IDAHO FALLS — An award-winning Idaho Falls journalist has created a short film that will be featured during a five-day film festival along the banks of the Mississippi River.
Kris Millgate, CEO of Tight Line Media, produced “Your Mississippi”, for outdoor conservation organization The Izaak Walton League of America. The film was selected out of 2,400 entries, and is one of 50 to be shown at the Flyway Film Festival in Minnesota.
“’Your Mississippi,’ aims to capture the everyday lives of civilization and enterprise along the Mississippi. In other words, ‘what the Mississippi river means to the people who live along it,’” Millgate told EastIdahoNews.com, “For some of them it’s their livelihood. For some of them it’s the place they play … for industry it’s the way they move product.”
The League is working to solve problems plaguing the Mississippi – from soil and nutrient pollution to lost fish and wildlife habitat, Izaak Walton League of America Communications Director Dawn Merritt said in a news release.
“Americans rely on the Mississippi River for recreation, commerce and healthy communities, but the river is not what it used to be,” she said. “We relied on Tight Line Media to tell this story. Kris Millgate knows how to create a compelling visual narrative and worked closely with us to ensure each of our videos accomplished our goals and more.”
Millgate spent time traveling the upper parts of the Mississippi down to Illinois, discovering inhabited backwaters and efforts to preserve the river.
“This is the nation’s river, and we’ve got to take care of it, even if us out here in Idaho can’t see it. It’s the main artery for our nation,” Millgate said.
Millgate said the goal was to convey the river in terms that viewers could connect with.
“People play on it, people work on it. It’s unbelievable to see all the commerce that’s moving up that river now,” Millgate said, “There’s a lot of different interests that have to be managed.”
The Flyway Film Festival will run Wednesday, Oct. 21 to Sunday, Oct. 25 in Red Wing Minnesota. See a preview of the film at the Tight Line Media website.
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