They promised "just great movies" and for five years now they've delivered. Starting today, the Traverse City Film Festival is going to do it again.
In 2005 filmmaker Michael Moore, photographer John Robert Williams and writer Doug Stanton, along with a handful of friends, launched the Traverse City Film Festival. In just six weeks they lined up movies and venues and enough volunteers to make it go. The five-day festival featured 31 films and 52 screenings and counted 50,000 admissions.
Those numbers — and the number of related events — have soared over the years. Last year there were 96,000 admissions over six days, 71 films and 50 shorts (from more than 30 countries) and 123 screenings. There were free film panel discussions, 65 film industry guests, a film school, a kids festival and outdoor movies on a giant inflatable screen at the Open Space.
This year: Six days (through Sunday), 80 films and 40 shorts (from over 25 countries), 135 screenings, the second film school (double the size), five free panel discussions and six outdoor movies at the Open Space.
And, of course, thousands of movie fans from across the region and state and, more and more, from across the Midwest and the country.
To say the festival has been good to Traverse City is an understatement. It can be hectic and, for local residents who still have to work and get on with life, a bit of a pain. Traffic and more traffic, crowded shops, crowded sidewalks, crowded restaurants .
But it is also a chance, right in our own back yard, to see films we most certainly would not otherwise see, and from just about every genre — comedy, war, dark drama, documentary, and romance. The wealth of shorts, a couple just six minutes long or even shorter, is adding a lot of zing.
See some films, go out for a bite, meet some friends, make some new ones. Great movies make for a great time.
