As part of an effort to reach out to aspiring artists, the NYCC also offered this year a session with the director of the New York TV Festival (NYTVF). The NYTVF is an independently sponsored that aspires to be the Sundance of independent TV, a festival that puts the work of independent TV creators into the hands of TV executives.  Between January and May, the festival accepts pilots of 4 to 22 minutes in length, from any genre – sitcom, drama, game show, soap opera, animation or whatever; the best of the bunch are screened in September at the festival itself and also sent to executives from the major television production companies, many of whom come to the festival and solicit pitches from winning teams.

After the panel, the NYTVF screened a number of its chosen pilots from last year, the craziest and most wonderful of which I have included below.  “The Food Party” is an absurdist puppet show/cooking show starring creator Thu Tran, “Yolk O. Oh No”, a French baguette, an ice cream cone and Satan himself.   In 2008 it won the “Out of the Box Pilot” award, and it truly is impossible to classify. Also impossible to resist.  Give it 2 minutes and you will be hooked.  

Jim McDermott, SJ