Lawrence.com

If you hear people talking about the KAN Film Festival, don't be disappointed if you discover that Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor are nowhere to be found, the beach faces no ocean and the accents are distinctly Midwestern. KAN may lack the glamour of the eminent French festival at Cannes, but it gives local viewers a welcome break from stale blockbusters.

Since being founded by Dennis Christesen in 1992, the festival has also introduced movie audiences to Kansas and Missouri filmmakers who later made their mark internationally. KAN audiences got to catch Tim DePaepe's Lawrence-set documentary "Shades of Gray" before it moved on to festivals in Brussels and San Francisco. Before he was directing episodes of popular TV shows like "Ally McBeal" and "The West Wing," Alex Graves appeared at KAN with his El Dorado-shot film "Crude Oasis." Kevin Willmott and Mitch Brian, who wrote the NBC miniseries "The '70s," have consistently participated. Even some of the student contestants have gone on to bigger venues. Teen-ager Alyssa Buecker's locally made short films starring guinea pigs even landed her an HBO contract.

Frequent filmmaker

Throughout the growing history of the festival, one of the constants has been Overland Park's Todd Norris. From his 1994 entry "Night of the Growling" on, Norris has written, scored, directed, edited and even starred in a variety of films, several of which have won the top prizes in the festival. In fact, last year Norris won the Open Division (30 minutes and under) with a more polished remake of "Growling," just as he did with the previous film.

"I 'peaked' early," he quips. "I've had a lot of luck with that story."

Norris' latest entries include "Don't Even," a look at the dangers of examining suspicious noises in the closet, and "Parallax," a film that features Norris chasing an intruder who may be himself. The latter is tricky to describe, but it's a strong contender because he and co-director John McGrath won first place in the local division narrative category for the project at this year's Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee. Nonetheless, "Don't Even" has a soft spot in his heart.

"I shot it in one night and edited it in one week," he says. "I did my own lighting. It was fun using actors, and my mug isn't in it."

The choices

Just as Norris' movies can be different from each other ("Night of the Growling" is a comedy, "Don't Even" is a horror entry and "Parallax" bends genres), many of the offerings in this year's festival are distinct. Lawrence resident Barbara Lindstrom's "The Great Pancake Race" is a 7-minute look at an unusual competition that involves women from the Kansas town of Liberal and Olney, England. The contestants, who must be married female residents from the two communities, engage in a three to four-block dash while holding skillets and flipping their contents.

"I hadn't lived (in Liberal), but I always read about the race and was really fascinated by it," Lindstrom recalls. "People talk about unusual events, but I wanted to know more about it. The Kansas history of it goes back about 50 years, but it goes back 500 years in another part of the world. There are probably other unusual races, but this one is a Kansas story.

"At one time, (the Liberal race) was a huge international event. It sort of lost interest because it was very small townish in a way. To me it describes what an area goes through to put themselves on a map and what people do to be remembered. It's an interesting, quirky little race that people get really excited about."

If Lindstrom was drawn to her subject matter by curiosity, Kansas Citian Joy Moeller took a more personal approach with her look at how Cowtown has embraced the Argentine tango in the 15-minute "Tango Kansas City: An Experiment in Dance, Music, Film and Video." It doesn't take long to discover that she's more than a casual fan of the dance. When contacted for this story, she was on her way to a tango session.

"I learned (how to tango) two years ago," Moeller says. "Last year after a film festival I went to, I was drawn to the documentary category. I had made attempts, but it was very hard for me to do because you can't script it. You have to take a real interest in it because you have to follow it for so long. I started thinking there's got to be something that I love that could hold my interest long enough to make a film about it. I needed to start somewhere the scene was big and there were people I knew well who were involved, so I'd feel comfortable conversing with them because it was my first documentary attempt. So I chose tango."

Location, location, location

Like Moeller, Free State High School seniors Eric Dobbins and Nick Reimond looked to their hometown for inspiration. Their 10-minute crime drama "The Bellman," which stars Dobbins as a bellhop who stumbles upon a cocaine deal, was shot entirely at the Eldridge Hotel.

"It's a historic building," Dobbins says. "To think they'd let us in and terrorize around it � but Nick's the head bellman."

Reimond, who took care of most of the behind-the-camera chores on "The Bellman," says, "We were lucky to use the connection with me working there. In public places, you can't just go shoot. You have to ask. (The Eldridge) is such a big place, and some of the rooms are so dark. There's a variance. You can shoot outside on the fire escape. You can shoot inside in the dark or at the bar. It's a good place to film."

Dobbins adds, "We came to class with a final project like this, and most people would do stuff about a kid trying to skip class."

Another filmmaker who has benefited from his choice of locations is Tristan S. Cook, an 18-year-old high school senior from St. Charles, Mo. His imaginative and frequently head-spinning entry "Oratorio of the Grotesques, op. 7" is competing in the Open Comedy/Drama category because its 56-minute length disqualifies it from the student competitions.

Shot on digital video, the movie incorporates touches of surrealism and existentialism but remains oddly engrossing � not bad for a flick that's set almost entirely in a bathroom. Speaking from his home, Cook explains how sticking his protagonist (Zack Smithey) in such a seemingly unfilmable location can become cinematic.

"You have to look beyond it being just a bathroom," he says. "You have to look at not only what a bathroom represents but just about anything that could happen. It's almost like (a tone of jest enters his voice) a bathroom of the mind. I felt I kind of set up an existential tale here in that the bathroom is this bleak metaphysical world where you have this protagonist who's faced with certain decisions."

Cook demonstrates a remarkable cinematic vocabulary. He can talk about movies by Ingmar Bergman and Luis Bunuel with considerable erudition. For example, he cites how an image in his own movie (where a man puts his arm on his hero's shoulder, and it remains even though the man has walked off) as an homage to Jean Cocteau. Still, much of the inspiration is his.

"There were certain times when I was making the film that I thought, 'This isn't going to work.' The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I'd go to bed at night, and this would just haunt me. I couldn't sleep because this movie was inside of me, and I couldn't get it out."

Tools and talent

Cook was able to achieve some of his images through low-tech means (thanks to an off-screen ladder, a young woman seems to fall to the floor from nowhere) and through filmic trickery.

"The scenes where we had all of the movement a little weird, we shot that backwards. I reversed the footage to make it look forward," he says.

The technology that makes some of these images possible has reached the point to where one finalist was able to create his entry without ever leaving his apartment. KU film major Jeremy Osbern, a graduate of Free State High School, won at KAN last year for his anti-smoking documentary "Evaporated." This year's entry, a music video for the Johnny Socko tune "I Like Cows," was somewhat less demanding.

"I did it in an hour one night when I was bored," he says. "It's a bunch of still pictures of cows. I just went on the Internet and typed in "cows" in the search engine. I just put all these pictures together. I thought it was a really funny song, and I'd like to do something with it."

Although "I Like Cows" demonstrates Osbern's ability to use the Final Cut Pro editing software (on which he created some animated cattle), he admits, "I wasn't expecting this one to make it. I did two horror movies that didn't get in. I seem to have a knack with getting things in that I entered at the last minute."

Norris also has put computer technology to use in his work. "Parallax" is told through split-screen images, while "Don't Even" features some eerily believable computer-generated effects. Yet he's also proud that "Night of the Growling" was shot on film and believes that computer filmmaking tools should be used judiciously.

"I'm on the fence," he claims. "I grew up with 'Star Wars,' and (the technology) is really exciting. I've reverted back to my 12-year-old self, but I hope it will be tempered by an adult sensibility and be more than good guys and bad guys."

Moeller shot most of "Tango Kansas City" in broadcast-quality video, but some of the dance sequences are in grainy Super 8 black-and-white.

"I wanted to give out visually, through the editing and through the use of video and film, the different moods that you would pass through as you dance," she explains. "I like going from something that's black-and-white and grainy and very archival to something that's completely bright, colorful and vibrant. For my feedback, there's an even split between people who say, 'I would have left out the color stuff when you're dancing' and 'I couldn't make out the black-and-white. It's too blurry.'"

She adds with a chuckle, "I kind of feel I've got a nice harmony because I'm getting half and half in the response."

Eyes on the prize

KAN does offer its contestants prizes for their efforts, like U.S. Savings Bonds and an Eastman Kodak film stipend. Merely getting in has its perks.

According to Reimond, "It hasn't influenced (Dobbins and me) much because it's our first year, but it's good to have because it gives you something to strive for. Otherwise, you make a film, and they say, 'Oh, yeah. It's good,' and it'll just sit in a media room. (KAN) is part of the community, and people attend it."

Osbern adds, "It's helpful to have a deadline. I really like writing, editing and doing all these different things, but I'll get caught up in one and won't finish anything."

Just a start

KAN has become a convenient launching point for many of these filmmakers, but it probably won't be enough to keep them. Just as locally born giants Walt Disney and Robert Altman had to move away before they found success, Cook is on his way to New York University, and Reimond is headed for the University of Southern California.

"If you want to do filmmaking as a career, you have to be in New York or L.A.," Reimond says. "Still, Lawrence is a good place to do creative things in general because it's a college town and it's more liberal and conducive to the creative process in general. We have it better here than someone in say, Great Bend."

Dobbins interjects, "We made this one movie up on campus our sophomore year. We were waiving this gun around. Nobody bothered us much when they saw the movie camera."

"We were yelling, and people were chasing each other," Reimond adds. "It's amazing what you can get away with and what people write off as normal when someone in the group is holding a camera."