Friends,
Greetings from deep inside our screening room bunker as we prepare the final list of great movies we’ve selected for this year’s Traverse City Film Festival! We’ve spent the past year spanning the globe, searching for the best films most people never get a chance to see. And I am here to report to you that this has been an extremely good year and what we’re going to bring you is an amazing offering of exhilarating, intense, beautiful, hilarious, and provocative movies.
When the world spins madly out of control, leave it to the artists to respond, to inspire, to operate with this crazy belief that one great movie can change the planet. Seriously, imagine yourself as a filmmaker, and you deeply believed that movies matter and that, when all else fails, you start thinking to yourself, “Cinema can save the world!” If that’s what you believed, deep in your soul, imagine then what kind of earth-shattering movie you would make.
A movie that made audiences think in an entirely new way. A movie that brought even the most hardened folks to tears. A movie so gut-splittingly funny, all the anger and fear and hopelessness you’ve been feeling turns itself into hopeful action. Or what if it were just a movie that was so breathtakingly gorgeous, or so uplifting that when you walked out into Front Street you paused for a moment to realize just how great it is to be alive and kicking and in a town that can do ANYTHING with a bowl of cherries.
That’s what’s in store for you this year at the 15th annual Traverse City Film Festival.
And in just 16 days, on Friday, June 28, we will reveal this mind-blowing list of movies to you and the public! If you are a Friend of the TCFF, you will get first crack at snapping up this year’s most sought-after tickets on Sunday, July 7. If you haven’t re-upped your membership, now is the time to do so.
It’s summer once again here in one of the most wonderful places on earth. Come July 30 – August 4, I personally look forward to showing you these great movies and talking to you about what they all mean as we head for higher ground. Kalkaska needs a view of the bay, too!
All my best,
Michael Moore
PS. We had an amazing night at the Bijou last night. Martin Scorsese selected us as one of just 50 theaters around the world to host a one-night-only sneak peek screening of his new Bob Dylan documentary, “Rolling Thunder Revue.” It’s an amazing film about Dylan’s 1975 tour of America on the eve of our 200th birthday. We sold out quickly! Congrats to those who got a seat! I’ll try to show it at the festival this summer.
