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Thursday,
October 14th |
The
Heights |
Friday,
October 15th |
St. Anthony Main 3 St. Anthony Main 4 |
Saturday,
October 16th |
St.
Anthony Main 3 St. Anthony Main 4 The Heights |
Sunday,
October 17th |
St.
Anthony Main 1 St. Anthony
Main 4 St. Anthony
Main 5 The Heights |
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WELLSTONE! Central Standard's Opening Night Film Filmmakers Present to Introduce Film Followed by the Opening Night Party The Central Standard Film Festival is honored and proud to premiere the long-awaited documentary from Dan Luke, Laurie Stern and Lu Lippold: Wellstone!. Whether you supported their politics or not, everyone agrees Paul and Sheila Wellstone were one in a million. Scrappy, populist, ambitious, impatient, tenacious, fair, and most of all hopeful, Paul and Sheila Wellstone believed in standing up for what was right, and fighting to help people achieve the American dream. From Virginia and high school wrestling days, to marrying sweetheart Sheila, Wellstone! movingly lays out the details of a relationship that led Paul to Carleton College and public service. With interviews from the critical players, Wellstone! shows the ads, the debates and the clips of Paul's first David vs. Goliath Senate race and his constant appeal to conscience as he served in the Congress. But whatever Paul was doing, two things were unchanging: Sheila was by his side, and Paul was speaking his mind. The lives Paul and Sheila Wellstone lived will make your heart soar, and ache. Paul always said anyone could stand up and fight for people the way he did. But when he died, maybe the saddest thing of all, was that everyone knew that wasn't quite true. Directors: Lu Lippold, Dan Luke, Laurie Stern (You MUST have
an All Access Pass to attend this film
and admittance will be limited to those with reservations. To place
your name on the guest list you must RSVP with Ticketworks prior
to the screening. Reservations will be taken on a first-come, first
served basis, and once the list is full no more names will be added). |
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LAST GOODBYE Central Standard's Closing Night Film Filmmaker Present to Introduce Film Followed by the Closing Night Party On a hot day in Atlanta - capital of the South,
home to CNN, Coca Cola and the world's busiest airport - a half-dozen
lives are about to come together, and come apart. Roland is a drifter
and a nobody; Agnes an actress on a hit TV show called "Southern Gothic";
Peter sings lead vocals in a band named Altruistic - and Jen is a runaway
with a wayward heart. But despite money and cell phones, drugs and
radio-play, sex and TV talk show appearances, no one in this non-linear
mosaic of modern-American life is able to emotionally connect with
anyone else. As each character recklessly struggles to find meaning
in life, a delusional bible salesman (David Carradine) and a raving
film director (Faye Dunaway) may be modern-day prophets, offering clarity
in an increasingly confused world. Filmmaker Jacob Gentry sketched
Last Goodbye from life in Atlanta, where he helped found POPfilms:
a film collective devoted to fostering the community of local Atlanta
actors, directors and musicians. With Last Goodbye, Gentry manifests
the ingenious - or Machiavellian - spirit of low-budget filmmaking
by casting - for the first time ever - exclusively the sons and daughters
of Hollywood stars in all the major roles! Fresh from a screening at
the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Last Goodbye is an incredibly
emotional, cutting edge film about the collective inner and outer life
of America at this moment. Director: Jacob Gentry |
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Everybody in Seattle knows who Richard Peterson is. He's an autistic savant street musician ("No Canadian Coins Please") who has put out four albums named Richard Peterson's First Album, Richard Peterson's Second Album, etc. On each album Richard plays piano and trumpet in a unique lounge style that homages his burning obsession: 60's television theme songs like the theme to Sea Hunt. He has other obsessions too. Celebrities. Each time Richard meets a specific celebrity (mostly local Seattle Djs) he adds a storey to their skyscraper in an illustrated city he is forever drawing and updating. His architectural drawings are beautiful, and his songs have inspired many of the major bands from Seattle, like Pearl Jam and the Stone Temple Pilots. And then there's Richard's obsession with Johnny Mathis - Richard even wrote Mathis a song, "Love on the Golf Course." From hundreds of hours of footage - including original interviews with Jeff Bridges (Son of the star of Sea Hunt) and Johnny Mathis - Seattle filmmakers Todd Pottinger, Scott Milam and Ken Harder have fashioned the story of a legendary character with a disturbing childhood and an all-American dream: to get off the streets and become a star! Big City Dick won the Audience Award at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival. Directors: Scott Milam, Ken Harder, Todd Pottinger |
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THE GRAFFITI ARTIST Filmmaker Present to Introduce Film Floating on a skateboard through the wet streets of Seattle and Portland in the small hours of the night, Nick is like a prophet who denies the existence of the world. A high-school aged graffiti artist with no family or friends, Nick steals what he needs, sleeps where he becomes tired and wanders the city at night with no other idea than perfecting his tag, "Rupture." So when Nick meets another tagger and they start up a friendship, his hopes and desires are like the art he has left on back street buildings, abandoned railroad cars and lonely walls: beautiful, but hidden. Working at the top of their professions, writer-director James Bolton and cinematographer Sarah Levy found their equal on the other side of the camera in the sensitive, storytelling eyes of newcomer Ruben Bansie-Snellman. Highly reminiscent of the classic Le Samourai, The Graffiti Artist evokes the city - and its nocturnal protagonist's place in it - with such hypnotic, Chandleresque grace that story and dialogue seem effortlessly to spring from setting. Simply put, The Graffiti Artist is cinema: a perfect fantasy world of people, pictures, movement, romance, possibility. Director: James Bolton |
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MILES AHEAD Filmmaker Present to Introduce Film Miles Ahead is an entrancing portrait of Miles Williams' last summer before college. Miles (Ben Allison, recently seen in Cold Mountain) and his father are alone - his mother has long since died - and Miles longs to meaningfully arrange his feelings by becoming a writer. He likes the Beat writers, but different from them, he can never seem to get on the road and cross the mountains that surround his home town. Imaginatively shot on widescreen 35 mm film in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina by cinematographer Kenneth Wilson II (2nd Unit on George Washington and All The Real Girls), filmmakers Dylan Trivette and Matt Zboyovski push the boundaries of the cinematic medium to erase the line between inner and outer landscapes. As Miles moves forward into his young life, viewers sense his emotional movement in the things he sees and hears: mountainous summer clouds, the bleats of a Miles Davis song, prismatic autumn leaves, a beguiling river of flying birds. Like a memory warped and improved by time, Miles Ahead transcends traditional filmmaking - connecting pace, place and tone - to become a thing of rare, perfected beauty. Director: Dylan Trivette, Matt Zboyovski |
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MOJADOS - THROUGH THE NIGHT Filmmaker Present to Introduce Film Originally shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival, Mojados - Through the Night takes us on a ten-day journey with four men as they attempt to illegally immigrate from their native village of Michoacan, Mexico to Austin, Texas. For millions of Mexicans, fulfilling the "American" dream means spending years away from home, evading the law, working for illegally low wages, and undertaking the dangerous odyssey depicted in Mojados. Leaving crying wives and children behind, "Bear," "Tiger," "Handsome," and "Old Man" will travel by bus, van, taxi and raft to the American banks of the Rio Grande. From there, it is almost two hundred miles across the unforgiving Texas desert to the appointed safe house. If they don't become lost, the men can expect at least four days of dehydration, barbed wire, thunderstorms, sub-zero temperatures, rattlesnakes, and the US Border Patrol before reaching the next stage of their journey. To get an authentic portrait of this infamous trip, filmmaker Tommy Davis worked without a crew, carrying his own camera equipment, food, and water - and suffering the same privations as the men he was filming. In the end, the men become desperate, and we learn firsthand why so many of illegal immigrants die every year trying to find work in the U.S.A. Director: Tommy Davis |
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THE NAKED
PROOF Filmmaker Present to Introduce Film Think screwball comedy meets Cartesian philosophy. Henry Rawitchser is an erudite 34 year-old philosophy student at the University of Washington. For almost a decade he's been writing a vast and complex dissertation literally about the meaning of life, specifically, how do we know we exist without use of the five senses. Frustrated, burnt out and not infrequently drunk or hung over, Henry spends a lot of time asking waitresses and friends to somehow prove to him that they exist. So it isn't surprising when a fantastical pregnant woman on a bike crashes into him one night then disappears, that Henry is left wondering if she's real or just a figment of his increasingly overburdened mind. In fact Henry still doesn't know if she exists even after they begin dating. And when his Thesis Advisor tells Henry he'll have to finish his dissertation by the baby's due date, it's no longer clear if he thinks, therefore he is, or he thinks, therefore he's just overanalyzing everything. As rare as a finished dissertation in its intelligence, humor and erudition, The Naked Proof includes interstitial narration by American playwright August Wilson. Director: Jaime Hook |
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NIGHTINGALE IN A MUSIC BOX From the brilliant mind of Chicago playwright Hurt McDermott comes the superb script for Nightingale in a Music Box - a fast-clip, no-budget thriller to rival Memento and The Usual Suspects. Things start fast in Nightingale in a Music Box. Robin McAlister is a real estate agent living a normal life in Chicago with two kids and a husband who travels a lot for work. Or at least that's who she thinks she is. The strange vividness of her memories has led UN operatives to believe Robin may have been given a new, false identity using the top-secret memory altering technology patented by a company called New Garden Technologies. They fear she may actually be a "nightingale": someone whose memorization abilities are enhanced in order steal and convey top-secret scientific code in long form. But unknown to Robin, nightingales are dangerous, and disposable. For this reason a "music teacher" - an expert mental re-programmer - may have placed Robin into a seamless set of new memories called a "music box." If legendary microbe-technology agent Burke can't find out who Robin was, and what she knows, Robin may be trapped forever in a life not her own, where memory doesn't shift, or self-identity ever evolve. Nightingale in a Music Box recently dazzled audiences at the Slamdance Film Festival. Director: Hurt McDermott |
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THE OTHER AMERICA New filmmaking technology has always affected which stories get told and how. As cameras and microphones became smaller and lighter, films moved off of the studio backlots and out into the places where stories were supposed to take place. Now, handheld DV cameras make it possible to capture the truest, most raw stories in film's history. Equipped with only a 24p Panasonic DVX100, writer-director Eugene Martin hit the streets and schools of Philadelphia to make a film that showed life as it was lived: The Other America is that film. Ari, Cassie and Jackie are in summer school classes together. Each has big dreams for the future: Ari wants to be an artist, Cassie's memorizing a monologue from Norma Rae, and Jackie's secretly in love with Ari. But these teens aren't privileged, or even middle class. For them, the future holds more menace than promise as they struggle to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. In the America they live in, everyone's on their own. The Other America was a finalist for the best "work in progress" award at the 2003 IFP Market in New York. Director: Eugene Martin |
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SEEDS In places like Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan, what might be the saddest thing in the whole world happens: children are taught to hate each other. Based on intangibles like religion, history, and national identity, kids on both sides of a conflict are corrupted by their elders into believing it is better to die for an idea than to live together. Seeds documentary filmmakers Marjan Safinia and Joseph Boyle take us to the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Maine, where kids from opposite sides of national conflicts gather together for three weeks each summer to share their dreams and fears, listen to opposing views and weigh the merit of their prejudices. For these young people who have always learned to equate peace with treason, emotions in the camp run high, progress is heartbreakingly slow, and failure is more likely than not. But for children anything is possible. With the laughter, humor, and hope native to children everywhere in the world, these teenage seeds of peace set themselves to finding their common humanity. As one young person describes their task, "In order to make peace with your enemy, you have to go to war with yourself." Directors: Marjan Safinia, Joseph Boyle |
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SINKHOLE It's a gray day at the landfill. Everyday is gray in rural Western North Carolina in winter. All the world feels mean and dark: the back roads, strip malls, trailer parks, abandoned mines, convenience store parking lots. And things are about to get even worse for Jason Griffin. His backhoe just turned up the body of a dead woman at the landfill. When the cops show up to investigate, they just tell Jason to forget he saw anything. If the good things in life feel like they're falling out from under Jason, it's because they are. North Carolina writer-director Paul Schattel wanted to capture the "wonderfully bleak" look and feel of life in the economically depressed rural areas of his home state - "the dark heart of the South." With unflinching starkness reminiscent of Kubrik's Full Metal Jacket - and an uncommon eye for seeing the sublime in the ordinary - Schattel and his talented players expertly guide us down into the invisible underworld of rural methamphetamine-use, and the subtle, cascading effect of bad choices. It's a long way down. Director: Paul Schattel |
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THIS BLACK SOIL Earning an average of just $6,436 per person in 1994, the rural, African-American fishing community of Bayview, Virginia was among the poorest in the state. But when Virginia's Republican Governor proposed building an unpopular new prison there, several defiant Bayview women decided to educate themselves and their town on how to make their voice heard in the Richmond legislature. And though they were initially as unorganized as they were poor, the residents of Bayview defeated the prison. This Black Soil poetically chronicles what happened next: inspiration. Drawing upon their shared history as a source of strength, the people of Bayview pushed forward to form the Bayview Citizens for Social Justice - a non-profit which brought worldwide attention and millions of dollars to their town; now they could begin the work of rebuilding their homes, lives and lost history. A potentially incisive template for social activism, Teresa Konechne's This Black Soil spans almost a decade and stands as a heartening shot across the bow for everybody who imagines the poor can't come together to seize power. Director/ Producer: Teresa Konechne |
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UP FOR GRABS From the opening frames of Up For Grabs, sports fans, and fans of the human comedy, will be utterly engrossed in this felicitous new gem of a documentary from Mike Wranovics. Record-setting home run balls are rare, but they can be positively identified and auctioned off for huge sums because of their importance in baseball history. In 1998 Phil Ozersky sold Mark McGwire's record-setting 70th home run ball for 2.7 million dollars. But before anyone can cash in, you have to get the ball! On the final day of the 2001 baseball season, Barry Bonds hit his record-setting 73rd home run of the season. Incredibly, two men claimed to have the ball! More incredible still, the catch was captured on videotape! With two different accounts of a single moment, and two totally different personalities involved, the controversy captured worldwide attention. Ultimately the owner of the baseball, and the huge sum of money it would fetch, would be decided by a judge. And that's just the beginning of the story told in this award-winning hit of the festival circuit. Reporter Wayne Freedman summed up this collision of the American game and the American dream as follows, "Tension, two good characters, lawyers, an event captured on video...It had all the elements to make a great story." Director: Mike Wranovics |
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Jessie's upstate New York hometown seems haunted, like a dream set to the tinkling of a far-off wind chime, and seen through a sad prism. At least to her. She's the 18 year-old small town bad girl; she smokes and drinks and shoplifts and has sad, overly-religious parents, who don't like each other, or themselves anymore. So when a common sparrow visits Jessie's bedroom window one morning at dawn and informs her that she's pregnant and she's carrying the baby of God, it's hard to tell where reality ends and being young, female, and totally alone begins. Filmmaker Deborah Kampmeier formed Full Moon Productions to make films by, for and about women. Virgin stars Elisabeth Moss as Jessie, and features the music of Ani Di Franco and Lucinda Williams; it was executive produced by Robin Wright Penn, who also plays Jessie's mother. Nominated for two IFP Independent Spirit Awards, Virgin is a beautiful, polaroid snapshot-like story that is unafraid to show the sadness, beauty and mortal danger of being a young woman in America. Director: Deborah Kampmeier |
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ORIGINAL REGIONAL Representing the oldest surviving film made by an African-American director, Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates was deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It has been reconstructed from film elements acquired from the Filmoteca Espanola in Spain in 1993, and has been restored in its entirety, save one short sequence that has been summarized with an intertile frame. The film is about an educated southern black woman, Sylvia (Evelyn Preer), who remains in the North following a violent breakup with her fiancé. There she discovers less prejudice in her new school for impoverished black youth. She soon learns the school is going broke, and after hearing people say that the black culture should remain uneducated and unrefined, she becomes driven to help save it. Within Our Gates is an arresting counterpoint to the films that preceded it, most notably D.W. Griffith’s racist “Birth of a Nation” from 1915. In “Gates,” Micheaux deals with issues of race relations, lynching, romance, rape, violence, and heroism from a vastly different perspective, creating a movie world far different than those that had been seen before. Central Standard is proud to present this
Original Regional, a silent film made in Kansas in 1920. The screening
will include a live organ accompaniment by Karl Eilers on the Heights’ original
WCCO Radio Wurlitzer organ. Director: Oscar Micheaux This screening was made possible with the support of The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center is charged with actively conserving, preserving and restoring film held in the collections of the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Since 1970 the MPCC has preserved over 18,000 feature films, television programs and short subjects, making the Library the largest publicly funded motion picture preservation organization in the United States. |
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SECURITY AND THE CONSTITUTION Central Standard is pleased to debut the latest project from Minnesota filmmaker and Central Standard Alumnus Matt Ehling. Security and the Constitution sets up its argument by exploring the historical erosion of American civil liberties during wartime: most notably Lincoln's suspension of the writ of Habeus Corpus, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and McCarthyism in 1950's Cold War America. After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Bush Administration moved quickly to cast the conflict as a permanent war, "...one that will not end in our lifetime." But with the implementation of permanent executive wartime powers guaranteed by the Patriot Act, prominant figures, such as FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and Stansfield Turner, identify several lasting threats to American Civil Liberties. These include, as in the case of Jose Padilla, holding American citizens indefinitely without bringing charges or access to a lawyer. At a time when many Americans say they would relinquish some of their rights to feel more safe, Security and the Constitution asks, "As a nation, have we learned anything from past mistakes?" Following this screening there will be a open forum with Michael Andregg (Adjunct professor, University of St. Thomas and University of Minnesota), Peter Erlinder (Teacher of Constitutional Law at William Mitchell), and Coleen Rowely (Special Agent, FBI - Minneapolis). Ms. Rowley is appearing in her personal capacity and her views do not necessarily reflect those of the FBI. Director/ Producer: Matt Ehling |
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STRANGE AS ANGELS Strange as Angels is about the sweet mysteriousness of love. When Marilyn, Rodney, Lena and Earl first meet at a diner in Chicago, they call themselves "four strangers together." They soon become better acquainted, and we find out a few, superficial details about each. Marilyn is stinging from a recent break-up, Lena has hardened herself to love, Rodney longs to connect with someone, and Earl looks at love as a contact sport. But the most important things about each character remain hidden. In darkened city apartments and on ethereal nighttime walks, the ineffable mysteries of experience, self-identity and personal desire intermingle with the mystery which is other peoples' souls. In the end, Strange As Angels posits that we know almost as much about a stranger as we do about ourselves and our lovers. Filmed on a shoestring budget in St. Paul and Chicago, Minnesota filmmaker Steven Foley assembled an all African-American cast for a story vibrantly photographed in the empty style of an Edward Hopper painting. But Foley's story is full, as his character Marilyn intones, "There's so much more to the world than just what we see around us." Director/Writer: Steven J. Foley |
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Karen Friedberg’s The
King of the Tango (IL) 16 minutes Bill Kersey and Edward Kim’s Garpenfargle (AZ) 5 minutes Josh Thacker’s Stale
Mate (MN) 8 minutes Matian's Daubit Crigh (WI) 5
minutes Douglas Pensak’s Reflex (PA) 13 minutes Mike Rivard’s Ice
Fishy (MN) 2 minutes Aaron Greer’s Not
Color Blind, Just
Near-Sighted (AL) 5 minutes Kat Candler’s Roberta
Wells (TX) 8
minutes Gary Henoch’s The
Puppeteer (MA) 32
minutes St. Anthony Main 3 - 10:00 AM - Sat., Oct.
16th |
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Steve Collins’ Gretchen
and the Night Danger (TX) 26 minutes Mike Seely’s Hush (CA) 5 minutes David Barker’s Seven
Days (TX) 10
minutes Kevin Obsatz’s Exploding (MN) 16 Minutes Joel Denyes’ bent
(in the meantime) (MI) 9 minutes Larry Blackhorse Lowe’s Shush (AZ)
10 minutes Todd Cobery's Blind
Date (MN) 6 minutes St. Anthony Main 3 - 12:00
PM - Sat., Oct. 16th |
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Ted Passon's Robot Boy (PA) 19 minutes Ryan Wood's Edible Love (MN) 5 minutes Bill Kersey's 87 Topaz (AZ) 8 minutes Michael Fisher's Falls (VT) 8 minutes Cindy Stillwell's A
Season on the Move (MT) 13 minutes Jeff Hopkins' Draw the
Pirate (MN) 7 minutes The Zellner Brothers’ The
Virile Man (TX) 7 minutes Barry Jenkins' My Josephine (FL) 8 minutes David Van Hooser's The
Funeral Man (TN) 16 minutes St. Anthony Main 3 - 6:00 PM - Sat., Oct.
16th |
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Kevin Obsatz’s AN
IMMACULATE HOUSE (MN) - 15 minutes The Heights 4:00 PM Sat.,
Oct. 16th |
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THE FOUND FOOTAGE
FESTIVAL This one-of-a-kind event compiles footage from videos that were found at garage sales, estate sales, in warehouses and dumpsters throughout the country. The Found Footage Festival collects a number of obscure and all-but-forgotten treasures of outsider (or inadvertent) art. From the curiously produced industrial training video, to the forsaken home video taken by your neighbors the FFF champions them all in a fond homage. A Film Threat reviewer recently described the fest, stating "This is the true underground cinema - If you want to see something truly different and disturbing, the Found Footage Festival has what you’re looking for en masse". Filmmakers Lounge (adjacent
to Pracna restaurant - St. Anthony Main) 7:30
PM Fri., Oct. 15th |
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