How you can visit the Sundance Film Festival right here in Atlanta

Some history of Atlanta's Plaza Theatre

The Sundance Film Festival has made some changes this year to allow people around the globe to take part in the Park City, Utah-based cinema event.

As such, Atlantans will get the chance to soak up the movies that would ordinarily be screened in person right here in the Peach State — and a preview event will let you tune in early.

Sundance Institute, the nonprofit founded by actor Robert Redford, announced last month that the seven-day event will be offered digitally this year in partnership with drive-ins, independent arthouses and a group of local community partnerships. As such, many theaters around the nation will screen selections from the 2021 program.

The Plaza Theater, Plaza Drive-In and Dad’s Garage Drive-In are among the Atlanta theaters that will participate thanks to the Atlanta Film Society.

The arts nonprofit is hosting a preview of the film programming and a roundtable with members of the host committee on YouTube Live and Facebook Live Tuesday, Jan. 19 as part of the virtual Eat, Drink & B-Indie event.

Beginning at 7:30 p.m., interested viewers can tune in to the streams and consume cinema-related content for an hour.

“Even under these impossible circumstances artists are still finding paths to make bold and vital work in whatever ways they can,” first-year festival director Tabitha Jackson said in a statement. “So Sundance, as a festival of discovery, will bring that work to its first audiences in whatever ways we can. The core of our Festival in the form of an online platform and socially distanced cinematic experiences is responsive to the pandemic and gives us the opportunity to reach new audiences, safely, where they are.

“And thanks to a constellation of independent cinema communities across the U.S. we are not putting on our Festival alone,” she added. “At the heart of all this is a belief in the power of coming together, and the desire to preserve what makes a festival unique — a collaborative spirit, a collective energy, and a celebration of the art, artists, and ideas that leave us changed.”

Atlanta isn’t the only place in Georgia that will serve as a satellite screen. Macon with Macon Film Festival will do the same at the Douglass Theatre.

Eat, Drink & B-Indie: Sundance Film Festival in Atlanta

7:30 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Jan. 19

Facebook Live/YouTube Live

Free