Finally! A nice rainy day outside to create the perfect mood to sit indoors to write and catch up on my blog without the sunshine making me feel guilty. I've been up a bit too early (for my freelance standards), so I may take a nap soon -- but for now, while I have the energy I'm going to attempt to step back in time (mainly for the month of June) and recount the last 30-40 days.
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| Our 2011 Festival Programs. Poster artwork by Emory Allen. |
To begin, I'll start with a quick re-cap of our 2nd annual film/music/art festival in Duluth that happened June 8th-12th. This year, we did scale down a bit...but it still didn't feel like it. When you have a festival that spans 5 days, its hard to feel like you scaled down. The short story is that this festival still needs much more work and a better managed and organized staff of people to get it on the track to success. I worry a lot about the state of Sound Unseen right now and have for some time, but I'm not going to get into that on this blog.
Anyhow, there were some successes to the festival, such as our opening night film about the legendary Harry Belafonte called Sing Your Song. His daughter Gina produced the film and was in attendance for the entire festival and we had a nearly sold-out opening night. We decided to also make all our music nights at Pizza Lucé free admission and paired all Twin Cities acts with local Duluth acts. We also have the wonderful local socialite Riki McManus on our side and once again she did a fantastic job playing host to our visiting festival VIPs.
Some things we weren't anticipating was road construction right on Superior St. which is where the majority of our venues were, so it was a bit of a challenge to park. Our attendance wasn't as strong as we had hoped, but again, we don't expect to grow a financially successful festival overnight. Again, a lot needs to be fixed internally for Sound Unseen before the organization can continue doing anymore festivals. Needless to say, our visiting filmmakers and jurors seemed to have a great time and I am hoping the powers that be will strategize before a 3rd festival can happen. Here are some photos from the festival taken by David Dolliver and Josh Olson.
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| Our soft opening on Weds. June 8th at Sacred Heart was "Light Factory" an art & cinema installation. |
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| Gina Belafonte saying a few words before the film with our Director of Programming, Jim Brunzell. |
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| A shot of the audience watching Sing Your Song at our Opening Night. |
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| Me and our visiting friend and artist Coleman Miller. |
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| Our staff and visiting filmmakers and actors hanging out at our opening night after-party with Buffalo Moon playing. |
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| Gina Belafonte and our awesome A/V expert Rick Vacius. |
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| L to R: The awesome Riki McManus, Gina Belafonte and her Duluth host. |
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| Lead singer of Sick of Sarah performing at Clyde-Iron. |
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| Me, Dylan and Karrie Vrabel hanging out at the Radisson while Joe Hastings plays the happy hour lounge. |
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| BNLX rocking Pizza Lucé on our Closing Night. |
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| Me and the Maurices staff with Sick of Sarah backstage before their performance. |
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| Hastings 3000 getting ready for his performance. |
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| The Tribe & Big Cats! performing at Pizza Lucé, |
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| MaLLy warms up the crowd at Pizza Lucé. |
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| Pink Mink delivers a rockin' set at Pizza Lucé, |
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