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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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A Few Words About the deadCENTER Film Festival

In all the busy-ness of Luka being in the hospital, I very nearly forgot to mention that my hometown of Oklahoma City has a film fest, the deadCENTER Film Festival, which starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday. I’m terrible for just remembering to write about this, especially since I’m an honorary board member. Sorry, guys. I’m a slacker.

One of these days I’ll make it back to OKC for this fest, but unfortunately it’s always scheduled over the last week of SIFF, which makes it tough. Maybe next year I can persuade them to bump it back one week, which would make it coincide with Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year — which is actually more the “dead center” of the year than the second week of June anyhow, right?

So this year, deadCENTER has over 100 films playing in seven venues in downtown Oklahoma City. And I know what you’re thinking: Oklahoma City? In the summer? With the heat and the humidity — and the tornadoes?! Really? I hear you, but if you’ve never been there, downtown OKC is pretty cool, what with the Bricktown club and restaurant district, and the canal, and the Paseo arts district to check out if you need a break from films. Also, they have a LOT of good food in OKC, especially Tex-Mex and BBQ.

This year’s opening night film is Talihina Sky: The Story of the Kings of Leon, “the story of Kings of Leon, whose strict Pentecostal upbringing in Oklahoma and Tennessee preceded their unlikely transformation into one of the biggest rock bands in the world.” It’s a free outdoor screening, followed by the festive opening night kick-off party.

Festival highlights include a screening of the restored, 35mm Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925), which has Edmund Meisel’s original score. Are you kidding me? OKC people, you have GOT to get out to see that one. It’s screening at the OKC Museum of Art, and I’m betting my friend Brian Hearn, the museum’s brilliant and passionate film curator, had a hand in bringing that one to the fest. Y’all better pack the venue for that one, it’s not every day you get to see a film like that in OKC.

If comedy’s more your thing, you might want to check out Bag of Hammers, starring Jason Ritter and Rebecca Hall. The film had its premiere at SXSW, and while it had some uneven reviews from that fest, many of them also praised Jason Ritter’s performance, and I like Ritter very much, so if I was there I would check that one out, just because.

If you’re more in the mood for drama, definitely make room on your slate for Small Town Murder Songs, a brilliant, tonally perfect film about a small town cop dragged into his first murder case. Jill Hennessy has a standout turn in this film. Another must see is Trollhunter, which is about exactly what you think it is, based on the title. Really, what more do you need than THAT?

On the docs front, you do not want to miss Elevate, which preemed at SXSW and won the docs award at Dallas IFF earlier this year. This film, about four West African Muslim kids with NBA dreams, has been getting accolades right and left, so don’t miss seeing it while you can. Also on the doc side of things, catch Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, a riveting look a the inner workings of the Gray Lady, at a time when print publications are being threatened by the advent of online.

deadCENTER also has a good many short films, most of which I haven’t seen — and I’ve been going out of my way to watch more shorts lately. Of those I’ve seen or have heard about, my strongest recommendations go to Pillow, which is still my favorite short of the year, and The Birds Upstairs, which is weird but also very cool. Any of the shorts packages would be a good bet, though. There’s even a package of short family films you can enjoy with the small fry.

And speaking of kids, if you read me very often, you probably know that I’ve been on a bit of a mission lately, researching and writing a lot about the role regional fests play with education and outreach. After all, today’s kids are tomorrow’s indie filmmakers (or tomorrow’s rich people who will fund tomorrow’s indie filmmakers!) and regional fests serve a key role in teaching kids in places far removed from NY and LA that there’s more to movies than Disney and Dreamworks.

deadCENTER has been doing more with education this year, so if those things interest you, check out their involvement with Oklahoma schools. This is one area in which I hope this fest continues to grow and grow and grow. They have a slate of family shorts on the schedule this year called Kids Fest, and I hope to see them, over the next few years, really expand their family programming, and perhaps even add youth and teen juries to their outreach program.

Keep up the great work bringing film to OKC, deadCENTER! And big props to all my friends at deadCENTER who work so hard to make it happen, especially Kim Haywood, Lance McDaniel and Brian Hearn. Y’all rock.

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One Response to “A Few Words About the deadCENTER Film Festival”

  1. Pierre Stefanos says:
    June 7, 2011 at 9:49 pm

    Hey deadCenter and Kim – Thanks for supporting the short films, including mine called BEDFELLOWS, which plays in the “Love, Sex, and Death Shorts” program. I mean, what more does one need than love, sex, and death? 😀

    Thursday June 9th @ 10:30pm
    Saturday June 11th @ 7:30pm

    And shout-out to my fellow NYC Downtown Shorts winner Christopher Jarvis for his Student Academy-Award nominated short The Bird Upstairs – definitely a memorable project!

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon