The virtual edition of Festival International is now underway. Over the weekend you can enjoy a livestream of performances by more than 50 artists from more than a dozen countries.
“We can enjoy a festival in the backyard with our friends,” said Lindsay Smythe, who is planning an at-home festival celebration. “Sadly we’re not going to have all those international artists in person to see, but how else should we get to see all these international artists, than in our backyards?!”
Last year after the onset of the pandemic, festival organizers only had a few weeks to prepare for a virtual presentation.
“This year there’s a lot more experience,” said festival executive director Scott Feehan. “Lock creative people up for too long and they’re going to some creative things.”
Feehan says this year’s improved production quality is likely a function of the pandemic. The virtual festival features performances recorded across the globe, including from rooftops in Paris, and Canada. Performances were also recorded locally at venues like The Acadiana Center for the Arts.
“A lot of the footage we got is in high definition, shot from really nice cameras, edited down really nicely,” said Feehan. “So I think the quality overall is much better than what we got last year.”
Although there won’t be live performances to record as in previous years, AOC Community Media is also lending a hand by broadcasting the virtual show on television over the weekend.
“The festival has handled aggregating all of their content, and they're streaming to their facebook page, and then we’re capturing their stream as well and we’ll be running the festival on our channels,” said AOC executive director Ed Bowie.
You can watch this year’s festival live on Facebook and AOC (LUS channels 3 and 4 & Cox channels 15 and 16).
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