A Mile of Music documentary is coming to TV screens around the state.
The one-hour film, comprised of footage recorded by PBS Wisconsin at last year’s festival, Mile 11, premieres 8 p.m. June 23 on television and online — but Fox Valley fans are invited to attend the movie’s premiere a week early.
Titled “Mile of Music,” the documentary will play on a big screen on June 16 at the Fox Cities Exhibition Center, 355 W. Lawrence St. in Appleton. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the film will start at 7 p.m., followed by a 30-minute Q&A with the film’s production crew and members of the Mile of Music team.
Attendance to the premiere is free. Moviegoers are encouraged to register through EventBrite.
Due to the high volume of content the documentary team filmed at the 2024 festival, a “streaming archive of performances” from more than 30 artists will be available online at at pbswisconsin.org/mileofmusic, according to a news release from PBS Wisconsin.
“We are honored that PBS Wisconsin is able to share the magic of Mile of Music through the upcoming Mile of Music broadcast program,” Mile of Music founder Dave Willems said in a statement. “We look forward to sharing our festival with a statewide audience, and beyond, through both the broadcast and online content.”
Willems said the Mile of Music team first welcomed PBS Wisconsin to the music festival in 2019 for early stages of documentary planning. After the pandemic hit, the production paused, then the PBS crew returned to scout locations at the 2023 festival and filmed in 2024.
Mile of Music, held annually at the beginning of August, has become a staple event in northeastern Wisconsin since its inception in 2013. The four-day festival is entirely free and made up of musicians performing 100% original music. It annually brings around 80,000 to 100,000 attendees to downtown Appleton, along a one-mile stretch of College Avenue.
According to PBS Wisconsin, the documentary explores the festival “through the eyes of performers including Christopher Gold, Illiterate Light, Abby Posner, Ben Mulwana, Tommy Prine and more.”
This year, the 12th-annual Mile of Music will take place July 31 to Aug. 3.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @ArseneauKelli.