Elling Lien profile image Elling Lien

Flip through the very first Nickel festival program

Flip through the very first Nickel festival program

So we're celebrating 25 years of the Nickel this year, and what good is an anniversary if not for rummaging through boxes and looking at old stuff??

Starting off at the beginning here is a scan of the very first festival program from 2001 with a Post-It on it that says "ONLY COPY!!!"

For the first edition of a festival, the 2001 Nickel started with a real bang. Bingo Robbers, the new local feature film by Lois Brown and Barry Newhook was the main attraction, and there were so many others, including a fundraiser screening of Faustus Bidgood at the Mall, a screening of Gerry Rogers' groundbreaking film My Left Breast, and films from now legendary filmmakers Deanne Foley, Justin Simms, Sherry White, Brad Peyton, and Roger Maunder — founder of the festival.

But what I love in particular is the little bit of text in the upper right of the cover that proudly proclaims — with all of the confidence in the world — that this was going to be "THE 1ST ANNUAL."

And hey, don't you know they were right.

Click to download the PDF and check it out: