hi i'm sunny coming up next on the form i'll be sitting down with natalie morell the founder of the twin cities a black film festival that's coming up next on the for why they were having me hour is i know to sit with you as i have to be honest with you i know most of your work from social media so i have a lot of questions for you to start out with cell first of all what's your background and how did you get started with this this big event that's been going on for thirteen years now ok here's why i started off actually as a promoter so i was doing concerts and you know i bring in concerts i started off with events where they were celebrity fashion shows and concerts and i thought we could do something like that here in minnesota so you know i kind of thought about it researched it and then started my own business for now ok so again you're thirty the year yes what did the first year look like the first year was absolutely crazy because i you know i researched it i decided that i could do it i kind of looked at it i went to a film festival in miami so i just kind of scaled down from you know here living in minneapolis as opposed to miami and started a festival from that so the first one we had definitely had a lot of people come out but it wasn't as smooth as it could have been but for over a couple of days it's a one day it's four days so we're four days there's peril discussions there's films there's meet and greets there's no networking opportunities there's also vendor opportunities for people with small businesses to have their  business showcased at our festival there's festival parties so it's a lot of stuff for the panel discussion do you what's what's up what's what do you discuss in a scene this year we are discussing we have one for addiction we're doing a health and wellness and so one is on a roll the diction so our focus this year is about health and wellness because you know i think it's super important for us to to show why it is good to be healthy and taught in schools and he has a documentary on that so we're actually going to do that around around his his documentaries i want i want to get more into the hollywood question obviously but you said you're talking about health i would assume that it's a film festival so how are you connecting that it do you want it to be do you want films to show more concerns or issues around health i mean why discuss how well there are you have a lot of films that that are of the there are that surround themselves around health and wellness one of them soul food junkies which we showed last year it was about a guy that his father passed away he loved so food but he was he had diabetes and he really died for from that and so after his father passed he went around the country to see how many other people  e are black community so food do they think about healthy things that's super interesting and so that made me think about you know when we look at the issues with insurance and things like that and you know michael moore has done you know he's  a filmmaker and he's done the ones where he a mcdonald's for thirty days and showed what kind of effect it had where this body looked like so i thought it was you know something this year that we wanted to to actually kind of showcase that have that our festival so for them black hollywood portion is that what you're using to what are you using to promote the event what are you using to attract new people and still have people who've been coming still keep them  big on helping promoters to bring him to different cities to promote their do you have any local acts that are going to be there yeah we will have some local acts and we haven't given them out as a ok ok i'm going to say i want to know if i what's been the most successful element of the festival the most successful element of the festival is really the films that are chosen every year so you know that really gears who comes like and who's like the actors that that actually come are actresses and so usually with those surround it with films that they have that's those seem to be the big things are parties are always really big two this year we're doing the twenty fifth anniversary house party for the film that's why we're having on we do have people that we do have interns that we work with but but yes sometimes it's certain things and not necessarily all things but this year i was thinking that we probably would feel more like you know me is like you should be he will do a meet and greet christopher martin will do a meet and greet and we haven't decided what we're going to do how we're going to do that yet but once he gets here he said he will talk about that but he will definitely be at the party so people get to meet him take pictures with them serious film festival what does planning that look like a whole year usually start right after christmas like january first i don't honestly start takes a long time you know we have big sponsors h b o alexa's microsoft rock this year patrol so we you know we do plan year in advance ok what what has been in the last thirteen years what's been your biggest obstacle my biggest obstacle is really showing that we're a very diverse film festival seventy percent of my attendees are caucasian and thirty percent are african american yeah so it's kind of swapped but and so for me i just want to be able soledad it's very and i think you know with seventy percent as you know of other ethnicities shows that we are but i really want the community to know that we have a little bit of for everybody you know there's all kinds of fields you know this you are showing black wall street we have a lot of different films that are also and we just love people to come out and enjoy you know from from all over not just minneapolis st paul you know and surrounding the suburbs ok do you think there's a reason why the attendees are i don't know that that's something i often ponder and think about what it could be but we work with all the colleges there's lots of interviews that i do leading up to the festival and you know so word this every year i try to think of different ways that we can reach people and so this year we're probably do a few commercials which is something we haven't done on television so i think that we definitely reaches a broader audience or so people kind of know what's going on so there are i'm pretty sure there are other film festivals that are going on around the country or we'll just say in the midwest we'll just keep it real local regionally what are you offering that they are africa's in this i am i i tell every guest that i speak with that i'm from chicago and so is this is so cool be and i'm asking him because i get to learn so many different things and well what you're asking is what are we offer that other veterans of assessable they're not doing really well just keep it in the midwest first and then nationally well one of the things i think is that we are  compared to like the american black film festival or perry african film festival you know we're definitely smaller it's our region people think of minnesota they think cold they think prince they think mall of america or they don't think a lot of african americans are here so you saw right away that that's one of our obstacles because people don't think of detroit or chicago or if you're planning a vacation oh let's go to mina so it's cold there so that they always think that so that's our biggest obstacle i think the timing is is good though because you know i have to look at what festivals are happening across the country so this is a good time for a festival it's after to ronald's after sundance so we're not competing too with with festivals that get films that we're trying to get from the big studios so i have to think about all those things and it's really just timing when you say good films what do you mean meaning that we work with fox or twentieth century fox like we're doing tonight the empire this is one of the official screens for prior so we are working with twentieth century fox in a way so that means that you know this is that's corporate so we we have to follow what they're doing and you know if i don't know how they're releasing it that hasn't been released yet for and they have toronto that wants the same film obviously they're going to do toronto it's a lot larger televised you know access hollywood these people are there and they're there for that festival so that's what is different between us with regards to minnesota we're the only african american festival there are several in minnesota but but when you do when you look at the midwest as a whole you know chicago would be the next city that has the larger festival so big chicago minnesota are the only ones in the midwest what we consider midwest kodos you know nebraska so on and so forth so you mentioned something about college students and you working with college students could you tell me well bit more about that with the news media are you featuring any of their work at the we encourage that but when i was talking about colleges we all of our graphics on our web site all that are done by interns we work with them we work with the brown college and so this is the way for them to get credit in their classes working with our festival and to give them hands on opportunity to see their graphics see you know their web things going on the other thing is that youth we have had i think the youngest we've ever had was fifteen years old and so we encourage everyone in their whole class came out  you know for the for it was the animated film actually was excellent and you know we do encourage that so the edge educates film festival i think that souths high school we've encouraged to have some of their  you know we've asked them to have some of their films or shorts shown in our festival so we definitely encourage and we also do encourage local filmmakers last year we had fifteen local filmmakers this year we have the probably seven so every year fluctuates as how many that we get but we have films from all over the country that you know obviously are in there and every once in a while will be a film internationally we had a film about skateboarding actually and it was from germany was excellent and so and then we had one with regard to when they do the graffiti on the wall and how they turned in someone that kept getting arrested for graffiti and made him take an art class because he was super talented so that was his his yeah that was basically basically his punishment but it was a good thing right yeah ok so just so everybody knows when this is all happening there's thirty things going on will be with christopher play martin and so we'll have the ninety's i think it'll be super fun that's one of my favorite films from you know a classic one so i think everybody's going to come on have a good time i think so too so just in case someone didn't catch all of it