Reflections on an Unprecedented Year

At FilmNorth, we’re remembering one year ago today. The day everything shut down and our lives were altered forever by a pandemic we didn’t fully understand. We honestly believed our doors would be closed for two weeks!

We are still amazed that our core staff (especially our education and youth programming departments) were able to move things online so quickly, and are forever grateful to our many associated artists who worked with us to help us re-imagine. We’re proud that we didn’t furlough any staff and that we kept all of our teaching artists employed. We also thank the donors who made the Film Artist Relief Fund possible. Within the first 60 days of the pandemic, FilmNorth was able to provide much needed financial support to filmmakers and crew members who suddenly found themselves out of work and in limbo as unemployment benefits and PPP loans were slowly launched.

Today we are hopeful – people are getting vaccinated much more quickly than we anticipated, the daily COVID numbers are declining, and Minnesota is slowly opening up again! We were even able to present a socially distanced Sundance Film Festival at the Riverview Theater. It was so great to go back to the movies!

All of us at FilmNorth wish to thank all of you for seeing us through this pandemic year and trusting us to continue to offer you programming such as classes, the FilmNorth Forum, and screenings.

We also promise to remember. We’ve learned a lot in the last year, not only from the pandemic but from the uprising, and we want to be sure that these experiences also inform us.

We don’t know what the future will bring, but we promise to be there to uplift all of the filmmakers in The North and celebrate your work!

Be well,
Andrew Peterson
Executive Director