By Kellie Houx, Editor of KC Studio
About 50 films
will be part of the 10th anniversary of the Kansas International
Film Festival the first week in October. The festival will be at the Glenwood
Arts Theatre, 95th and Metcalf on the east side of the Metcalf South Shopping
Center.
Initially Kansas City’s film enthusiasts supported the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee (now the Kansas City FilmFest). “Some of us realized that the Kansas side of the metropolitan area was not being served by the festival. Ben and Brian Mossman and myself in particular, knew that a sophisticated group in Kansas had stopped going to the movies. They didn’t want to deal with the Westport and Plaza settings. When the Mossmans opened their theater, they knew they wanted to cater to a sophisticated clientele,” says founder Ben Meade.
Meade, who owns Cowtown Media Group, works on movies himself. He knows the work and the effort that goes into films. Meade’s next release is “Woke Up This Morning in the Arkansas Delta.” The film looks at the “humor, hardship, music and art that lies along the Mississippi River, largely ignored by the American people.” His film will have its debut Oct. 8 at the festival.
Films this year have come in from places such as Poland, Croatia and Australia. “Documentaries are taking over. Humans are truth trackers and if they are interested in a subject, they will either make a documentary or they will seek out a documentary. The best stories are real. That’s why there are six documentaries for every one narrative. On top of that, women make almost half. It seems intuitively, women stop and are more reflective,” Meade says.
A screening
committee reviews all the entries. Meade says the group watches films from the
beginning to the end. “I dealt with narratives this year and some of them are
pretty good and others are mediocre. Whatever area, we watch the entire films.”
The festival will also include two series of animated shorts and a thematic
evening chosen by the Independent Filmmaker’s Coalition. Mike B. Rollen’s
“Kansas City Murder Factory” will be shown. Rollen is a recent graduate in film
who studied with Meade.
“When the Kansas Film Commission asked us to add the word, ‘international,’ to our name, it added that little zest. Now we are getting 20 to 30 countries represented in the film submissions,” he says. “I can’t believe it has been 10 years. We get more respect and we are so lucky with Ben and Brian Mossman. We don’t have to beg for theater space. They just reopened the Red Bridge Theater and now we have more independent screens here than in New York City.”
