Photo Credit: Athens Rising

AthFest Educates Vice Chair (and Flagpole Publisher) Alicia Nickles.

The first full-length documentary in a planned series "that aims to celebrate the creative class in the Classic City," filmmaker James Preston's Athens Rising: The Sicyon Project chronicles Athens' multifaceted arts and music scenes, with an additional focus on dance, food, comedy, theater, festival culture and more. 

Over the past few months, we've premiered a few segments from the film. Today's clip focuses on the AthFest Music & Arts Festival and its parent organization, AthFest Educates, which also presents the AthHalf half marathon this weekend. (For more on AthHalf, check out this week's Flagpole.)

"I wanted to include the origin story of AthFest in the first Athens Rising film because I felt it was a great juxtaposition to the nontraditional/upstart/house shows that the film mostly focuses on," says Preston.

"I also found it inspirational in that AthFest started with a small group of people and not a lot of money, and now it's a huge economic engine for the city," he says. "I wanted to show that our arts and cultural events are not trivial, and that they have a powerful economic impact on our community with an example that's pretty hard to deny."

Check out the segment below: