The 1st Rural Route Film
Festival was a huge success! A packed and enthusiastic
crowd at Enid’s!!! A great selection of films and many
filmmakers in attendance!!! Thanks to everyone who lent a helping
hand! We look forward to next year, and also hope to put out
a touring program to screen in other areas of the country.
Stay tuned for details…
This Year’s
Award Winners are…
Best Documentary: (tie) “Dental Farmer” (Directors:
Ellen Brodsky and Dunya Alwan) and “As We Sow” (Director:
Jan Weber)
Best Narrative: “Coming Down the Mountain” (Writer/Producer:
Colin Spoelman)
Best Experimental: “oil wells: sturgeon road & 97th
street” (Filmmaker: Christina Battle)
Opening Night
Section 1
1. Pernice Brothers “Working Girls” music video (James and Alex)
3.5 min.
2. “Dental Farmer” (Ellen Brodsky and Dunya Alwan) 15 min.
3. “Ellen’s Story” (Ellen Brodsky) 3 min.
4. “Dancing with Indiana” (Erik Gernand) 14 min.
5. “So Much Depends” (John Cantine) 90 sec.
6. “How Chattanooga Mooned America” (Emily Ley-Shiley) 18 min.
Section
2
7. “Crystal Hunting” (Lydia Paterson) 7 min.
8. Silver Jews “Random Rules” music video (Paul Finn) 4 min.
9. Selections from “Eight Movements” (Melanie West, Geoff Marslett)
6 min.
10. “Farmer” (Patricia Harris Seeley) 5 min.
11. “Lawrence Station Road” (Adam Burgess) 8 min.
12. “Hump” (Skip Hobbie) 12 min.
Section 3—Feature Presentation
13. “Pursuing Happiness” (Jon Andrews) 92 min.
Second Night
Section 1
1. “Y’All Come! The
Hell Hole Swamp Festival” (Jay Edwards, Dave Drabik) 23
min.
2. “Auction” (Matthew Bryant) 3 min.
3. “Coming Down the Mountain” (Colin Spoelman) 23 min.
4. “Desert Songs” (Mitchell Stephens) 46 sec.
5. “Zapata’s Garden” (Chiapas Media Project) 19 min.
Section
2
6. “Billy’s Backbone” (Tom Small) 12 min.
7. Bright Eyes “Bowl of Oranges” music video (Cat Solen) 3 min.
20 sec.
8. “Marathon” (Aaron Valdez) 3 min.
9. “As We Sow” (Jan Weber) 23 min.
10. “oil wells: sturgeon road & 97th street” (Christina Battle)
3 min.
Section
3
11. “Vivian’s Beauty
Shop” (Laura Kissel) 5 min.
12. “Slitch” (Dianne Bellino) 23 min.
13. Cat Power “He War” music video (Brett Vapnek) 3 min. 47 sec.
14. “Truck” (Adrianne Jorge, Tamy Ojala) 55 min.
OPENING NIGHT FILMS
1.The Pernice Brothers “Working
Girls”
Directors: James and Alex
Ashmont Media
Length: 3.5 min.
2001, music video
Lush, haunting melodies, catchy
pop/country hooks and smart bittersweet lyrics make The Pernice
Brothers one of the best sort-of-kept secrets around. Shot
in rural Upstate New York, the video for “Working Girls” features
Joe Pernice and company riding around idealistic gravel roads
in an old station wagon, and later playing frisbee with an
odd version of the Grim Reaper.
2.Dental Farmer (PREMIERE)
Director: Ellen Brodsky and Dunya Alwan
City, State: Cambridge, MA
Length: 15 min.
2002, documentary
Meet
dental farmer Dr. Art Rybeck, a man who combines his passion
for organic farming with dentistry in West Virginia. Rybeck
sees no reason why the less fortunate should go without dental
care, so he has set up a second clinic in a farmhouse with
a pay-as-you-wish policy. Director Ellen Brodsky follows this "radical" dentist
as he works and ponders life in Dental Farmer. It’s both
entertaining for its peculiar subject matter, and inspiring
for Rybeck’s vigor and good nature.
3. ELLEN’S STORY (3 min.)
(story of how Ellen Brodsky met the eccentric Dr. Rybeck)
4. Dancing with Indiana
Director: Erik Gernand
City, State: Atlanta, GA
Length: 14 min.
2000, fiction
In
Indiana…a boy and a basketball have a destiny. Winner
of Best Screenplay at the Colossal Film Crawl in Columbia,
South Carolina.
5. So Much Depends
Director: John Cantine
City, State: Apollo, PA
Length: 90 sec.
2001, experimental
The approach to the yard as a
place where so much life is experienced…from leaf raking
to flute practice.
6. How Chattanooga Mooned America
Director: Emily Ley-Shiley
City, State: Columbia, SC
Length: 18 min.
2001, documentary
Director’s
nostalgia for her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee led her
to rediscover a favorite childhood memory--the Moon Pie. Compelled
to create a documentary from the pride felt in seeing how a
local favorite snack has become a national icon, How Chattanooga
Mooned America is a tongue-in-cheek presentation of the Moon
Pie’s rise to popularity. The film features the son of
the Moon Pie’s inventor, the President of the Moon Pie
Cultural Club, and, for the Moon Pie connoisseur, a Moon Pie
Fashion Show and Festival.
The Moon Pie was invented in 1917
and sold to small grocery stores in the South. The snack was
originally created for the residents and blue-collar workers
of the small, self-contained coal mining communities in and
around the Appalachian Mountains, where the workers favored
the Moon Pie because it tasted good, was a solid snack without
lots of air, and it felt good to chew. It was popular blue-collar
tradition to have a Moon Pie and an RC Cola for lunch—each
only a nickel a piece for many years.
7. Crystal Hunting
Director: Lydia Paterson
City, State: Philadelphia, PA
Length: 7 min.
2001, documentary
Lydia Paterson and family (+dogs)
casually roam the pastures of Pennsylvania looking for crystals
in the ground.
“Like finding the perfect
crystal, rurality is something that stays with you. It’s
something you can keep in your pocket and hold on to whenever
you need to feel something solid in this mixed-up, increasingly
urbanized world. Crystal hunting is a tradition in my family—a
ritual that unites us each muddy Spring.”
8. Silver Jews “Random Rules”
Director: Paul Finn
Drag City Records
Length: 4 min.
1999, music video
Clever, witty rock band, The Silver
Jews, poke fun at and celebrate country music in postmodern
fashion through wordplay about honky tonks and rhinestone suits,
alongside familiar jangley C&W riffs. Guitarist Stephen
Malkmus’ (of Pavement fame) current project is Stephen
Malkmus and The Jicks. SJ Front man, David Berman, is also
a critically acclaimed poet/writer, who lives in Nashville,
TN.
9. Three Selections from “Eight
Movements”
Directors: Melanie West and Geoff Marslett
City, State: Austin, Texas
Length: 6 min.
2003, experimental
Flickering Super-8 and engaging
musical accompaniments enhance these three selections from “Eight
Movements”. Co-director Melanie West was born on a ranch
in the Cerrillos Hills of New Mexico. Melanie’s father,
Archie West, is interviewed in the first selection, “Atom
on Atom”, describing the secrets of handling matches.
The Art Car Parade in Houston is captured in “Collision” as
four women talk about the challenges, rewards, and experiences
of being creative. In “Bidding of Our Hearts”,
a group of women ranging from co-director Geoff Marslett’s
five-year-old niece to his mother jump rope in an unmowed field.
10. Farmer
Director: Patricia Harris Seeley
City, State: Redwood Meadows, Alberta, CANADA
Length: 5 min.
2001, experimental
A voice in the past evokes memories
of life on a Canadian-Ukrainian farm in the 1930s with a boy
and his grandfather. Beautifully shot on b&w (&color)
16mm in Alberta, Canada, this piece won Best Cinematography
award at Canmore Int’l 7 min. Film Fest. Featuring award-winning
poetry by the director, as well as the best shot of a pig in
this festival.
11. Lawrence Station Road
Director: Adam Burgess
City, State: Saratoga, CA
Length: 8 min.
2002, documentary
The
last two farmers in Silicon Valley/Stranded on a dirt island
of what was once known as “The Valley of Hearts’ Delight” are
the last two survivors of farming in today’s “Silicon
Valley.” While their world has been consumed with homes
and electronic buildings, Ben and Joe Francia continue their
way of life as taught to them by their father 74 years ago.
Despite pressure to sell and retire, the brothers cling on
to all that they know and love. Nicely shot in a personal style
on 16mm.
12. Hump (WORLD PREMIERE)
Director: Skip Hobbie
City, State: Austin, TX
Length: 12 min.
2003, documentary
Hump is a short documentary following
a camel trek in the West Texas desert. Viewers are introduced
to Doug Baum, owner and operator of the Texas Camel Corp. The
film explores Doug’s loving relationship with his camels
while he leads four trekkers across the desert near Monahans,
Texas.
13. Pursuing Happiness (WORLD PREMIERE)
Director: Jon Andrews
City, State: Brandon, VT
Length: 92 min.
2003, fiction
In one small Vermont town, three
people find themselves at crossroads in their lives. As they
make the choices that their hearts demand, their stories draw
inexorably closer, finally converging on a moonlit night in
a way that none of them could have imagined. Matt, a humble
farm kid, is falling in love for the first time, as his family
struggles to stay afloat. Charlie, an uptight but charismatic
pastor, is fighting temptation and doubt as his marriage nears
the point of collapse. Nan, a once-active retiree, is caring
for her husband as his ailing mind becomes a threat.
Even ordinary lives have their
epic moments. This very John Sayles-esque narrative is the
first feature from Yale grad and Student Academy Award winner,
Jon Andrews. Excellent performances from an entirely non-professional
cast, and great use of locations in the rural VT community
that Andrews recently returned to after spending several years
in NYC highlight this subtle and intriguing story about challenges,
choices, and the drama of the everyday.
Rural Route is the world premiere for Pursuing Happiness!
SECOND NIGHT’S FILMS
1. Y’All Come! The Hell Hole
Swamp Festival (NEW YORK PREMIERE)
Producers: Jay Edwards and Dave Drabik
City, State: Atlanta, GA
Length: 23 min.
2001, documentary
Jay Edwards and Dave Drabik document
an unabashed celebration of American culture in this DV short
that visits Jamestown, South Carolina (population 83). Wry,
affectionate man-on-the-street interviews and music montages
mix to make the local participants and organizers the stars
of the film. Meet the in-coming and out-going Miss Hell Hole
Swamp. See the town mayor model his gams in the Sexiest Legs
contest. Watch as folks compete in bull riding, tobacco spitting
and arm wrestling while sneaking a taste of the local moonshine.
2. AUCTION (PREMIERE)
Director: Matthew Bryant
City State: Wichita Falls, TX
Length: 3 min.
2002, documentary
The farmers, the cattle, and most
importantly--the auctioneer… Experience three minutes
from a live cattle auction.
Auction is not so much a short
documentary as it is a morsel of experimental rural video art.
Capturing the perpetual jibber-jabber of a Texas livestock
auctioneer, director Matthew Bryant doesn’t try to interpret
his banter. Instead he treats the voice like a saxophone mid-jazz
solo and tosses in some percussive editing, and cattle kicks,
to round out the measure. Bryant calls Auction "the poetic
auditory experience of a livestock auction."
3. COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Director: Colin Spoelman
City, State: New York, NY
Length: 23 min.
2002, fiction
Coming
Down the Mountain confronts prescription drug abuse in rural
Kentucky on beautifully shot 35mm. In a dysfunctional home
an Appalachian father and son sit on opposites sides of a malcontent
mother. Each maintains a closeted, private life, but allusions
from one to the other make certain that neither man’s
affairs are secret. In fact, we are led to believe the boy,
Joe (Kett Turton), wishes he knew less about his father, Paul
Skidmore (Frank Hoyt Taylor). What follows are two storylines
that run alongside each other like parallel lanes on a winding
highway. Sometimes the men run side-by-side, sometimes they
position themselves for a head-on collision.
We find Joe to be less of a rebellious kid than an embarrassed son. His father
has an addiction to the drug Oxycontin, a prescription pain killer he acquires
from local folks on government medical assistance. He’s also a dealer.
In the end father and son confront their notions of escape as their paths
converge at home.
Spoelman now lives in New York,
but he is originally from Harlan, KY where he grew up under
the guidance of a Presbyterian minister father. He feels Appalachia
is under-represented in fiction filmmaking, and he is proud
to voice this regional story. Coming Down the Mountain has
played at the San Francisco Film Festival, the Dahlonega Film
Festival, and the Florida International Film Festival.
4. Desert Songs
Director: Mitchell Stephens
City, State: Alpine, NJ
Length: 46 sec.
2001, experimental
It
is difficult to imagine a life more “rural” than
that lived by this tribe of nomads, whose tents sit deep in
the Sahara – a day’s walk, with camel, from the
nearest town. This very short video by NYU journalism professor,
Mitchell Stephens, considers the charms of such a life, as
well as – from the perspective of a visitor who spends
a night there – its limitations. Mitchell Stephens has
traveled around the world, writes regularly for Feed magazine,
and received much critical acclaim for his books, the rise
of the image the fall of the world and A History of News, which
received “Notable of the Year” from The New York
Times.
5. Zapata’s Garden
Chiapas Media Project
Mexico/Chicago, IL
Length: 19 min.
Tzeltal and Spanish w/ English subtitles
2002, documentary
Shot and produced by indigenous
men and women videomakers in the Autonomous Municipality of
Emiliano Zapata, this video looks at the new society that the
Zapatistas are building. Zapata’s Garden shows how this
new municipality is fighting the effects of globalization and
government corruption through their work in the collective
garden. Community members talk about the importance of collective
work in building this new society. “We don’t want
things to be as they were before. Now we have land to work,
and with it we will feed ourselves and our children.”
6. Billy’s Backbone
Director: Tom Small
City, State: New York, NY
Length: 12 min.
2003, fiction
A country boy from Kentucky arrives
alone in the big city late at night, intending to set up house
with his long-distance girlfriend. He soon finds himself lost
in a rough neighborhood, barely escaping danger. When he finally
arrives at his girlfriend’s apartment, he has a few more
surprises waiting for him.
7. Bright Eyes “Bowl of Oranges”
Director: Cat Solen
Saddle Creek Records
Length: 3 min. 20 sec.
2002, music video
Born
1980 in Omaha, NE and recording since he was 13, Conor Oberst
possesses an incredible ability to tell stories with his songs
and paint intricate pictures with his words. As the mastermind
behind the acclaimed Bright Eyes collective, Oberst’s
genius is found in a pretense-free, orchestral approach to
songwriting. His most recent, most musically vigorous and rockin’ project,
Desaparecidos, toured the nation and released Read Music/Speak
Spanish to enormous amounts of critical acclaim.
The video for “Bowl of Oranges” is
entirely animated with still photographs and puppets, and shot
on a multi-plane 16mm set up. Each shot took approximately
4 hours to assemble. Director Cat Solen worked to parallel
the folk-like aesthetic in Oberst’s music through process,
imagery, colors, and movement. The puppets are based on two
of the director’s friends who live in a garden (an empty
lot neighboring residential houses in a northern suburb of
Berlin, Germany).
8. Marathon
Director: Aaron Valdez
City, State: Austin, TX
Length: 3 min.
2000, experimental
Marathon documents a small West
Texas town, where the director’s great grandfather lived
in a one-room shack while working on the railroad. The film
uses B&W Super-8 to document the town and many of its old
building facades before its homogeneous “revitalization.”
9. As We Sow
Director: Jan Weber
City, State: Brooklyn, NY
Length: 23 min.
2003, documentary
As We Sow opens on the winter
landscape of the central Iowa plains with the lone voice of
an Iowa farmer: “This is basically the heart of Iowa.
It’s all farms here, but you’re not going to see
any farmers. They’ve just disappeared.” What happened
to the farmer? Why have they left the land? Why should the
displacement and disappearance matter to people outside of
the isolated rural countryside of Iowa?
As We Sow searches for answers
in the words of the people themselves, taped on their farms,
in their towns, at their offices, and around the supper table
in their homes. As We Sow bears witness to the changes occurring
across rural America and the powerful forces behind the replacement
of family farms with factory farms. As farmers leave the land
in record numbers, contract production and marketing and the
associated industrialization of agriculture continue to expand;
with the consolidation of food production into fewer and fewer
hands, farmers are rapidly becoming obsolete. As We Sow reveals
a desperate struggle for the land itself, who controls it and
how, and at what cost to people and communities, to animals
and the environment, and to the very essence of our democracy.
10. oil wells: sturgeon road & 97th
street
Director: Christina Battle
City, State: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Length: 3 min.
2002, experimental
Christina
Battle describes her affection for the Canadian prairie in
this simple but striking experimental film. Both her repetition
of image and use of deteriorating hand processed footage serve
to mimic the rustic oil wells that litter the Albertan countryside.
As they churn, so the film churns. As the wells draw on the
earth, oil wells draws on the pumps. Her film was funded in
part by the National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker’s
Assistance Program.
11. Vivian’s Beauty Shop
Director: Laura Kissel
City, State: Columbia, SC
Length: 5 min.
2001, documentary
In
this short video portrait, the clients of Vivian’s Beauty
Shop discuss their hair, the styles that come and go, and their
commitment to a once-a-week visit to stylists Terry and Judy,
who have been doing hair since they were in high school.
12. Slitch
Director: Dianne Bellino
City, State: Brooklyn, NY
Length: 23 min.
2001, fiction
Slitch
is a short comic film about a teenage girl’s summertime
lust, featuring fantasizing, bubble gum, and bicycle riding.
Directed by Dianne Bellino and shot on location in sunny oceanside
Rhode Island, Slitch stars singer/songwriter, Will Oldham as
a mentally unbalanced surfer, blending in seamlessly with a
cast of lovely local ladies. The Continental OP (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
and Papa M) provide the original soundtrack of beautiful instrumentals
and funny punk songs.
13. Cat Power “He War”
Director: Brett Vapnek
Length: 3 min. 47 sec.
Matador Records
2003, music video
Cat Power’s Chan Marshall
has a voice unlike anyone you’ve heard before, combining
raw intimacy with a gruff, chalky confidence. Her lyrics’ plain-spoken
lines belie an otherwordly perspective on primal human emotions.
Broken down to their essentials, many of her songs could have
been written sixty years ago on a rural Mississippi back porch,
but Chan ably personalizes the traditional so it sounds handmade
for the modern day.
14. TRUCK
Directors: Adrianne Jorge and Tamy Ojala
City,State: Long Island City, New York
Length: 55 min.
2002, documentary
Most truckers like to say that
all of America is their “backyard.” With a favorite
coffee shop in Gloucester, Massachusettes, a favorite diner
in West Liberty, Iowa, best chapel in Sharock, Texas, friendliest
motel in Phoenix, AZ… They know this country the way
most people only know their own neighborhoods. In Truck, Two
NYC women hit the road, hitching rides from rig to rig, chronicling
truckdrivers, and the emotional and physical confrontations
that these men and women steer through everyday. Folks with
nicknames like The Professor, Shithouse Mouse, Too Low, Super
Chicken and more remember the good old days, and lay it all
out from lot lizards to the 12-gauge one driver kept in his
cab to Christmastime meals in truck-stop diners. Truck shows
how this uniquely American way of life just keeps on truckin'
"I highly recommend Adrianne Jorge and Tamy Ojala's documentary film Truck:
On the road with truckdrivers, the filmmakers have a way of getting to what's
special about the truckdriver subculture. And it's fascinating." -Albert
Maysles, Maysles Films Inc.
Honorable mention:
“Ole and Lena” by Les Sholes, Grand Forks, ND. Narrative feature
about a Norweigan North Dakota farming family chosen by an L.A. production company
for a reality TV series.
“Boy Scouts without Honor
or Humanity” by Jonathan J. Detrixhe, Brooklyn, NY. Narrative
feature about Boy Scouts who sell crystal meth in small town
Kansas.
“Razing Appalachia” by
Sasha Waters, Iowa City, IA. Documentary on coal mining in West
Virginia.
“Greater Southbridge” by
Rod Murphy, Asheville, NC. Director revisits hometown in MA to
capture some very colorful characters.
