“I met so many different people from different fields — industry and filmmakers,” Jones said, adding that he saw movies in Park City that “have been the highlights of the year.”
Jones, who runs the site Ready Reviews, couldn’t have made the trip from Brooklyn to Utah without the Sundance Institute’s inaugural Press Inclusion Initiative. The program gives travel stipends to critics, freelancers and journalists from underrepresented communities — women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities. Jones, 21, qualified on two counts: He’s black and nonbinary.
This year, the initiative is dealing with the growing pains of its success.