FLIC: Food, Libation & Independent Cinema

In Brief

FLIC brings to Boulder an evening of independent film and entertainment that’s as singularly engaging as the community itself. Unlike any other forum, FLIC:

FLIC’s co-founders, Emily Lawrence and Dan Spiegler, believe that a movie-going experience can be about more than box office receipts. FLIC’s mission involves community-building through art, film and personal connection to both.

Movie theaters bring people together but discourage interaction by the sit-down, shut-up, watch-this & get-out ritual of today’s googolplex. A FLIC event will break these boundaries by providing a platform for the young to be heard, the elderly to be included, local artists to be showcased, local businesses to be promoted and human issues to be explored.

FLIC’s first season starts in April, 2010 with events scheduled on the last Wednesday of April, May and June at BMoCA (Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art) following the Farmer’s Market. Doors open at 7:15 and the feature begins at 8pm.

What to Expect

Why just watch a movie when you can go to a FLIC event?

Pre-show

Doors open at 7pm to a fabulous array of the fun, the funky and the unexpected. Each FLIC event starts with cocktails & cartoons — from the Pink Panther to Spike & Mike's to anime, you’ll find fabulous and often irreverent gems to take you out of your head and into the night. Local shorts will also roll off the reel - - adding more bang to your entertainment buck. So kick back, pick up a drink, nosh on some fine local food, catch up with your friends and make some new ones.

FLIC Previews

At FLIC, 8pm is the witching hour which is when you shut off your cell phone. Let the emcee usher you into a world of live, performed previews for upcoming local art events. It's a taste, a teaser, an appetizer. And then on to the main event.

The Main Event

FLIC is devoted to bringing you fabulous, contemporary, cutting-edge independent films from the US and abroad. Feature film or documentary, stop-animation or black and white, you can count on FLIC's selection to be engaging & provocative, entertaining & worthwhile.

Intermission (FLICermission?)

Some films lend themselves to quiet, earnest watching while others demand a beer break or a pause for Twinkie-Trivia. It's a break, it's brief....consider it an intermezzo. This could be a short performance or an audience opportunity. You'll know ahead of time. That way, if you’re shy, you can be first in the beer line.

Post-Show

Rolling credits don’t mean it’s time to roll out the door. Stick around for musical entertainment, Movieoki (like karaoke for movies, hold the sake) or....well, the possibilities are endless. The lineup is never the same, but the irreverent fun is something you can always count on at FLIC.

FLIC + Boulder’s Arts Community

The Boulder performing arts community—from the Fringe to CU, the Dairy to the Philharmonic-- is vibrant & diverse but doesn’t often overlap. One secret to a strong arts community—and a strong community in general—is cross-pollination. Like Pandora does for music, FLIC events expose audiences to a diverse yet curated array of art forms and ideas, some as simple as smell-o-vision and some as sublime as love.

What FLIC Delivers

No two events are alike. FLIC moves you from passive listener to active participant and delivers film, art and social values in digestible bites. Where art delivers the message, FLIC amplifies it. Where art has lessons, FLIC will point out the living lessons in the community. Some pieces are explicitly designed to build community and connections between young and old in Boulder. The intergenerational interview solicits life experience from Boulderites ages 7 to 97, in spontaneous interviews designed to uncover shared values and get unpolished perspectives.

Funding FLIC:

FLIC’s value in the community is seated in a unique movie-going experience that softly brings community to the forefront. As a non-profit, FLIC enjoys significant funding from individuals as well as businesses, grants and foundations, yet also maintains a platform that encourages participation by local businesses with only a minimal cash commitment. FLIC seeks partners, not just sponsors. For example, a film that pivots on a character receiving a bicycle may be paired with a local bike shop offering free tune-ups to anyone biking to that evening’s event. The film expresses a value, a local business demonstrates it and the community benefits. That’s community building through art & film. That’s win-win-win.

If you’d like to make a donation please go to the Support page. To suggest a partnership or otherwise collaborate with FLIC, please email Dan.

Who is FLIC?

Founders:

FLIC was conceived in 2009 by Emily Lawrence and Dan Spiegler, who share a love of local art, independent anything, community building and kazoo bands. As they began hatching a plan to bring independent movies and a variety show to Boulder, Dan and Emily realized that their complementary backgrounds (MBA meets MFA) and mutual oddity could amount to something compelling. Emily has since moved on to lead video production for a Denver start up but left a great list of ideas that FLIC continues to play with.

danDan Spiegler, Executive Director, has been in Boulder since 1993, long enough to remember when Boulder had eight movie theaters, including a drive-in and a one-dollar, second-run cinema. His fondest movie theater memory involves the pre-feature Pink Panther cartoons that his hometown theater showed before trailers, commercials and cell phone admonitions became ubiquitous. The vision for FLIC comes from a dislike for big-box stores, chains and anything else homogenized, sterilized or workaday. Dan earned an MBA from CU-Boulder in 2004 and has nearly fifteen years of experience in various finance and operations roles, ranging from start ups to business process consulting at GE. For four years he also ran events for up to 500 people with a staff of up to thirty five, locally and across the western US. Today he makes his living in the mortgage industry with Premier Mortgage Group and is part of a sales team that is top five out of nearly 200, yet he’s surprisingly not salesey. Dan’s non-linear experience is either seated-in, or the by-product of, an ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things which is, in part, what FLIC aims to do.

FLIC Board:

Board of Directors:

Board of Advisors