Hey, remember a couple weeks back when the Clips of Faith Film Festival came through Gas Works Park? Hailey Way from the UW News Lab was kind enough to share her experience:
After a warm day in Seattle, the sun perched on the horizon, lighting Gas Works Park last Friday evening. As soon as the sun went down, with beers in hand, attendees of the New Belgium Brewing Clips of Faith tour nestled into picnic blankets to watch homemade film shorts under the stars.
It’s a rare occurrence that Gas Works Park turns into an outdoor movie theater. The Clips Beer and Film tour is a traveling fundraising event hosted by New Belgium Brewing, that has made its away across the country showing films and serving beer.
“There are 21 cities that this event has been through. Each city has a different cause. This event is supporting Nature Consortium,” said Monica Thomas, marketing content specialist at Nature Consortium.
The Nature Consortium is a Puget Sound based organization that aims to connect people in the community through environmental progression and artistic expression in natural settings. The Consortium offers several educational programs for children, encouraging them to explore art, music, and sustainability practices as a way to build communal values.
The event cost 10 dollars, which included a “beerography” passport sized booklet, for attendees to use to record their favorite beer combinations. The contents included an extensive beer manual to the 16 brews on tap that New Belgium served that night. The first beer I tried was the blue paddle pilsner lager, which had a firm hoppy flavor and a faint floral scent. With the rest of my beer tokens, which were redeemable pints or multiple sample sizes, I had the la folie (folly in French). It’s sour brown ale, fairly similar to a tart hard cider, which fondly reminded me of my trip to England a few years ago.
To compliment the variety of tastes in the park, the films were celebrated with laughs and admiration. They ranged from stop motion, animation, slow motion, and ended off with a fitting hipster Western. Amateur filmmakers and local fans of New Belgium Brewing created the films. The next city Clips will travel through will be Milwaukee on Thursday August 15th.
Sad you missed it? Enjoy one of the videos that was shown in the comfort of your own home. BYOB.
I attended and thought the event had a lot of potential. But the constant New Belgium and beer imagery used in the short films themselves made it seem like a very long commercial for the brewery.