A few weeks ago I had started some serious contemplation on the South Dakota Film Festival. I’ve really only been to one film festival in my lifetime, but it was a big one, the Toronto International Film Festival. For me personally, TIFF is the granddaddy of film festivals (yes, I know there is a festival in the south of France called Cannes and yes, I know it’s massive). But TIFF is in my heart and I consider it a high benchmark for other festivals to follow, so I knew I had to keep my expectations in check.

I knew it wouldn’t be fair to compare the SDFF to TIFF. So I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see the same quality of films here. The Monday before the festival I told myself I had to do more research on the films to know which I was going to be looking forward to. Hell, I even convinced myself that I owed it to the filmmakers that I needed to do the research. But I actually think it would’ve been a disservice to have “favorites” going into the festival. So I decided not to revisit any of the films I would be seeing. And I don’t think my festival experience couldn’t have been any better. I was pleasantly surprised and unquestionably satisfied.

By not knowing anything about the films, I was able to sit back and put myself in the moment of each film. Truth be told, I had a blast even if I didn’t enjoy every single movie. But I would say I easily enjoyed 90% of the films I saw. That speaks volumes to a) the talented filmmakers on hand and b) the quality of the eye that the programmers of the SDFF have.

If there’s one thing the SDFF has taught me—or rather, reminded me—it’s that sometimes doesn’t matter how big the festival is, it’s the atmosphere of the theater itself. Every single person at the Capitol Theater this past weekend was there for a sole purpose, to appreciate the art of film. There were no other agendas brought to the table. It was simply a celebration of film.

The producers of the festival need to be commended. They put on a very warm and welcoming festival. I remember when Dustin and I were walking into the theater the for the first time and we weren’t sure what to expect, but immediately we were treated like two long lost family members that hadn’t been seen in years. Looking around over the weekend, it was pretty obvious that every single person attending was being treated the same way.

Sure the festival is tucked away in upstate South Dakota makign it a little out of the way from some areas, but if you’re in the region or if you just happen to be passing through, you will be hard pressed to find a better outlet for film lovers.

Our Top 15 films from SDFF

#1 – Gefallen

#2 – Noah

#3 – Ride with Larry

#4 – Sweet Crude Man Camp

#5 – Mirror

#6 – A Hard Day

#7 – Bring Me A Dream

#8 – The Garage

#9 – Dust of War

#10 – Family Meeting

#11 – Looking Past You

#12 – Storytime

#13 – After the Torment

#14 – Episode 5

#15 – Head Case

Sweet Crude Man Camp

By far the most visual striking film of the festival was the short documentary Sweet Crude Man Camp. The film is about the effects of the oil boom in the small town of Williston, North Dakota, which was recently predicted to be producing more oil than any other place in the country. The decision to shoot the documentary in black and white was genius, allowing a crisp contrast between the dark oil and the light open fields of the prairie. Not all that unlike the gold rush over 150 years ago, the town is flooding with people coming in to cash in on the oil. The problem is the small town cannot keep up with the boom, nor can it sustain itself with the rising costs of absolutely everything in the town. Even Walmart is feeling the burden as they cannot get anyone to work for them despite offering a $17 an hour starting wage. The images here are haunting and they are paired brilliantly with an appropriate score. My only complaint about Sweet Crude Man Camp is that it was not made into a full-length documentary. I want to see more. [Dustin]

Watch Sweet Crude Man Camp here

Gefallen

I wrote some fairly lengthy notes for nearly every film I watched at the festival, but for Gefallen I wrote only one sentence: “Best film of the festival.” This film does in 20 minutes what a lot of other films fail to do in 90. Gefallen is the tale of soldiers in the German army who come home from the war in Afghanistan and are dealing with choices they made and battles they fought. The acting is superb and the filmmaking on hand is of the highest order. Everything about the short is great. Only Ride with Larry affected me more during the weekend. Maybe it’s because I have a brother that was a Marine. But this is a stellar film that will have you at the edge of your seat. [Blake]

Fergus Falls

A man’s quest to make it to a retro gaming convention in Minneapolis comes to a screeching halt when his radiator fails in the middle of nowhere. As he is pushing his car down the cold wintery Minnesota road a young attractive girl, who just so happens to be a mechanic, stops to help. While he waits two days for the part to ship in for his vehicle, the two have a heated discussion on which is better; big cities or small towns. This is your standard romantic tale that is not difficult to predict yet is still an amusing ride even if its 20 minute runtime could have been shortened. The best part about this student film was the cinematography, specifically a night shot that is wonderfully lit by a single car headlight. [Dustin]

The Tale of Cuthbert

He only means well, right? Cuthbert is a simple man…well, zombie actually. While other zombies look for flesh and brains to munch on, Cuthbert would rather play with flowers and lollygag through warehouses without a care in the world. When other zombies aim to “domesticate” him to their lifestyle, Cuthbert fails with comical results. This short is way too succinct. Could’ve used more beef (pun intended) in its runtime. Aside from that, I laughed enough to be able to recommend it. [Blake]

Balance

Brett is a college student who returns home at the request of his stubborn father who complains with every breath, especially when money is involved. His father wants him to go to a community college nearby so that he can work on the farm, but Brett has other plans and must learn to stand up to his intolerable father. Balance does a great job at making you want to punch the father square in the face after the family dog gets sick and his father would rather shot the dog rather than to even see what is wrong with it. The dreary weather surround the farm conveys the tension of the story well. Some of the lines fall a bit flat at times, but Balance is a well shot student film that feels very personal. [Dustin]

Storytime

Storytime is an interesting little piece about a man telling a bed time story to his daughter that ends up being a lot more than it initially lets on. He tells her the story of a king who has to protect his princess after the queen has fallen ill. Soon do we realize that the story turns out to be the story of the father himself and his daughter as they try to survive a zombie apocalypse. Production values were low on this compared to others at the festival, but hard to deny the originality of the short and the bitter sweetness of its ending. [Blake]

Ride with Larry

After spending 20 years battling Parkinson’s, Larry Smith seeks to bike 300 miles over five days across the state of South Dakota. The distance alone makes this a worthy challenge. But when you add the fact that this man has a hard time controlling his body movements with the brutal wind and rain of South Dakota weather, it not only makes the ride truly impressive, but also very dangerous. If there is something you cannot take from him it is the freedom and control of movement he feels when cycling, a rare sensation that he gets to experience.

As you would expect due to the subject matter, Ride with Larry is an extraordinarily moving story that would be impossible to walk away from it without some sort of emotional response. It’s an uplifting tale of the human spirit. When obstacles are in his way he finds a way around them and when he falls he gets right back up. Larry is not only an inspiration to those who suffer from the same disease as he does, but is an inspiration to us all. [Dustin]

Stay tuned for a full-length review of Ride with Larry

Looking Past You

An elderly woman, whose husband has just passed, is getting sick and tired of people ignoring her and her feelings. I kept thinking about that scene at the end of Network where the main character spouts, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” She grabs his old service pistol and decides she’s going to get back the money that is owed to her after a financial advisor heartlessly tells her she’s broke. Well-acted and perfectly paced with a message that doesn’t banging on the heads of the audience, Looking Past You is good drama.

Family Meeting

One day the head of a household is on the family computer when he finds a video that leaves him speechless. He confronts his entire family at once and demands an explanation. It turns out that every one of the family members has made an embarrassing video, but no one know which he is referring to. Family Meeting is simple and more importantly, it made me laugh and as more and more truths start to reveal themselves, it only becomes funnier.

Episode 5

This short horror/comedy is a spoof of handheld POV horror films that had plenty of good laughs and even some creepy moments. An investigative paranormal TV crew is hired by a mattress company to probe their store for any clues of a haunting. What they find instead are plenty of laughs as they have seemingly been set up to show how great the prices are at the store. This is one of the shorts that I saw that I wish was about 20 minutes longer. The mood was perfectly set and the tension (when not relieved by the laughs) was stout.

Mirror

Mirror was far and away my favorite film of the first day. This short narrative never explains what exactly is going on and I was pretty fine with that. The film begins with a movie star flying home from Hollywood to visit family he hasn’t seen for a while. When he arrives home though, things begin to crack immediately. Mirror plays with perception the entire length of its run time. You never know what reality is. Are there really aliens abducting people? Is he just imagining things? There was a great shot of a man walking into a room in complete darkness as lights flickered on and off creating a strobe effect that is still making me blink. Loved the sound design and loved the score. This was easily the most ambitious film that I saw at the festival.

Bring Me a Dream

This nice little film was great amalgamation of a children’s best time story mixed to great effect with the horror genre. A young girl is told by her father to go to bed, but she’d rather stay up coloring in her book. Her father warns her that if she doesn’t go to bed, the Sandman could visit her and that it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. So of course she doesn’t heed his warning and sure enough things get creepy. Things in her room begin to come alive and move with free will, while the Sandman himself shows up to put the young girl to sleep. For how short this was, I was surprised at how much it affected me. It gets really scary really fast. The sound design was very good albeit a little too loud and the costume design for the Sandman himself was well done.

The Garage

This was a fun little horror short that never really makes any sense, but is nonetheless funny and at times even creepy. A young girl (who is a misfit at school) is sent to live with her older brother to clean up her act. The brother doesn’t ask much of her when it comes to chores, but he does want her to take out the trash and recycling to the non-attached garage behind the house. When she does, there seems to be some kind of entity that talks to her. There are shops tools hanging on the wall that only get bloodier and bloodier the more times she enters. While watching The Garage I couldn’t help but think of Sam Raimi and more specifically Drag Me to Hell. Funnily enough, the director of the short cited these two exact references during the Q&A after the film. While The Garage disappointingly ends out of nowhere, everything else that precedes it is worth the time.

A Hard Day

I will keep this review brief as I do not want to ruin any of what this utterly hilarious short shows. A man is looking to spice up his relationship with his girlfriend so he goes off to buy special pills that will enhance their “afternoon delight” He buys two different pills and is warned not to take them at the same time. Of course he doesn’t listen and the results make for easily the funniest film of the festival. A Hard Day doesn’t even try to apologize for being too raunchy, instead throwing in one fantastic gag after another. The lead actor was perfectly cast as a dimwit who seemed to do one wrong thing after another.

Dust of War

Dust of War was one of the headline films of the festival and the screening played to a packed house that ate it up. Dust of War is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that when really boiled down to it is essentially a 90 minute chase film. That isn’t a complaint either. I’m a big fan of simple action films that don’t try to be anything more than what they are. The film adds in some sci-fi that felt out of place for me, but that is a small quibble. Set on a prairie in a world that has been ravaged by a war with an alien race with nothing left and only a few small groups of people are left to fight. A young girl is seen as the key to survival for the human race and two opposing forces want to use her in their own ways. A young quiet warrior, who lets his sword do his talking, teams up with the old wise cracking has been fighter, who still has some fight left in him, to rescue the young girl from the clutches of an evil general and his gang of marauders.

Dust of War is not trying to break new ground here. It is however, a competent low budget action film. The villain General Chizum, played by Bates Wilder, is of course spewing fantastic lines of poison aimed at his nemeses. His aim (and dialogue) is consistently undermined by Tom’s (Gary Graham) unwillingness to play along. The action scenes are fine and the chase scenes are well executed. And finally a movie that brings back under cranking to a car chase scene.

As I mentioned earlier, my only complaint was that Dust of War added some sci-fi elements in it did not seem to add much to the film. I wish it would have either gone for it all or kept it out altogether. The final reveal at the end leaves the audience begging for more, but considering what came before, it felt out of place. But that is more of a small complaint. As a whole I really dug the film. Screenwriter/Director Andrew Kightlinger made a film that, despite a low budget, shows ambition and enough quality for me to recommend it.

Noah

Not only did Noah easily stand out as the most unique film that I saw at the festival, but it is one of the better short films that I have seen in a long time. Filmed entirely from the point of view of a computer screen, the audience has front-row seats to observe Noah in his digital life of Facebook, Skype, ChatRoulette, and even his favorite porn site, all in real time. The short narrative accurately portrays how contemporary relationships are affected by social media. Drama quickly unfolds when a dropped Skype connection with his girlfriend causes him to overanalyze that she might be cheating on him with a classmate who constantly leaves flirtatious comments on her photos on Facebook. After quickly consulting with his (hilariously named) friend Kayne East, he decides to log into her Facebook account suspecting a break-up is in on the horizon. This is a fantastic depiction of how technology is affecting relationships in a way that has not been done before. Born as a school project, Noah has gone on to earn the recognition it deserves after picking up the Best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto Film Festival a couple months back. Noah is an absolutely must-see.

Stay tuned for an interview with the filmmakers of Noah

Home

There are two major issues that are brought up in the ten minute short film entitled Home. The first is an elderly woman whose mind is rapidly fading and stuck back in time with an image of her youthful former self. The second is that her regular nurse turns out to be her own child, who she does not recognize nor remembers that she abandoned long ago. The intensity of emotions regarding the situation between the estranged relationship between the mother and daughter is carried out well by the two lead actresses and the quick camera cuts attributes to the theatrical pacing. With such complex issues at hand, I feel like the film would have worked better as a feature, but Charlie Hofheimer shows off his talents as an actor-turned-director in his debut.

OneSmallProblem.com

Two single people setup a date from an aptly named dating website called OneSmallProblem.com, a website where singles who have some flaw about them can meet other imperfect individuals. The classically handsome man is enjoying a candle-lit dinner he is having with the beautiful woman he met on the site. Their first date is only shortly under way when his problem makes an appearance, or in his case it’s voice. It turns out his one problem is his obnoxiously loud talking genitals that he has no control over. As you can probably guess, this is a straight-up slapstick comedy that works well by not taking itself at all serious. The absurd comedy is not afraid to take the audience on a sidesplitting ride.

City Boots

City Boots is a classic fish out of water story about a city man who is obviously more concern about his stock portfolio than training to ride a horse on a farm. But that is precisely what he is setting out to do, even though he shows no interest in doing so. The reason why he is wants to ride a horse is not stated up front, but it is eventually revealed he must do it to impress a client after a character in the film finally asks the question that is on everyone’s mind. The concept of a man learning to respect the animal he is training is stronger than the presentation of the film.

Head Case

The idea of someone who can hear other people’s thoughts is not entirely unique, but the fact that it is causing Emma to lose her own mind is rather interesting. Sure, hearing random people thinking about how their significant other is annoying or a lonely man with cat issues brings about some hilarious results. But Head Case takes a darker turn when Emma meets a man who shares the same ability. The overall theme of “better not to know” is well enforced when they try for a relationship in which it is impossible to hide any thought from one another. Blending two distinct story varieties into a ten minute film was done effectively.

The Wedding Gown Project: One Day, One Dream, One Dress

If you think about it, the idea of spending weeks (perhaps months) picking out the perfect dress only to wear it for a few hours is a strange concept. Then the fact that you save that dress for the rest of your live, even though you have no intention to ever wear it again, makes it even more bizarre. It is not until you provide the context of how important those few hours you wear is that the idea starts to make sense. The Wedding Gown Project: One Day, One Dream, One Dress is a short documentary that highlights the significance and history of the wedding gown. For many it serves as a cherished memory of that special day. For other it can help preserve a family heirloom. The documentary does a noble job of showing both traditional and non- traditional dresses as well as marriages. At the beginning of the film it shows a young girl excited about her future white wedding dress and if the documentary was permitted a longer runtime I would have loved for it to explore how kids are trained at such a young age to romanticize about the dress.

After The Torment

There is a very impressive long shot of two people taking a walk in a New York City park near the beginning of After The Torment which also reveals the history between the two characters. It has been a year following their 20th high school reunion party where the two re-connected for the first time since graduation, and although they do rekindle some mutual attraction for each other, it turns out that one of them has turned a new corner in their life. The best parts about this short film are the authentic conversations the two have during the one day they share with each other. The cinematographer Taylor Allen does a great job of making dialog heavy scenes between the two characters an interesting watch.

Timeless

A man repeatedly insists that he can stop and rewind time to his psychiatrist, who understandably has a hard time believing that he can do so. I could not quite figure out why he was seeking help as he seemed to understand and use his ability in opportune times. Trying to explaining it to a psychiatrist proves to be an uphill battle. The impressive part about the short film Timeless is that it is a byproduct of a 48 hour short film project in which the theme of the film is given to you. Had the filmmakers been given more than 48 hours to complete the film, the script could have shown its full potential.