The Flyway Film Festival is a film festival held annually in Pepin, Wisconsin, in late October. Rick Vaicus is the founder of the festival.
Started in 2008, the Flyway Film Festival screens both short and feature-length films, dramatic, comedic and documentary. Screenings are held at the Lake Pepin Art & Design Gallery and the Widespot Performing Arts Center in the Historic Stockholm Opera Hall.
In 2012 the festival started to use the new technique of crowd-funding to raise the funds for the 2012 festival. The Festival hoped to raise $10,000 to cover the travel expenses of 120 film-makers and film experts. They reached their goal in September, 2012.
The opening 2008 Flyway Film Festival included notable films such as Speedy Delivery and Older Than America, an American Indian horror film that premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, produced by Christine Walker who also Line Produced American Splendor and whose recognitions include a Producer's Guild of America Diversity Award and the Sundance Producer's Institute Fellowship Award.
The 2009 Flyway Film Festival debuted the International Zombie Summit, a genre-specific event of classic and cutting-edge independent zombie films, including Dead Snow, Colin, and Redneck Zombies, while standard programing in 2009 includes the Dutch drama Storm (film), which was much praised at the Berlin International Film Festival, and Francesco Quinn in the short The Gnostic.
In 2013 the 50 films the festival screened included The Rocket, and A Field in England.
Brian Newman, entertainment industry consultant and former CEO of Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Institute, will delivered the 2009 keynote speech and moderate a special panel for attending filmmakers, artists, and other interested parties about exploring new distribution methods for film and other artistic media.
The 2014 Festival had a presence at the nearby Red Wing Fall Festival of the Arts. The Flyway booth allowed visitors to record a selfie, or video, with the two best being awarded a full pass for two to the Flyway Festival.