The Fargo Film Festival: From Modest Beginnings, a Fargo Tradition

Since 1999, when the historic Fargo Theatre re-opened its doors after a 2.6 million dollar restoration project, the theatre has reclaimed its role as the cultural center of Downtown Fargo. That same year, a group of avid supporters of film, and of the cultural community that was just beginning to thrive here, proposed the theatre as a site for the 2000 Library of Congress Film Preservation Tour. From there, and with the guidance of film-lover and educator Ted Larson (whose legacy lives on through the festival), the proposal became reality and kindled support for an annual Fargo Film Festival, the first of which was first held in March of 2001.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” says Director Margie Bailly, “or whether we’d get submissions or not. And we probably got maybe 25 actual submissions to be juried” Since then, the Film Festival has simply flourished in Fargo.

Now, in 2008, it’s a much different scenario. “This year we had over 120 submissions in all juried categories so it’s grown exponentially, continues to grow, and this year we have more filmmakers coming from out of town than ever before.” This year’s submissions represented 16 U.S. states and 7 countries.
I have to admit, this came as a surprise to me because, like a lot of Fargo citizens, I often catch myself thinking that we have little to nothing to offer outsiders.

But Margie begs to differ. “The big changes that have happened are that more and more people are finding out about us. Fargo has always had that…Fargo-esque mystique, that funky kinda…people wonder! They don’t really know who we are…but they’re intrigued by what we are and who we are. ”
The film festival is definitely a part of this “mystique” and I feel like it’s part of why Fargo is becoming the little town that could. Although the festival is never going to become a big celebrity destination each year, that’s not what the film festival or Fargo is about. I think in that, we have something to be collectively proud of. So does Margie.

“I think we’ve developed a product, so to speak, that we can be proud of and that we can point to and say ‘this is something that is truly unique, uniquely ours.’” She goes on to say, “There are independent film festivals all over the place but I think that we’ve developed a unique character for our festival. We’re never going to be a place where the major distributors come and make major deals, but we can be a place where young, emerging, fresh, and really exciting creative voices can see their work on the big screen in a wonderful theatre.”

On many a boring, snowy night, I have popped onto the internet and looked at what was showing around the theaters in Fargo. For entertainment purposes, movies are the perfect antidote to winter blues and boredom. But film is so much more than that. It’s an art of communication that touches the human soul in a way that transcends entertainment.

The people who put the Fargo Film Festival together each year recognize that a film-maker is an artist who relies on human empathy to communicate. The synthesis of emotion, sight, and sound all come together to communicate life in an experience that is unique, different than that of any other medium. For eight years now, the film festival has brought Fargo the experience of film and without it, we would miss out on so much.

This year, from the documentary “Children of Leningradsky,” which explores the experience of children who starve in Moscow’s train stations, to the feature-length narrative “Hollywood Dreams,” a fictional film that follows a damaged young woman’s journey toward fame, the Fargo Film Festival provides a window for us all to peer into the variety of human experience. Out of the 60 films selected for screening this year, it is certainly the case that there is a lot to be seen through that window.

Please support the Fargo Film Festival because film matters. It matters to film-makers, it matters to the theatre, and most of all, it matters as a source of culture in our community. Art is what makes life rich and varied. In these winter days as we wait for spring to emerge, we need it.