Christian Gaines

Executive Director, ArtPrize

Christian Gaines was born in Brussels, Belgium to American parents and grew up in the United Kingdom until he came to the United States to attend Vassar College, and stayed.

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 and Director of Programming 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 film festival and film programming projects, including AFI FEST, AFI at ArcLight and Cinema’s Legacy: How Great Filmmakers Inspire Great Filmmakers.

In 2008, Christian joined IMDb.com, an Amazon.com company, where he focused on the global expansion of Withoutabox.com, a film festival submissions platform connecting filmmakers to film festivals worldwide.

In April 2013 Christian joined ArtPrize as Executive Director.