The 2008 Reel Artists Film Festival attracted record numbers, opening on February 21 with a sold-out gala celebration and screening of James Crump’s film Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe. After the screening, Crump conversed with Maia Sutnick, Art Gallery of Ontario curator of photography. Sutnick spoke about her experiences working with Wagstaff while organizing the 1981 exhibition “The Sam Wagstaff Collection” at the AGO, and treated the audience to rarely seen slides of the collector at that exhibition. A 25-minute audiocast of this conversation is linked above. The evening concluded with a fantastic party at Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner Museum, with over 300 guests in attendance. Flashbulbs popped all evening as Hello! Canada and the National Post photographers snapped local celebrities including Zoomer editor-in-chief Suzanne Boyd, architect Bruce Kuwabara, event co-chairs Kim Bozak and Amoryn Engel and CFL commissioner Mark Cohon. This opening event kicked off a successful weekend of world and Canadian premieres and strong ticket sales. To stay in the know about Reel Artists ’09 premieres, be sure to subscribe to the Canadian Art Weekly e-bulletin. Less