Rural and Community Art Project Grant
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
The Free Range Film Festival seeks to improve the audience experience and to increase the participation of filmmakers. Films are played simultaneously in one large screening room and two smaller ones. We face three problems: a) communication, b) low filmmaker participation, and c) awkward transitions between films. Solutions: a) Filmmakers who attend take audience questions following their film. Since our venue has one large screening room and two smaller ones, the audience in the smaller rooms cannot fully participate. We propose to add closed-circuit video among all screening rooms. b) In order to increase the number of filmmakers attending, we propose to offer limited reimbursement for their expenses. c) Our projection equipment relies on outdated DVD technology, resulting in delays between films. We propose to rent available technology so that the audience will experience smooth transitions from one film to the next. We also hope to add a virtual reality experience. The Directors and volunteers of the Free Range Film Festival attend the film screenings and interact with the audience; audience members share comments and reactions which give a measure of the festival's success. We shall be alert to audience approval of interactive audio and video. The number of filmmakers attending has always been modest; we shall record how many more filmmakers attend given the promise of a limited subsidy for their travel expenses. Our technical staff will report on improvement in film transitions; we shall also ask for audience responses to this issue. We hand every audience member a program for the films that are being screened and this year we will include a short evaluation form with the program in order to document and measure our success and to help plan for future years.
We were able to screen 35 films and host 7 filmmakers for the weekend of our festival. We screened an independent VR film in addition to the 35 screened on the large screen. We had 380 attendees to the festival with 28 of those as youth. We were written up in the Duluth News Tribune and featured on all of the local TV news stations. We received glowing reviews from one on one conversations with filmmakers and audience members. The following is a Facebook post by one of our visiting filmmakers: "Quick wrap-up from this weekend and the Free Range Film Festival: Manlife found itself in a wonderful program of films sitting along short films about a woman who makes dioramas for snails, a man bio-hacking his gut bacteria, and our friends Kate and Jeremy's beautifully gut-wrenching animated short. It was a block of amazing films about people surviving on the fringe of society. The film was well received, and Manlife both looked and sounded beautiful. More films should play in 101-year-old barns. Afterwards the film was followed up with a very thoughtful question and answer session. Just can't say enough about the entire staff of volunteers that help run the Free Range Festival, they certainly go out of their way to make both filmmakers and audiences feel at home. They also send you home with the freshest swag bag! We'd encourage any and every filmmaker to submit to this gem of a festival, and I'd push more festivals to expand the concept of what a film festival can and should be. Thanks to everyone who came out and to the fine folks that put this festival on."
Other, local or private