FHFF Says “Thanks!”

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, 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 Elwha dam removal and subsequent restoration efforts to the environment and salmon runs. The purpose of the FHFF 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! [email protected] . We priced our tickets affordably for friends and family to share so sold a lot more tickets, insuring more films were seen. We made approx. the same amount of money as 2013, so continued fund raising 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, 2015 and will make screening decisions by mid-summer 2015. 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 Friday Harbor Film Festival, twice per month on Tues. evenings at the Grange, throughout the winter. Entry 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 at each venue took on the responsibility to make sure everything ran smoothly. Big thanks to the SJIYC 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 SJIVB who guided us in promoting this event, throughout the PNW 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 Kudo’s Friday Harbor, for extending such a warm welcome to everyone that attended. We are so lucky to live here!!

Sincerely,
Lynn Danaher, Director
Karen Palmer, Producer

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