Short films at the Tallgrass Film Festival reflect on the history and landscape of Kansas
"The Interior Frontier," "Color Me Wichita," "Unwarranted: The Senseless Death of Journalist Joan Meyer," and "Electra Wasp” approach Kansas subjects from different directions.
One of the great pleasures of the Tallgrass Film festival is its robust short film programming. Within the space of an hour or two, viewers are introduced to numerous emerging and independent filmmakers, many of whom live in Kansas or who came here to work on their film projects.
Of the dozens of shorts that screened at the 22nd annual festival, held October 24-27 in downtown Wichita, a handful made bold statements about the Kansas landscape and its history and culture.
"The Interior Frontier"
20 minutes
Screened with the feature film "Bajo Naranja" at 5 p.m. Friday, October 25 at Century II
Director Justin Clifford Rhody’s “The Interior Frontier” serves both as an homage to a 1975 educational film about a family braving their first winter on a Kansas homestead and an ambiguous meditation on the meaning of the frontier.
You don’t need to have seen Barbara Loden’s “The Frontier Experience” to appreciate “The Interior Frontier,” but the two films make for an interesting double feature, and the latter includes multiple visual references to Loden’s work. They’re connected, in part, by their treatment of the landscape of central Kansas — less desolate now than in the 19th century, but still marked by a stark horizon line and an unrelenting wind. Throughout the film, three figures in period costume are pictured negotiating the landscape: farmland and ponds, but also a gas station and a skating rink.
Rhody and Abigail Smith, who co-wrote and star in the film, are the proprietors of Santa Fe’s No Name Cinema, which showcases experimental and avant-garde films, videos, and visual art. Along with collaborator Alys Griego, they filmed “The Interior Frontier” on a road trip to Greensburg, Kansas, home of the Big Well, which is prominently featured in the film.
Made using nine different film stocks, many of them expired, “The Interior Frontier” is a mediative record of the Kansas landscape, accompanied by diary-like, lyrical subtitles.
we saw many things during our travels
but mostly we saw the horizon line
a straight razor across our vision
where the sky ends at the land,
stubbled golden or snow swept
“The Interior Frontier” is the newest entry into a group of works I think of as the prairie canon. — Emily Christensen
“Color Me Wichita”
20 minutes
Screened as part of the Kansas Mixed Bag Shorts program at 12:30 p.m. Friday, October 25, at the Orpheum Theatre
Charity and Sara, aka the Harmon Sisters, love them some Wichita history. You may be familiar with Sarah Harmon’s documentary “For Your Amusement: The Wonderland Park on Ackerman Island,” which tells the little-known story of a playground for adults on the Arkansas River in the early 20th century. “Who Scammed Rajah Rabbit?,” the sisters’ first documentary collab, covers a wild 1920s local scam.
Artists, filmmakers, and offbeat influencers, this creative team loves to investigate subjects that spark their imagination. They learn more about the history behind the mystery, then embark on a creative journey, taking their followers along. That’s exactly what happens in “Color Me Wichita.”
With Charity and Sara as our guides, we tour Steampunk Village, the art environment of local creator Gary Pendergrass. The village is populated with trippy, mostly metal sculptures that Gary builds for hours a day. His work inspires the sisters to create a steampunk-style artwork, which they do. This was an unexpected but fun take, but I would love to see them do more in-depth interviews with folks like Gary. The Harmons’ unconventional point of view is quirky in all the right ways, so why not take a deeper dive? — Teri Mott
“Unwarranted: The Senseless Death of Journalist Joan Meyer”
38 minutes
Screened in the Kansas Mixed Bag Shorts program at 12:30 p.m. Friday, October 25, at the Orpheum Theatre
When former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody raided the Marion County Record on August 11, 2023, he didn’t think twice about his body camera, which captured nearly everything he did and said that shocking day. He was that sure he was in the right.
This was also true of the police officers Cody sent to raid the home of Joan Meyer and her son Eric, the co-owners of the small-town Kansas newspaper. Joan, 98, had been a journalist most of her adult life. During the raid, she made it clear that she knew it was illegal. Body camera video captured her rage as well as the officers’ outright dismissal of her.
The resulting footage is a vital part of “Unwarranted," a tribute to the woman who lived her life for journalism and for her community. The powerful documentary, directed by Wichita Eagle journalists Jaime Green and Travis Heying and produced by Michael Roehrman, is also an important record of a violation of our First Amendment. — Teri Mott
“Electra Wasp”
6 minutes
Screened as part of the Tim Gruver Kansas Shorts program at 10 a.m. Saturday, October 26, at the Orpheum Theatre
Note: This review was previously published as part of our coverage of the Doc Sunback Film Festival.
Director Wasan Hayajneh used materials from the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kansas, for her animated meditation on the pioneering aviator, who died on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean. The archival materials Hayajneh borrows lend her work authenticity and visual texture, but the film is more a dreamy evocation of Earhart’s spirit than a historically accurate treatment of her life.
For one thing, “Electra Wasp” — the title a reference to Earhart’s airplane engine — entertains a scenario in which the aviator survives a crash landing on a remote Pacific Island. From there, the film shifts between history and reverie, using multiple visual techniques, an effective score (Michael Benedict), and a confident voiceover performance (Teri Parker-Brown) to convey Earhart’s joy in flying. The film contains Easter eggs for Earhart-philes and signals for newbies, such as a reference to Neta Snook, the woman who taught Earhart how to fly in the 1920s.
One of the standout films on the Doc Sunback schedule, "Electra Wasp" introduces Hayajneh as an animator to watch. — Emily Christensen
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