Kickstarter

The Wandering Mercuries Film Festival is an independent international biking film festival that will go on tour this summer for the first time on June 23 from Providence, Rhode Island to Chicago, Illinois with 12 city stops and over 15 screenings in cafes, parks, co-ops and other community centers along the way. It is a grassroots effort, organized and transported by Brenden Cicoria, a 2013 undergraduate of RISD's Film/Animation/Video program, and Ronald Lewis, a 2012 graduate of CCRI’s performing arts program.

The festival seeks to find underground independent international films that are unique to this time, and makes them accessible to communities who wouldn’t otherwise attend film festivals. The goal is to actively close the gap between everyday life and art and to create a space where great independent films, animations and videos can exist outside of Hollywood and the traditional idea of a venue. With the help of funding, we will be able to carry all of our own equipment with us so we will be able to screen anywhere we can get power to. By screening in places like parks, co-ops, coffee shops, and libraries and by physically biking these films from place to place, we hope to evolve the way media is presented and create intimate viewing experiences unlike that of any other film festival.

We believe that media, and the stories it spreads is becoming a world of it’s own and it is up to us to guide it’s evolution into a place that the human mind actually wants to inhabit. We believe that media and the way it is shared needs to be humanized. In every city we bike through, we will spread the stories of unique voices in the underground independent film communities both domestic and international. Each screening will also be opened with performances of our own poetry and acoustic music, and end in a dialogue about the films with the audience.

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We will be curating 15 screenings in 12 cities, and filming a documentary of the entire journey.

Providence, RI (June, 22)

Hartford, CT (June, 26)

Poughkeepsie, NY (June, 30) 

Albany, NY (July, 2)

Syracuse, NY (July, 7)

Rochester NY (July,11)

Buffalo, NY  (July, 14)

Erie, PA ( July, 18)

Cleveland, OH  (July, 21)

Toledo, OH  (July, 25)

Southbend, IN ( July, 31)

Chicago, IL.  (August, 4)

Providence, RI (September TBA) final screening with release of documentary.

With your support, this vision can become a reality, and these films will reach audiences who will never see them otherwise. We hope you will join us in our journey this summer.

-Brenden and Ron 

Contact us and check out more of our work @ thewanderingmercuries.tumblr.com

thewanderingmercuries@gmail.com