It takes a village to raise a Film Festival; many thanks | As We See It
Published 7:58 pm Monday, November 17, 2014
By Lynn Danaher & Karen Palmer
Thank You Friday Harbor. We are full of gratitude to the community of Friday Harbor and the San Juan Islands.
The Friday Harbor Film Festival could not have enjoyed such great success without the generous support of our sponsors, the Town of Friday Harbor, the enthusiastic dedication of our volunteers and all the community members of Friday Harbor and the San Juan Islands who participated in the 2nd annual Friday Harbor Film Festival.
Our Audience Choice was “Return of the River,” about the Elwa dam removal and subsequent restoration efforts to the environment and salmon runs.
The purpose of the Friday Harbor Film Festival is to inform film-goers about important issues to consider and the challenges we all face. Our goal is to support documentary filmmakers whose passion drives them, by providing them an audience for their important storytelling films.
Our hope is that the result of seeing some of these films, some alter their perception and decide to “be the change,” raise awareness, build coalitions and consensus around these important issues and move positive change forward in the global community.
Filmmakers traveled from all over the world to share their films and be available for Q & A. Thanks to all for extending such a warm welcome to our filmmakers, plus our off-island visitors; comment cards were full of compliments about how friendly everyone was—they loved our little town and felt very welcome.
We believe this event is an exceedingly valuable addition to our community, so any ideas, suggestions or assistance would be greatly appreciated (info@fhff.org).
We priced our tickets affordably for friends and family to share, so a lot more tickets were sold, ensuring more films were seen. We made approximately the same amount of money as 2013, so continued fundraising for this event will be a necessity.
We are already planning our 2015 event and have been contacted by filmmakers for submissions. We will be accepting submissions after Jan. 1 and will make screening decisions by mid-summer (FYI: several of the films screened this year were suggested by local islanders—so please let us know about films you find worthy enough to share).
For those of you that were not able to see all the films you wanted to see, we will be hosting screenings of most of the films shown during our 2nd annual Film Festival, twice per month throughout the winter, on Tuesday evenings at the Grange. Admission will be by donation. Watch for dates and announcements of films scheduled, or go online to our web page; www.fhff.org, and please sign up for our monthly newsletter.
We wanted to offer a very special thanks our venues; Island Inn, SJ Community Theatre, Friday Harbor House, the Grange and the Whale Museum, plus all the volunteer leads; Chris, Janet, Caroline, Malcolm, Kristin, Parin, Bruce, Diana, Nan and Steve, who took on the responsibility to make sure everything ran smoothly at each venue.
Big thanks to San Juan Island Yacht Club for hosting our Soiree this year, and to Marcy, Cynthia, Gayle and Ryan for pulling it all together. We greatly appreciate all the hotels/accommodation’s that hosted our filmmakers.
A heartfelt thanks to Kristine, housing maven and Robert and Kate our film wranglers, Matt for documenting the entire event thru his lens, The Journal for great coverage and all our online news sources for news and schedules. We owe a big debt of gratitude to the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau, who guided us in promoting this event throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
A special nod of appreciation to our volunteers: Ellen and Lori for all the writing and editing of our program, newsletters and press releases, Linnea and Mary Kate for our social media and web site presence, plus Sandy and Noreen for coordinating the Young Filmmakers Project, as well as, Tony and Laszlo for mentoring some our young filmmakers.
Big kudos Friday Harbor, for extending such a warm welcome to everyone that attended. We are so lucky to live here.
—Editor’s note: Lynn Danaher is director of the Friday Harbor Film Festival; Karen Palmer is Film Festival producer.
