Christian Gaines

In 1988, Christian Gaines joined the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, serving as its Administrative Director for six years. In 1994, Christian was appointed Film Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, programming the 1995 and 1996 festivals. From 1996 to 2000, he served as Festival Director for the Hawaii International Film Festival, responsible for its management and programming.

From 2000 to 2008, Christian served as Director of Festivals at the American Film Institute, where he led several festival projects, including AFI FEST. In 2008, Christian joined IMDb.com, an Amazon.com company, where he focused on the global expansion of Withoutabox.com, a film submission platform connecting filmmakers to film festivals worldwide.

Christian has served on numerous film festival juries including Sundance, SXSW, Denver, Montreal and Warsaw; has participated on numerous panels worldwide about film, film
festivals, non-traditional distribution and technology; has independently consulted for several film festivals; has attended many, many film festivals around the world and has written many times about film festivals for outlets like Variety and Indiewire.

In April 2013 Christian joined ArtPrize as Executive Director. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ArtPrize is the world’s largest art competition, annually attracting over 400,000 attendees and 1,700 artists competing for $560,000 in cash prizes, including two $200,000 prizes awarded equally by expert jury and smartphone-enabled public vote.