PEIL SPRING21

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

CHARLOTTETOWN FILM FESTIVAL

How Cheryl Wagner ushered the “little festival with big dreams” into the COVID era

By E. Christie Photos Sara Bakker

From Cannes to Cairo, it’s hard to think of an event less suited to the age of the coronavirus than a film festival. But 2020 was, at the very least, a year that forced most industries, including the film industry, to re-imagine the way they do business. Cheryl Wagner, executive director of the Charlottetown Film Festival (ChFF) which took place in Charlottetown in October 2020, says this meant taking the “little festival with big dreams” from a three- day, in-person event filled with screenings, parties and intimate gatherings, to a hybrid part-virtual/part in-person event with intense COVID protocols.

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www.pei-living.ca SPRING 2021

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