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2001 Fargo Film Festival

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The 2001 Fargo Film Festival was held March 1 through 3 at the Fargo Theatre. Second Venues for the festival in 2001 included the Fargo Cinema Grill and the Plains Art Museum.

Contents

[edit] Awards and Award Winners

[edit] Festival Introduction

The following introduction was written by Fargo Theatre Executive Director Margie Bailly, and appeared in the program:

The Birth of a Film Festival... A Labor of Love
Following a gestation period of approximately 17 months, Fargo Film Festival committee members are prepared to deliver a bouncing baby film festival from the collective wombs of our minds.
It is the consensus of festival "parents" that the most identifiable moment of conception occurred at an organizational meeting held on stage at the historic Fargo Theatre in November of 1999. This gathering was held in conjunction with the regional premiere of North Dakotans Todd Bulman and Regge Bulman's award-winning film Dead Dogs. The enthusiastic response to the Dead Dogs screening proved to festival committee members that an audience existed in our area for the presentation of lesser-known independent films - especially films with regional ties.
In the months to follow, festival committee members completed parenting courses in the form of research and development on the care and feeding of film festivals. Hard work and divine intervention eventually illuminated for us the John Hanson, Rob Nilsson, David Schickele links to North Dakota via the Cannes-winning Northern Lights and the North Dakota documentary trilogy Rebel Earth, Prairie Fire, and Survivor, featuring North Dakota poet laureate and socialist party activist, Henry Martinson. This basic genetic material, combined with the world's fascination with all things Fargo and the inspired contributions from the late Ted Larson (Linda and That Ice Ticket), gave the festival parenting team the courage to send out pre-birth announcements in the form of festival press releases.
In the final weeks of gestation the festival baby has gained significant weight as the schedule has been fleshed out with numerous entries of considerable creativity and artistic integrity. As we hold and release our final collective Lamaze breath and push this baby onto the festival stage, we chant our parenting team mantra...
"It takes a community to raise a film festival and we're just the community to do it!"
My heartfelt thanks to the inedefatigable festival parenting team and a hearty welcome to honored guests, friends, and audience members of the 1st Annual Fargo Film Festival.

[edit] Festival Programming

[edit] Thursday, March 1

[edit] Afternoon Session

Documentary Short, 12 minutes, Fargo, North Dakota. Introduced by Festival Honoree and Film Producer Bill Snyder. A 12 minute ecology educational motion picture, Cry of the Marsh was the brainchild of Robert Hartkopf, a science teacher of Agassiz Junior High School in Fargo, North Dakota. Industrial film producer Bill Snyder liked the idea and offered to loan Bob the camera equipment, fund the production and share any profits. It was filmed in marsh lands near Hartkopf's family farm near Appleton, Minnesota. John McDonough, then of Bill Snyder Films, Inc., edited and scored the picture and guided neophyte Hartkopf in shooting the picture. Cry of the Marsh won Best of Show at the first film festival it entered, The Michigan Outdoor Writer's Competition. It won the Blue Ribbon in the American Film Festival's ecology category, the Silver Medal in the Berlin Agriculture Film Festival, and awards in national and international festivals.
Narrative Feature, 86 minutes. In 1974, Hanson returned to a North Dakota of abandoned farmsteads and desolate prairies. While researching the history of the area and his grandfather's personal struggle to survive the industrialization of agriculture during the early 20th century, Hanson learned about the Nonpartisan League.
Begun in 1915, the agricultural collective was the most successful agrarian movement in the country. Inspired, Hanson joined forces with Rob Nilsson and begun scripting a feature film detailing one small-time farmer's struggle to survive the "mechanical revolution." In 1978, Northern Lights was released with much anticipation.
Premiered in Crosby, North Dakota to an overwhelmingly receptive audience, the film went on to win several awards and accolades around the world, including the Neil Simon Award for screenplay and the Camera d'Or for Best First Feature at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.

[edit] Evening Session

Documentary Short, 25 minutes. Funded in part by the North Dakota Humanities Council, and edited by David Schickele and Jane Stubbs, with music by David Ozzie Ahlers, David Shickele, and Rob Nilsson, Rebel Earth is the chronicle of a prairie voyage. Henry Martinson, 97 years old, goes out with a young farmer, Jon Ness of Ambrose, North Dakota, to look for the sites of his past. They search for the exact spot of the Divide County homestead where Henry grew up in 1907. They try to find the old Socialist Party headquarters where Henry was secretary and newspaper editor 60 years ago in Minot, North Dakota. But looking for the past they encounter the present. Energetic, humorous, and game for anything, Henry explores the land and meets the people of North Dakota as he has done for almost a century.
Narrative Feature, 97 minutes. Editing assistance and original music by David Schickele. The tale of a photographer whose affair with a dancer is on the rocks. 1988 Sundance grand prize winner.

[edit] Friday, March 2

[edit] Morning Session at the Fargo Theatre

Narrative Short, 17 minutes. Wheels Locked is an emotional roller coaster ride that unfolds within the stuffy confines of a hospital waiting room. Garth, a man fighting pain and boredom slowly becomes drawn to a quadriplegic woman. By film's end Garth faces his urge to speak out against an abusive nurse and the injustices inflicted on the handicapped. He's left to ponder the haunting thought we've all encountered: If only I had done something.
Narrative Feature, 77 minutes. A quirky tale of two guys burying dead bodies in a pigpen, The Pig Farm revolves around the unlikely pairing of a backwoods zero from upstate New York and an entrepreneurial hitman from New York City. An outlandish tale of laziness and greed gone bad. Winner, Telluride Indiefest.
Narrative Short, 16 minutes. An emotionally repressed lounge pianist comes to terms with his grief in the form of an elderly shriner crying inconsolably in this darkly absurdist tale that is part Edward Hopper, part Samuel Beckett, and part Laurel and Hardy.
  • Stumbling (2000) directed by Michael William Johnson
Narrative Short, 10 minutes. A classic black and white film beautifully photgraphed in Minnesota, Stumbling is a convincing story about a rebellious nine-year-old who steals a fishing rod and gets caught.
Combination Animation and Live Action Narrative Short, 11 minutes. Street gangster little girl on the run. Upon her arrest she tells her story about crime, love and doing whatever it takes to be a bad ass.

[edit] Morning Session at the Fargo Cinema Grill

Narrative Short, 7 minutes, Fargo, North Dakota. Dare to Do draws you into the challenges faced by a sickly young man many years ago, demonstrating that nearly every adversity can be overcome if you take care of what is important. The success of its central character, Theodore Roosevelt, has been credited in great part to his time spent in North Dakota. The story of Dare to Do brings tears to your eyes while it motivates you to action. The weaving of fiction with actual accounts of the central character's life give a simple quote in a letter the power to turn lives around. Nominated for Best Director, International Monitor Awards, Washington, D.C., 1994.
Documentary Short, 11 minutes. A wildlife documentary on the rutting behavior of the American Bison in the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. The documentary, produced by Bismarck, North Dakota natives Nicola Renton and David Peterson, is the first project for the newly married couple. Received first place at the 23rd annual Wildlife Film Festival, amateur category.
Documentary Short, 7 minutes, Fargo, North Dakota. Your Skin, My Canvas is a gritty and graphic film that explores the artistic and creative aspects of body piercing and tattooing while contrasting them with people's attitudes and misconceptions of the two art forms.
Narrative Short, 6 minutes. In the near future, all mankind will be possessed... The mind of a human has landed in the processor of a worker android, causing the android to step out of its automated routine, trying to escape from its society. The android is caught and must face his punishment, a memory wipe. The human mind must try to figure out where he is and how he got there before an android surgeon resets the processor. And with the help of a female android, the human mind might succeed.
Narrative Short, 22 minutes. In this humorous adaptation of Anton Chekov's Three Sisters, three women move through their existential crisis, obsessing about Moscow. Video made from live performances at Sacred Fools Theatre, Los Angeles. Richard Alger is a Fargo native.
Narrative Short, 10 minutes. A Quick Fix is the true account of a young girl's stolen adolescence. Reeling from her father's sexual abuse, Paige runs away by the age of sixteen, fleeing her quaint Pennsylvania hometown for the neon solace of New York City. There she discovers that she needs to take better care of herself before she can be truly happy.
Narrative Short, 23 minutes. After a night of deep dreaming, Philip Montag awakes one morning to the discovery that his organs have been stolen. Not ignoring the blatant similarity to Gregor in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Montag becomes a prisoner of his own home, compromising situation and failing routine. Ultimately, all he wants is something to eat. Based on the short story The Transmogrification by Peter Gregg.
Panelists include John Hanson, Rob Nilsson, Bill Snyder and friends. Moderated by Merrill Piepkorn (North Dakota Public Radio) and Matt Olien (Prairie Public Television).

[edit] Afternoon Session at the Fargo Theatre

Documentary Short, 7 minutes. Serving up nutrition for both the body and soul, Hot Dog Church is an oasis in a tough world that brings hot dogs and hope to the poor and needy of Vancouver, British Columbia. Operated by Pastors Randy and Cheryl, the two have dedicated their lives to helping the unfortunate, giving them hope for a new life. Through their religious teachings and compassion, they have helped many of Vancouver's transients turn their lives around.
Narrative Feature, 140 minutes. The first collaboration by Nilsson's Tenderloin Action Group, a drama workshop for homeless people and inner city San Francisco residents. Chalk was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "summoning up the natural ensemble work of Cassavetes and the early rough edges of Scorsese... an atmospheric triumph." Improvised by the cast from Nilsson's bare-bones story, it is now in theatrical distribution around the country and recently streamed live over the Internet on iFilm. Directors present.

[edit] Afternoon Session at the Fargo Cinema Grill

  • Flat Tire (2000) directed by Steven Anthony Smith
Narrative Short, 23 minutes. Jim Red Dawn just got a flat tire on an isolated country road. He's got a tire jack, a short temper, and a gun. Less than friendly passersby turn Jim's ordinary situation into a deadly one.
Narrative Sjort, 17 minutes. The film dares to take on, in 17 minutes, Faust, the classic tale penned by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It's an updated version of the devil-buys-a-soul tale, filmed in South Dakota. "The Faust story seemed to sum up not only what had gone on in my life, but it had also explained a lot of nutty things in the outside world," says filmmaker John Hanson, "That's what drew me to it." Recently screened at Slamdance, 2001. Director present.
  • Baby Luv (1999) directed by Robert Martin Carroll
Narrative Feature, 104 minutes. Applying his usual sensitivity to a cast of unknowns, Carroll gives us the story of LeeAnn, a troubled teenager whose existence revolves in an around downtown Los Angeles, a world of desolate streets and run-down tenements a million miles from the sunny city most of us know. Pregnant, against the wishes of her artist boyfriend, LeeAnn agrees to sell her child to a middle-aged couple - only to discover the couple has a secret even more troubling than her own. Feature Film Winner, Telluride Indiefest 2K. Best Picture Winner, The Deep Ellum Film Festival. Best Drama, New York Independent Film and Video Festival, 2000.

[edit] Evening Session at the Fargo Theatre

  • Stroke (2000) directed by Rob Nilsson.
Narrative Feature, 97 minutes.
Narrative Feature, 89 minutes.

[edit] Saturday, March 3

[edit] Morning Session at the Plains Art Museum

[edit] Morning Session at the Fargo Theatre

  • A program of vintage cartoons from the collection of Ted Larson and Rusty Casselton, served with Sandy's Doughnuts (a Ted Larson tradition)
  • Saddle Sore (1996) directed by Steven Sohlstrom
  • The Lift (2000) directed by Jason Allen
  • Grandfather's Birthday (1999) directed by Gayle Knutson
  • Panel Discussion at the Radisson: North Dakota and Minnesota Filmmakers and Filmmaking Present and Future
Panelists include Ken Promersberger and Bill Marcil, Jr. (Wooly Boys), Gayle Knutson (Grandfather's Birthday), Jason Allen (The Lift), Kirk Roos (Van Hook), Randy Adamsick (Minnesota Film Board), Pat Hertz (North Dakota Film Commission), Allen Stenehejm (North Dakota Tourism). Moderated by Doug Hamilton.

[edit] Afternoon Session at the Fargo Theatre

[edit] Evening Session at the Plains Art Museum

  • A reception honoring the life and work of Ted Larson
Master of Ceremonies, Doug Hamilton, Director of Alumni Relations, Alumni Foundation Minnesota State University Moorhead and longtime friend and colleague of Ted Larson

[edit] Evening Session at the Fargo Theatre

The presentation of the film is a beautiful restoration with compelling, and certainly provocative for the time, themes of domestic violence. Restored by Ted Larson and Rusty Casselton.
Audience members are invited to share in a toast to Ted Larson and to future film festivals in this historic facility. Sponsored by the Fargo Theatre Board of Directors, with champagne provided by Happy Harry's Bottle Shop and Kathy Gershman.

[edit] Additional Program Notes

[edit] Honored Guests

  • John Hanson
John Hanson heads his own company, Northern Pictures, Inc., and independent film/video production company in Bayfield, Wisconsin. He has produced and directed feature films, numerous documentaries, and most recently the public television special A Sense of Place, a half hour portrait of three Midwestern writers. Other documentaries include Sisters, a portrait of the unique community of Benedictine nuns in Duluth, and On This Farm, a revealing look at the impact of large scale hog factory farms in Missouri.
A North Dakota native, he co-directed and co-wrote (with Rob Nilsson), Northern Lights, a film about North Dakota farmers in 1915; it won the Prix de la Camera d'Or for Best First Feature at the Cannes International Film Festival. He also received the Neil Simon Award from his Alma Mater, Carleton College.
His other feature film credits include Heat and Sunlight and Waiting for the Moon, both grand prize winners at the Sundance Film Festival. Another film, Wildrose, was selected for a number of international film festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, and Venice, where it was runner-up for the Critic Prize. Shimmer, his most recent movie, featuring actress Mary Beth Hurt, won the Crystal Heart Award and was broadcast nationally on the 1995 season of American Playhouse.
His next project is the film adaptation of the classic novel by O.E. Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth. He's scheduled to begin shooting this summer on location in Canada and Norway.
  • Rob Nilsson
Rob Nilsson, a San Francisco-based director, won the Prix de la Camera d'Or (with John Hanson) at Cannes for Northern Lights and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for Heat and Sunlight. He is the first American film director to have won both awards.
Nilsson is a pioneer in the techniques of video to film transfer which led to today's digital revolution. In 1985, Signal 7 was the first small format video feature to be blown up to film and distributed around the world.
Chalk, his first feature with the Tenderloin Action Group, now the Tenderloin Ygroup, an acting workshop for homeless and inner city San Franciscans, is now in theatrical distribution around the country and recently streamed live over the Internet on ifilm.net.
His 9 @ Night feature film package featuring actors from the Ygroup currently has three feature films in post-production. The production of his latest work, Scheme, is being featured on ifilm.net where rehearsals and workshop sessions are posted weekly. Nilsson has a regular editorial column on both ifilm.net and Res magazine.
Nilsson recently directed A Town Has Turned to Dust, a feature film for television, from a script by Rod Serling, and has just completed a screenplay for Minneapolis producer John Stout and director Dean Hyers.
Nilsson is the creator of Direct Action Cinema (DAC), a system designed to allow actors and technicians high freedom and deep responsibility to create memorable cinema. Nilsson describes this as "a dynamic jazz ensemble of actors, camera, sound, directors and editors which creates and interprets together, seeking the unexpected, the extraordinary, the miracles only a well-prepared combo can play..."

[edit] In Memoriam

  • David Schickele (1937-1999)
David Schickele was a well-known Bay-Area filmmaker, violinist, and compsoser. He is best known for Bushman, a feature-length film about an African student in America who struggles to resolve tribal, personal and racial frictions. The film won numerous festival awards, including Best First Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival, and was collected by the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California Berkeley and the Museum of Modern Art in New York for their archives.
As a film editor, his work includes Crazy Quilt and Funnyman, directed by John Korty; Over-Under, Sideways-Down for Gene Carr and Steve Wax; and Chalk for Rob Nilsson, with whom he wrote a screenplay for MGM, The Peeled Man.
His most recent film, Tuscarora (1992), is an independent documentary about a ceramic artist whose tiny Nevada town is threatened by an open-pit gold mine. He wrote, directed, and edited more than 30 films for corporate clients ranging from documentaries to tightly-scripted sound-stage productions.
David was a classically trained musician and was skilled at all phases of film music. Born March 20, 1937 in Ames, Iowa, he grew up in Washington D.C. and in Fargo, North Dakota (1947-1958) where he studied violin and viola. At the age of 15 he conducted the Fargo-Moorhead Community Orchestra. After he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1958, he was a scholarship chamber music student at the Academia Chigiana in Sienna, Italy. He remained a lifelong chamber music enthusiast, performing professionally and privately.
He was awarded grants through the American Film Institute, Guggenheim Fellowship, Nevada State Arts Council and the Sierra Arts Foundation.
He died October 31, 1999 in his San Francisco home after a four year battle with cancer. His gifts of film, music, poetry and prose, his passion for life and art, and his deep devotion to family and friends touched and inspired all who knew him.
  • Ted Larson (1940-2000)
Ted Larson is best known for his presentations of classic film, seminars, and movie series events at colleges, theatres, and arts centers throughout the region. He was named Distinguished Alumni of Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1998 for contributions to students and film studies.
A Glyndon, Minnesota native, Larson graduated from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1962 with Speech Commmunication/Theatre and English degrees and taught at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in Fargo for six years. He then joined the speech and theatre arts faculty at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he taught for 32 years. He directed Minnesota State University Moorhead's International Film Festival and Summer Cinema film series for more than 20 years. He also held a master's degree in speech and drama from the University of Kansas.
A long time member of the Fargo Theatre's board of directors, he was one of the initiators and co-producers of its Silent Movie Night, which began in 1974. He also collaborated with symphonies in Butte and Billings, Montana as a guest scholar. Most recently, and up until his death, Ted was extensively involved in planning the first ever Fargo Film Festival.
Through his work in locating, restoring and reconstructing lost and rare films, Ted and his longtime collaborator and friend, Rusty Casselton, have made donations of valuable motion pictures to the Library of Congress, the George Eastman House, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and the Museum of Modern Art. Until his death he also administered the Colleen Moore Film Grant program at Minnesota State University Moorhead, which funds projects for student filmmakers. He and Rusty have also provided Kevin Brownlow, British film documentarian, with rare film footage for his television productions Universal Horror and Lon Chaney.
Among his many achievements, Larson has helped a number of talented young filmmakers develop careers. His former students have worked with the likes of Steven Spielberg, David Letterman, and George Lucas.
Ted was a unique presence who impacted constituencies, institutions, and audiences throughout the United States. We are deeply saddened by his death and acutely aware that Ted Larson is indeed irreplaceable.

[edit] Notes on Leonard Maltin as the Recipient of the Ted M. Larson Award

The very first Ted M. Larson Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Film Industry was bestowed on Leonard Maltin. The following notes appeared in the festival program: Often called upon for his expert knowledge and views, Leonard Maltin is a frequent contributor to numerous news organizations commenting on film history, pop culture, and cinematic happenings. Recently, he was a consultant for the highly-rated special AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars, and was seen in the CNN series Voices of the Millennium. Recognized for connecting with the MTV audience, he was a featured guest on MTV Movie Awards Uncensored, a one-hour special, and on its sister channel, VH1's The List. He is now in his 19th season as film historian and correspondent for the #1 news magazine in syndication, Entertainment Tonight, produced by Paramount Domestic Television. Previous to this he held a faculty position from 1973 to 1981 at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

A native of New York City, Maltin graduated from New York University. He has penned a number of cinema-rleated books and articles, including his most recent work, Leonard Maltin's Family Film Guide. Meanwhile, his annual bestselling paperback Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide is considered a standard film reference around the world. Maltin's other titles include The Great American Broadcast, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang (as co-author), The Great Movie Comedians, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, and Selected Short Subjects. He has written articles that have appeared in the New York Times, TV Guide, Esquire, Premiere, Smithsonian, and Film Comment. Currently, Maltin is movie critic and columnist for Playboy magazine, and a regular contributor to Disney magazine.

Maltin also hosts the daily radio feature Leonard Maltin's Video View, broadcast on more than 100 stations in the United States and Canada. As a member of the National Film Preservation Board, Maltin votes on the 25 films named each year to join the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Previously, he also has served as a panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts.

Maltin met Ted Larson in 1970 and over the decades they have remained friends until Ted's recent death.

Among his honors, Maltin received the 1997 Press Award from the Publicists Guild, the 1996 Video Software Dealers Association special award for his contribution to home video, the 1993 Anthology Film Archives of America Preservation Award and the 1993 Laser Beam Award for the Laser Disc Association of America. He was also named 1973's Man of the Year by the Society for Cinephiles.

Maltin, who lives in the San Fernando Valley with his wife and daughter, also teaches at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television.

[edit] Notes on Bill Snyder

The following notes appeared in the festival program in tribute to Bill Snyder: Film producer Bill Snyder started Bill Snyder Films in 1964 when he came home from duty as a Signal Corps officer in World War II and bought a professional movie camera. A year later he went to Africa where he filmed for three different expeditions. He then becase the very first film and photo director for WDAY Television in Fargo. After six years in television he opened Bill Snyder Films again, and with artist Norm Selberg as the art and animation director, and John McDonough as the film editor and music genius, he produced more than 800 audio visual and television projects ranging in length from a string of ten second TV spots to one hour documentaries.

For a number of years, Bill Snyder Films, also called Snyder Films, was the only full service industrial movie maker in the area with full cell animation, multi-track sound mixing and sound stage facilities. Nationally recognized, it won more than 60 national and international awards.

Clients ranged from the makers of Melroe-Bobcat skid-steer loaders and Steiger Tractors in North Dakota, to the vast Farm Credit System in Washington, D.C. For three years beginning in 1956, Bill Snyder personally covered many news stories about kids in the three state area for Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Newsreel. Snyder retired in 1983 when he sold the company.

[edit] External Links

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