Observations on the 10th Annual Fargo Film Festival

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

The Fargo Film Festival celebrated its first decade last week with an intriguing variety of movies from across the country and around the world. Included were several notable student productions from the Fargo-Moorhead area that could easily hold their own against much bigger-budgeted California and New York film school submissions.

The popular two-minute movie contest had over 40 entries this year, as well as the festival’s largest attendance, packing the Fargo Theatre on Friday night.

Saturday night’s “Best of Fest” program was also very well-attended for the screenings of the winners and several honorable mentions in the major categories of narrative feature,, narrative short, animation, student film, experimental film, and the two-minute movie winner.

Screenings kicked off last Tuesday night and ran all day from Wednesday through Saturday, often with double screenings using the Fargo’s new “Off-Broadway” auditorium. Each evening featured a different theme, with invited films on Tuesday, Animated films Wednesday, documentaries Thursday, comedies Friday, and award-winners Saturday (along with the award presentations).

Unfortunately classes and other commitments allowed me to attend only Friday’s and Saturday’s programs, so I missed a number of films I’d like to have seen, but the remaining films, luncheon panels, and pre-parties were all well worth the effort to make the daily round-trip drive from Grand Forks.

Best Narrative Feature deservedly went to the moving and gripping “Tahaan,” beautifully filmed in an Islamic region of India, and one of the few pictures this year actually shown on 35mm film. The title character is a young boy whose beloved pet donkey is seized to settle family debts after his grandfather’s death. Tahaan tries everything he can think of to retrieve him from his new owner, including an ominously secret alliance with a mysterious militant gun-runner, and an exhausting mountainous trek to a neighboring village with his donkey’s new master. The film looks at first like a heartwarming look into the culture of rural India, but gradually becomes a tension-filled drama set against a devastating civil war, before ultimately resolving with an uplifting and hopeful conclusion. “Tahaan” is definitely a film to look for when it gets its inevitable video release.

“The Secret of Kells” received the “Golden Snowflake Award for Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking,” sponsored by Forum Communications, and just happened to be one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature. It sadly has received very limited theatrical exposure in favor of the other much more commercial Oscar-nominated animated films, but its stunning stylized artwork and unexpectedly antiquarian subject material make it well-worth seeking out, once the film makes it to video. The story follows the adventures of a young boy who lives in a medieval Irish monastery that is simultaneously trying to prepare for a Viking invasion and finish work on the lavishly illustrated edition of scriptures that would eventually become famous as “The Book of Kells.” The film works in elements of Irish history, folklore, and fantasy in a visually dazzling and intellectually stimulating way (perhaps why it was not a commercial hit). It should nevertheless appeal to many adults and more thoughtful children aged about 9 or 10 and older.

California filmmaker Eli Akira Kaufman won both Best Student Film and an Honorable Mention for his two movies “California King” and “Winning the Peace,” respectively. I would have reversed the awards, as “California King” was a moderately amusing if well-made romantic comedy, but his more impressively shot and edited “Winning the Peace” was a brilliantly acted and thought-provoking look at an Iraqi-American Marine sergeant’s first-hand experiences trying to help the people of his homeland.

Fargo filmmaker Tony Grosz got an honorable mention for his entertaining musical mocumentary, “May I take Your Order.”

Overlooked for awards, but equally deserving of recognition, was Moorhead filmmaker Andrew Neill’s hilarious yet thoughtful coming-of-age comedy, “Condoms.”

A surprise hit at both the Fargo Film Festival and others around the country was the Honorable Mention winner for narrative short, “Mildred Richards.” This audacious experiment by director Marc Kess was a beautifully photographed (black and white) and nicely edited visualization of a 1940s noirish murder mystery, lip-synched to an actual 1940s radio drama recording.

Winner of narrative short was Peter Besson’s romantic comedy with a bizarrely clever twist, “True Beauty This Night,” which shows a young man trying to reconnect with the woman he was smitten by after a chance meeting the night before. That chance meeting, however, is nothing like one would expect, nor is the surprise resolution.

The Fargo Film Festival has been a major asset of the region for ten years, an excellent opportunity for locals to sample the experience of the international festival circuit, and for international filmmakers to experience the legendary Fargo weather and friendly hometown attitude.

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