Festival Data:

• Established: 2005
• Attendance: 96000
• Total Number of Films Screened: 121
• # of Shorts Screened: 50
• # of Features Screened: 71

• Competitive
• Retrospective
• Has Panels

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

The Traverse City Film Festival, founded and curated by filmmaker Michael Moore, is America’s fastest growing summer film festival based on its 2009 Box Office of more than 96,000 paid admissions across five indoor venues.

The festival’s anchor location is the beautifully restored 530-seat State Theatre, a 1916 historic building made over in style in 2007 thanks to Moore’s investment in a renovation that included a state-of-the-art projection system and Skywalker Sound. Comfy green rooms are stocked with snacks in abundance. The State is a movie palace, complete with a balcony, red velvet curtain, electric stars on the ceiling, and an organ played before screenings.

Another TCFF venue is the 465-seat City Opera House where free filmmaker panels and question-and-answer sessions are held every morning. Free nightly outdoor family-oriented screenings take place on a giant inflatable screen at Open Space Park on Grand Traverse Bay and the TCFF Kids Fest offers morning screenings of new, independent films for young people. Live music is one of the highlights of the festival, with performers at every venue playing before each show plus a new After Hours series running at three concert halls around Traverse City and at outdoor daytime TCFF Film Lounges.

The 2009 program of the non-profit festival led by Moore and executive director Deborah Lake presented a lineup of 71 features and 50 shorts representing more than 30 countries and five continents with directors from France, Burma, Palestine, Israel, Norway and Iran on hand for panel discussions. There were five sessions of the new TCFF film school. More than 65 percent of the screenings were sell-outs. In a retrospective section three films by Paul Mazursky were screened and the director was on hand to accept the TCFF 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award. The Closing Night Movie was the Midwest premiere of Julie & Julia starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Completing the festivities were free screenings of popular films on a giant inflatable screen at Open Space Park every night. In total, 40,000 people attended free movies that included live pre-movie entertainment. Festival juries and audiences selected winners in 21 award amd prize categories.

Film Submissions:

• Call for Entry: http:/ / www.traversecityfilmfest.org/ about/ ?page=faqs