Fire Starters Film Festival to bring Muscogee (Creek) artists to Macon this fall

Ready for the new film festival coming to Macon this year featuring Indigenous filmmakers?

Here’s the latest on what organizers have now named the Fire Starters Film Festival coming Sept. 14-17 which will bring Muscogee (Creek) filmmakers to town along with a selection of visual artists and musicians — all told almost a dozen Muscogee (Creek) creatives heading our way with their work.

The festival is a signature project of the Macon200 Bicentennial Celebration with folks from the Macon Film Festival — which is set this year for Aug. 17-20 — also involved to bring their film and organizational expertise.

“The Fire Starters Film Festival is a mini-film festival that will feature films, visual art and music made by Indigenous filmmakers with a particular focus on the Muscogee Nation experience,” said Julia Morrison, a member of the Fire Starters festival committee whose day job is director of arts marketing and community engagement for Mercer University, an indication of how many parts of the community are pulling together to bring about this and other Macon200 events.

The significance of focusing on Muscogee (Creek) filmmakers, artists and musicians goes back to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation being the last to inhabit what is now the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park and other parts of Georgia and the Southeast, their traditional homelands before being unjustly and illegally forced out and relocated to Oklahoma in the 1800s during what has come to be known as the Trail of Tears affecting many tribal nations.

Morrison said the festival will feature the creator’s work as well allowing them to take part in lectures and other question-and-answer or workshop sessions beneficial to the Middle Georgia community.

She said once going by the working title of the Macon Indigenous Film Festival, organizers came to realize the event needed a more unique name reflecting the mission of the festival. That mission reaches beyond simply bringing great entertainment to audiences to fostering a greater connection and understanding between communities.

“We realized it was important to have a unique name that reflects the idea of this being the Muscogee (Creek) homeland and what homeland and the concept of sacred fire means to Muscogee people,” Morrison said. “The idea of welcoming people back and acknowledging what they mean to us is important. The creativity sparked by Muscogee culture and tradition is central to the festival and bringing that cultural exchange and greater understanding is an exciting proposition we’ll all be better for.”

In recent years, there has been a concerted effort locally and among Muscogee (Creek) Nation leaders in Oklahoma to re-forge ties. That effort coincides with efforts to see the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park become a full-fledged National Park, Georgia’s first.

Moderate admission will be charged to the festival with money raised benefiting the Ocmulgee National Park & Preserve Initiative (ONPPI), a grassroots group of Middle Georgia and Muscogee (Creek) citizens working together to expand the current site of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, see it become a National Park and foster the preservation of historic lands.

The overall initiative to reconnect Macon with the now Oklahoma-based Muscogee (Creek) Nation has gotten strong support from Mayor Lester Miller and Macon-Bibb County leaders. At an ONPPI event Wednesday, Miller told me of his excitement about the Fire Starters festival and how pleased he is to see Muscogee (Creek) creators come and be featured here. He said it was one more indication of the desire of people here to welcome people of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to their homeland.

Fire Starters screenings will take place at The Grand Opera House with visual arts displayed at Mercer’s downtown McEachern Art Center.

Morrison said there’s also the possible use of The Capitol Theatre as a third festival venue.

More information about films, artists, ticketing and schedules is yet to come along with announcements of special guests coming for the occasion.

Funding for the festival is coming largely through Community Foundation of Central Georgia Downtown Challenge 2.0 grants made possible by the Peyton Anderson Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

For more information about Macon’s bicentennial celebrations go to www.macon200.com. For more on ONPPI, go to www.ocmulgeepark.org.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com.