Green Art Festival expands summer films

WEEKLY SCREENING ADDED TO PROGRAMMING

Image from Watermark, one of the award-winning docs that will be shown over the festival. – Photo www.watchwatermarkmovie.com

The Green Art Festival Association (GAFA) is back with expanded programming this summer.

In addition to the return of Midnight Sun, which will run from Aug. 5 to 8, GAFA launched an outdoor series screening eight films on Friday nights between June 24 and Sept. 2.

“The films that I chose are all about outdoors, about our connection to nature, water, snow and different interactions with it either artistic or adventure,” said GAFA president Dasha Novak.

The free films will be screening near the clock tower beginning at 8:30 p.m. on most Fridays throughout the summer. A full schedule is available at greenartfestival.org.

“Those films belong outside. I think for anybody who comes up here it’s something they can resonate with,” Novak said. “There’s something about nature that we’re drawn to so I’m tapping into this passion, our natural human need to be outdoors and showing these films outdoors about our relationship with the outdoors, with the natural elements.”

Midnight Sun is also expanding this year with a three day art exhibit, two days of art workshops for kids, live music and a film shown each of the three nights. Big Steel Box returns as a sponsor to provide a storage container that will house the art exhibit at the base of the Sundance chairlift.

“This year I’ve been targeting young, emerging artists so we’re going to have some graduates from (Thompson Rivers University),” Novak said. “We’ll be showing their work, we’ll be featuring them because green means, not just in terms of environment, but also young perspectives, young minds and young points of view, and we’ll bring them together with older seasoned artists
as mentors.”

The free summer films will be a combination of movies previously shown and brought back with high demand and ones that are new for the festival. Two locally made short films, Interior Soil by Keegan Kovacs and Frames by Eddie Foster featuring Kieran Nikula will be featured during the summer programming, with the dates still to be determined.