FILM FESTIVAL NEWS: The 2018 Tallgrass International Film Festival Announces Film Lineup with an emphasis on the Indie Documentary
The 16th Annual Tallgrass International Film Festival presented by Consolidated Equities Trust (October 17-21) today announced the feature film lineup for this year’s edition with a full roster of Gala selections including; Dava Whisenant’s BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY (Opening Night Gala), John Alexander’s THIS IS LOVE (Centerpiece Gala), and Theo Love’s WHITE TIDE: THE LEGEND OF CULEBRA (Closing Night Gala). Those films are joined by Sahra Mani’s A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME, which is Tallgrass’s DOXX Spotlight winner, and Sara Radle’s ELEVEN HUNDRED TO LUBBOCK, which is this year’s Stubbornly Independent Gala Selection.
Director of Programming, Nick Pope said, “Documentaries led the pack in many ways as we made our official selections for Tallgrass this year, and while documentaries are not routinely thought of as “funny” or great sources for comedy, our Opening and Closing Night selections will both offer up exceptions to that rule. Add to that a Centerpiece choice that profiles one of Wichita’s favorite sons, and the two winners from our Stubbornly Independent and DOXX Spotlight competitions, and we have another wonderful slate of Gala presentations for everyone to enjoy this year.”
The Opening Night Gala will feature Whisenant’s festival favorite BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY on Wednesday, October 17. The film follows a writer’s experiences, both funny and unexpected, behind the scenes at a Late Night comedy show. The documentary includes appearances by a host of entertaining personalities, including David Letterman, Martin Short, Chita Rivera, Jello Biafra, and more. Director Dava Whisenant and Subject Steve Young are both scheduled to attend and participate in a Q&A. The film will be preceded by Celia Galan’s WE NEED IT YESTERDAY. The Gala will continue with an after party at Candela at The Lux (120 E. First Street) with music by DJ Carbon.
Alexander’s THIS IS LOVE will make its U.S. Premiere as the Centerpiece Gala selection on Saturday, October 20 at Scottish Rite Theatre (332 E 1st St N.). The documentary profiles Wichita musician Rudy Love and his successful career alongside legends like Little Richard and Ray Charles, Rudy Love’s experience in the music industry over the decades encapsulates an all-too-familiar struggle for African American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Alexander and Producer JC Guest are both scheduled to attend. The film’s presentation will be preceded by a screening of Shaka King’s LAZERCISM.
The Closing Night Gala Presented by Butler Community College features Theo Love’s WHITE TIDE: THE LEGEND OF CULEBRA. Lysa Heslov’s documentary SERVED LIKE A GIRL on Sunday, October 21 at the Wichita Orpheum Theater. The film follows the adventure that ensues when a desperate Florida resident goes on a treasure hunt for $2 million worth of cocaine, buried somewhere in the shores of the Caribbean. Love and Producer Bryan Storkel will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A, followed by an after party at the Wichita Art Museum (1400 Museum Blvd.) with live music by Stranded in the City.
This year’s DOXX Spotlight screening, showcasing the incredible real life stories being told by women documentary filmmakers will be Mani’s A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME. The documentary focuses on Khatera a 23-year-old Afghan woman who confronts the will of her family and the traditions of her country to seek justice for years of sexual abuse from her father. In doing so, she brings to light the faulty Afghan judicial system and the women it rarely protects. Sponsored by Bungalow 26 and Gretman Group, the film will screen Thursday, October 18 at the Scottish Rite Theatre.
The winner of the Jake Euker Stubbornly Independent competition, presented by Rick & Monica Hutt is Radle’s ELEVEN HUNDRED TO LUBBOCK. The film will screen on Saturday, October 20 at the Scottish Rite Theater. The film follows a group of unlikely friends, as they pay tribute to their recently deceased loved one by relay-running his ashes across the country. Radle is scheduled to attend the screening, which will be preceded by Peter Espinosa & Brayden Frazier’s DTTW Film Race Winner, THE SMILE AND THE LIGHT BLUE EYES.
VIP TALLPasses for the Tallgrass Film Festival are available for purchase now. Please visit tallgrassfilmfest.com for more information.
THE 2018 TALLGRASS FILM FESTIVAL OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
OPENING NIGHT GALA SELECTION
(Presented by Steve Anderson)
BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY
Director: Dava Whisenant
Country: USA, Running Time: 88 min
A Late Night comedy writer stumbles on a hilarious, hidden world of entertainment and finds an unexpected connection to his fellow man. With David Letterman, Martin Short, Chita Rivera, Jello Biafra, and more.
Preceded by:
WE NEED IT YESTERDAY
Director: Celia Galan
Country: Spain, Running Time: 7 min
CLOSING NIGHT GALA SELECTION
(Presented by Butler Community College)
WHITE TIDE: THE LEGEND OF CULEBRA
Director: Theo Love
Country: USA, Running Time: 83 min
After his livelihood is upended by the 2008 financial crisis, a desperate Florida resident goes on a treasure hunt for $2 million worth of cocaine, buried somewhere in the shores of the Caribbean. A fast, wild and comedic documentary like you’ve never seen.
CENTERPIECE GALA SELECTION
THIS IS LOVE US PREMIERE
Director: John Alexander
Country: USA, Running Time: 81 min
Despite finding success alongside legends like Little Richard and Ray Charles, Rudy Love’s experience in the music industry over the decades encapsulates an all-too-familiar struggle for African American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Lauded by musicians worldwide, this biography lovingly celebrates the Wichitans life and music.
Preceded by:
LAZERCISM
Director: Shaka King
Country: USA, Running Time: 6 min
JAKE EUKER STUBBORNLY INDEPENDENT GALA SELECTION
(Presented by Rick & Monica Nutt)
ELEVEN HUNDRED TO LUBBOCK
Director: Sara Radle
Country: USA, Running Time: 99 min
A group of unlikely friends pay tribute to their recently deceased loved one by relay-running his ashes across the country.
Preceded by:
THE SMILE AND THE LIGHT BLUE EYES (DTTW Film Race Winner)
Director: Peter Espinosa & Brayden Frazier
Running Time: 5 min
DOXX SPOTLIGHT SELECTION
(Presented by Greteman Group)
A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME
Director: Sahra Mani
Countries: France/Afghanistan, Running Time: 81 min
When a 23-year-old Afghan woman, Khatera, confronts the will of her family and the traditions of her country to seek justice for years of sexual abuse from her father, she sheds light on the faulty Afghan judicial system and the women it rarely protects.
THE ARK OF LIGHT & SHADOWS
Director: Jan Svatoš
Country: Czech Republic, Running Time: 90 min
The forgotten story of Martin and Osa Johnson, rebel filmmakers and Kansas natives who made some of the first films in Africa in times when filming itself was more dangerous than lions or malaria.
BEHIND THE CURVE
Director: Daniel J. Clark
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
A documentary film about people who think the earth is flat… Yes, really.
* Director Daniel Clark and Producer Caroline Clark scheduled to attend.
BEI BEI
Directors: Marion Lipschutz & Rose Rosenblatt
Country: USA, Running Time: 76 min
A legal and political drama with two extraordinary women at its center: one, a Chinese immigrant charged with first degree murder and the other, a successful white collar lawyer who unwittingly finds herself defending a woman against legally unprecedented charges.
BIKINI MOON
Directors: Milcho Manchevski
Country: USA, Running Time: 103 min
A charismatic but mentally unstable vet captures the attention of a documentary film crew who are ready to exploit her story for their own shot at independent movie fame.
Preceded by:
CADENCE
Director: Branwyn Elizabeth Driscoll
Country: USA, Running Time: 5 min
BISBEE ‘17
Directors: Robert Greene
Country: USA, Running Time: 112 min
An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago.
BITTER MELON
Director: H.P. Mendoza
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
When a Filipino-American family reunites for a Christmas party, the holiday takes a dark turn when they conspire to murder the abusive bully of the family. Sponsored by Moeder & Associates
* Writer/Director H.P. Mendoza scheduled to attend
COFFY
Director: Jack Hill
Country: USA, Running Time: 91 min
A nurse takes vigilante justice against inner-city drug dealers after her sister becomes their latest victim. Introduction by 2018 Ad Astra recipient and cinema icon Pam Grier will be in attendance.
Preceded by:
HAIR WOLF
Director: Mariama Diallo
Running Time: 13m
CRIME + PUNISHMENT
Director: Stephen Maing
Country: USA, Running Time: 115 min
A group of brave officers risk it all to expose the truth about illegal quota practices in police departments.
DARK CITY
Director: Alex Proyas
Country: USA, Running Time: 111 min
20th Anniversary Director’s Cut. A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun.
DAUGHTERS OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE DALLAS COWBOYS CHEERLEADERS
Director: Dana Adam Shapiro
Country: USA, Running Time: 78 min
The never-before-told story of Suzanne Mitchell, the fiercely-loyal den mother of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
* Director Dana Adam Shapiro scheduled to attend.
DOUBTING THOMAS
Director: Will McFadden
Country: USA, Running Time: 80 min
After a white couple inexplicably gives birth to a black child, the purest bonds of trust, friendship, and love are put to the ultimate test.
* Co-Writer/Director Will McFadden scheduled to attend.
FAR FROM THE TREE
Director: Rachel Dretzin
Country: USA, Running Time: 93 min
Far From the Tree follows families meeting extraordinary challenges through love, empathy, and understanding. This life-affirming documentary encourages us to cherish loved ones for all they are, not who they might have been. Sponsored by Bungalow 26 and Moeder & Associates
* Co-Director/Producer Jamila Ephron scheduled to attend.
JACKIE BROWN
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Country: USA, Running Time: 154 min
A middle-aged woman finds herself in the middle of a huge conflict that will either make her a profit or cost her life. Preceded by 2018 Ad Astra Award presentation and conversation with recipient, star and cinema icon Pam Grier – moderated by filmmaker and KU film professor Kevin Willmott
THE LAST SUIT
Director: Pablo Solarz
Country: Argentina/Spain, Running Time: 91 min
Abraham Bursztein, an 88 year-old Jewish tailor, runs away from Buenos Aires to Poland, where he proposes to find a friend who saved him from certain death at the end of World War II. After seven decades without any contact with him, Abraham will try to find his old friend and keep his promise to return one day.
Preceded by:
FAITH
Director: Tatiana Fedorovskaya
Country: Russia, Running Time 16 min
LETTER FROM MASANJIA
Director: Leon Lee
Country: Canada/China, Running Time: 75 min
A desperate SOS letter penned by a political prisoner turns up in Halloween decorations sold in Oregon, which sparks a nail-biting chain of events that exposes appalling human rights violations.
* Director Leon Lee scheduled to attend.
LIGHT IN THE WATER US PREMIERE
Director: Lis Bartlett
Country: USA, Running Time: 75 min
The story of West Hollywood Aquatics, the first openly gay swim team and water polo club.
* Director Lis Bartlett scheduled to attend.
MR. FISH: CARTOONING FROM THE DEEP END
Director: Pablo Bryant
Country: USA, Running Time: 71 min
A feature documentary about the incomparable cartoonist, and multi-talented dissident known as Mr. Fish.
* Director Pablo Bryant scheduled to attend.
Preceded by:
ARTIST IN THEIR SPACE
Director: Bobby Obermite
Country: USA, Running Time: 8 min
THE MAESTRO
Director: Adam Cushman
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
After the Second World War, budding film composer Jerry Herst moves to Hollywood to study with infamous master teacher Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
* Director Adam Cushman and Producer/Actor David J. Phillips scheduled to attend.
MARLINA THE MURDERER IN FOUR ACTS
Director: Mouly Surya
Country: Indonesia/France/Malaysia/Thailand, Running Time: 94 min
Marlina lives quietly in Sumba until one day a man named Markus and his gang try to rob her house and she kills him. Eventually, she is haunted by Markus, and her life turns in 180 degrees.
Preceded by:
DON’T BE A HERO
Director Pete Lee
Country: USA, Running Time 15 min
MEOW WOLF: ORIGIN STORY
Director: Morgan Capps & Jilann Spitzmiller
Country: USA, Running Time: 90 min
A disenfranchised group of artists, punks, and weirdos create a subversive DIY collective to disrupt the art establishment in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which in the face of internal turmoil evolves into a cultural phenomenon on the path to becoming a global creative empire.
Preceded by:
WASTE OF FILM – KC LOVES TRAVIS YOUNG
Director: Jason Dubois
Country: USA, Running Time: 9 min
NO DATE, NO SIGNATURE
Director: Vahid Jalilvand
Country: Iran, Running Time: 104 min
Kaveh Nariman is a coroner in the medical examiner’s office. One day at his work he meets a corpse which is very familiar to him. Sponsored by Ulrich Museum of Art.
Preceded by:
THE ANGEL OF HULL
Director: Elizabeth Healey & James Card
Country: United Kingdom, Running Time: 7 min
PATRIMONIO
Director: Lisa F. Jackson & Sarah Teale
Country: USA/Mexico, Running Time: 83 min
As unrestricted development threatens water sources in Baja California, local peoples are beginning to push back against global business.
Preceded by:
MURDER ON THE REEF
Director: Allen Dobrovolsky
Country: Australia/Germany, Running Time 30 min
PIG
Director: Mani Haghighi
Country: Iran, Running Time: 107 min
Iranian directors are getting slaughtered by an unknown serial killer and a blacklisted director, Hasan Kasmai, is curious about only one thing: Why isn’t the killer after him?
RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE
Directors: Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler, & Jeff Springer
Country: USA, Running Time: 71 min
An offbeat environmental documentary about the monstrous swamp rats (nutria) at the edge of the world.
* Co-Directors Chris Metzler & Quinn Costello scheduled to attend
Preceded by:
LIONS OF WEST TEXAS
Director: Ben Masters
Country: Australia/Germany, Running Time: 10 min
ROLL RED ROLL
Director: Nancy Schwartzman
Country: USA, Running Time: 80 min
When social media, “boys will be boys”, and vigilante justice collide… one small town will never be the same.
* Director Nancy Schwartzman scheduled to attend.
SADIE
Director: Megan Griffiths
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
While her father is away serving in the military, Sadie battles to preserve his place on the home front when her mother takes an interest in the newest resident at the Shady Plains Trailer Park. Sponsored by Bungalow 26
A SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO LIVING AND DYING
Director: Nitzan Mager & Shachar Langlev
Country: USA, Running Time: 77 min
Obsessed with finding answers in her groundbreaking genetic research, a young scientist is thrown into free-fall when she becomes pregnant with her dead husband’s child and is suddenly confronted by the unknowable — absorbed into a realm of mystical female consciousness both terrifying and transcendent.
* Co-Directors Nitzan Mager & Shahar Langlev scheduled to attend.
SHOPLIFTERS
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Country: Japan, Running Time: 121 min
A misfit family of pretty thieves take in an abandoned child. 2018 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’or winner. Japanese with English Subtitles.
TAXI TEHRAN
Director: Jafar Panahi
Country: Iran, Running Time: 82 min
After being blacklisted by the Iranian government, acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi poses as a taxi driver to have spirited conversations with Tehran citizens about life, art and the social challenges facing Iran.
Preceded by:
DIFFERENCE
Director: Ali Asadollahi
Country: Iran, Running Time: 15 min
A TUBA TO CUBA
Director: T.G Herrington & Danny Clinch
Country: USA, Running Time: 82 min
A Tuba to Cuba follows New Orleans’ famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band as they retrace their musical roots from the storied city of jazz to the shores of Cuba and in turn discover a connection that runs much deeper than could have been imagined.
Preceded by:
ROOM TONE
Director: Morgan Cooper
Country: USA, Running time 15 min
WHEN JEFF TRIED TO SAVE THE WORLD
Director: Kendall Goldberg
Country: USA, Running Time: 92 min
When Jeff, the manager of an old-school bowling alley, discovers the owner’s plans to sell, saving Winky’s World means pulling himself out of the gutter, too.
* Director/Co-Writer Kendall Goldberg and Actor Jim O’Heir scheduled to attend
