinctive occasion, yielding so many transformative experiences for creators and viewers alike. I’m intensely happy with the work our small and really mighty group has achieved.”

Pierson, a revered 45-year trade veteran and beloved fixture within the unbiased movie world, will shift to a brand new position as director emeritus and programmer as planning continues for the 2023 competition. Godfrey, who has been with the group since 2006, will assume the position of VP, director of movie and TV.

Throughout Pierson’s tenure, SXSW helped launch the careers of filmmakers from Lena Dunham (HBO’s “Women” was born in no small half out of the indie function “Tiny Furnishings”) to Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi,” however at SXSW with “Quick Time period 12″), and spearheaded the groundbreaking embrace of episodic tv and digital and augmented actuality storytelling. Notable world premieres lately embody Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck,” Jordan Peele’s “Us,” Steven Spielberg’s “Prepared Participant One,” James Wan’s “Livid 7″ and and John Krasinski’s directorial debut, “A Quiet Place.”

Previous to SXSW, Pierson served as a producer’s rep on movies resembling “Roger & Me,” “Clerks” and “Slacker” alongside husband John Pierson, with whom she additionally spent a 12 months operating a movie show in Fiji, an expertise documented within the 2005 movie “Reel Paradise.” She was named director of the SXSW Movie Pageant and Convention in 2008, constructing on the momentum her predecessor, earlier head Matt Dentler, delivered to the burgeoning movie program, which started as an outgrowth of the SXSW music competition in 1994, alongside the tech-focused interactive competition.

Making certain the SXSW spirit was as eclectic as its host metropolis’s well-known motto, “Preserve Austin bizarre,” Pierson led a strong interval of development in measurement, star wattage and affect during which SXSW expanded right into a coveted launchpad for daring new voices in American indie cinema, in addition to studio comedies in any other case missed by rival festivals.

“We’ve been privileged to current unbelievable work at each funds degree again and again, offering these transformative moments for folks,” Pierson advised The Instances of the eclectic programming and fashionable sensibilities that distinguish SXSW’s signature model. “Once I stepped in, the muse was already actually robust by way of being populist-facing and being enjoyable, adopting all types of leisure and never having too slim of a spread of what was satisfying and attention-grabbing.”

Godfrey, recognized for main SXSW’s robust shorts programming group and for her knack for sniffing out rising expertise, joined the group as a volunteer crew supervisor earlier than working her manner up via programming and operations posts. In her new publish, efficient instantly, she will probably be liable for the “imaginative and prescient, programming and execution” of the movie and TV competition in addition to associated convention programming.

“Janet is an unbelievable chief and mentor, and I’m deeply grateful for the chance to observe and be taught from her instance,” stated Godfrey in an announcement. “Our daring neighborhood of filmmakers, our enthusiastic audiences, and our gifted group that makes all of it occur perpetually encourage me. I’m a hype lady at coronary heart, and it’s an important pleasure in my life to find and elevate new expertise by curating and evolving an occasion that celebrates movie, TV, and creativity. I began from the underside and the journey has been distinctive — it’s an immense honor to proceed to construct on the legacy of SXSW Movie & TV and take it into the longer term.”

Among the many quick kind and music video filmmakers she has championed at SXSW, many have gone on to notable function movie careers together with “Zola” helmer Janicza Bravo and “The whole lot All over the place All at As soon as” duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert a.ok.a. Daniels, who selected to world premiere their probably Oscar nominee earlier this 12 months at SXSW, the place their music movies received prizes in 2012 and 2015.