Although the staff at Outdoor Movies looks forward to many of their film festival jobs, the Traverse City Film Festival, located in the northwest corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula on the coast of Grand Traverse Bay, is by far the one that the crew looks forward to the most. Not many people can boast about their work taking them away to a beautiful beach area. A place where they can put on critically acclaimed, crowd-pleasing movies by night and relax in this quaint city by day. It is easy to become nostalgic when celebrating the 12th anniversary of such a special event.
In 2005, Oscar-winning film director Michael Moore reached out to Outdoor Movies Inc. about an idea to bring a film festival to one of his favorite places from his childhood, Traverse City, MI. Utilizing indoor movie venues already in place, Moore sought out Outdoor Movies Inc. to spearhead an outdoor component at the Open Space, a park surrounded by water on three sides. Though at first a daunting task, with strong winds often blowing off the Traverse City Bay, it was no challenge to the solutions oriented team at Outdoor Movies.
Twelve years later, Outdoor Movies has gotten the installation and execution of this outdoor cinema down to a science. Using the enormous, 65’ wide AIRSCREEN® Classic, 4k digital cinema projection and top of the line sound equipment, the grandeur of the event is impressive even to high profile Hollywood directors, such as Michael Moore.
The 12th Annual Traverse City Film Festival ran from July 26-31, with attendance reaching 128,000, an increase from 2015, a major success.
Featured this year:
- Adam’s Rib
- Frozen
- Jurassic World
- Pitch Perfect
- Shrek
- Wayne’s World
Outdoor Movies is looking forward to another fantastic event in Traverse City in 2017.
The 13th Annual Traverse City Film Festival is taking place July 25-30, 2017.