Nova Studios are delighted to be the film company of choice for Hull’s fantastic Freedom Festival.
Now ten years old, Freedom has become one of the biggest and most important events in Hull’s calendar. After producing the promotional film for this year’s festival, Freedom commissioned Nova to document the whole event.
Which meant all hands on deck: three teams working throughout the full event in order to capture everything as it happened – funk bands on bikes, giant giraffes, dancers, haircuts with kids, the free feast, big scale happenings like 451 and Rush, street performers, DJs, foot-baths, dinosaurs, disco chips and more as well as vox pops and interviews with audience members, artists and volunteers.
It’s a fantastic way to see the festival. Our three crews combined covered more than 80km on foot during the weekend, five of us worked 82 hours and we shot hours and gigabytes of footage. Shooting for Freedom gives you licence to push your way to the front and get in amongst all the excitement – you see the thrill and sheer wonder on people’s faces and the joy the performances bring.
This year Freedom stretched beyond the confines of the ever-developing Fruit Market ‘village’ and into the new squares and public spaces of the city, really connecting Hull people and visitors with the fabric of the place itself.
We’ve always loved Hull, but our council’s top class public realm improvements, combined with the wonderful surge of cultural activity 2017 has provided, really have brought a genuine lift to the city that previous regeneration efforts never quite achieved.
Freedom was the perfect showcase for that.
Anyone who has ever doubted that culture and arts can provide a tangible catalyst for regeneration needs to come to Hull.
Our fantastic Freedom festival not only reminds us that through the Civil War, through Wilberforce and through a long history of creative expression our home Hull is truly rooted in independence and freedom of thought and action… For a weekend in September, Freedom brings people together to share in the pride we feel as a great English European city and as a diverse and united community.
Freedom brings us together. We should treasure it.
Relive some of the highlights of this years festival with the short film we’ve produced for Freedom.
We hope you like it.
