The Tallgrass film festival is entering its 23rd year of showcasing small, independent films made by filmmakers trying to get their start. The films showcased are from both Wichita community members and from people beyond.
The film festival is made for the community, with partnerships with businesses and organizations around the Wichita area. One of these partnerships this year is with the Wichita State history department.
“It’s really about engaging the larger community and getting the community to be thinking about some bigger issues,” Wichita State history professor Jay Price said. “We’re thrilled to have that.”
Tallgrass Film Association, the organization that runs the festival, was founded in 2002, under the name Wichita Association for Motion Picture Arts, and the first Tallgrass Film Festival was held in October 2003.
The association holds its annual film festival in October every year.
Several of the board members who work for Tallgrass are Wichita natives, like Andre Seward, the programming director of Tallgrass. Seward began his relationship with the association through volunteer work in high school.
“(I) actually volunteered doing different things during the festival, and then after high school, I started reviewing films,” he said. “During college, I was still volunteering, still reviewing films for a while.”
As the programming director, Seward oversees the film selection process and organizes the submitted films for the festival.
Films are submitted in the winter, and a board of volunteer viewers watches them and provides the first round of feedback. Then, it comes to Seward, and he is in charge of making sure each of the films is watched. Then the film list is narrowed down based on the originality of the films and their “freshness.”
“Something that’s super new and well made is going to be more interesting to us, usually, than a film that’s more or less old,” Seward said. “Not always the case, but it can be a deciding factor for (when we’re) stuck between two films.”
Another factor Seward considers is current events in the world, thinking about how the audience will be affected.
The festival showcases several different types of films, from documentaries to animated, long and short. Each night of the festival, there are the “gala films,” which are the films that Seward and his team wanted to showcase.
“These are the films that we hope would have a wide appeal … we focus in the evenings around seven or eight with the idea that’s kind of the film for the evening,” he said. “During the day, people kind of have to choose what to watch.”
One of the daytime films this year, titled “A brief history of chasing storms,” comes with a community partnership between the Wichita State History Department and the Tallgrass Association.
Jay Price has worked with Tallgrass in the past and is renewing that relationship this year with the community partnership.
“I think the real root of this goes back … to a book project that I did with a number of students and with Craig Torbenson, and we did a book called ‘Kansas in the Heart of Tornado Alley,’” Price said. “This was a book … really to understand what does it mean to be in Tornado Alley and why are we that easy … the book was really about the history of tornadoes … it’s also a story about the recovery”
The community partnership is a helpful factor in bringing the community to both the campus and the film association, according to Price.
This year, Seward said that there is such a wide range of films that there is something for everybody.
“Any type of person can come to the festival and find something that they would enjoy,” he said.
He also said that the organization is always looking for volunteers and people interested in film. Those interested can go to the Tallgrass website.
