The Stats:

Films Submitted: 189 Features & 263 Shorts

KS Connection: 41 Kansas-connected films were submitted

Films Screened: 28 Features & 72 shorts

Visiting Filmmakers: 32. From cities including LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Albuquerque, Nashville, Boston, Seattle, Montreal & all over Kansas.

2009 Festival Attendance: 7,000

2010 Festival Dates: Stay Stubborn at the 8th annual Tallgrass Film Festival, taking place in and around downtown Wichita October 22-24, 2010!

Did you attend the festival? We’d greatly appreciate your feedback. Please take a moment to fill out this very short survey and help us prepare for next year’s event!

2009 AUDIENCE AWARD FILMS

You came. You saw. You voted.

Here’s a complete list of all of the festival winners and runners up:

Audience Award Winning Feature: SWEET CRUDE

Beginning with the filmmaker’s initial trip to document the building of a library in a remote village in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, SWEET CRUDE is a journey of multilayered revelation and ever- deepening questions. It’s about survival, corruption, greed and armed resistance. It’s about one place in one moment, with themes that echo many places throughout history.

Audience Award Winning Short: LOST PARADISE

A present-day Adam and Eve story.

Audience Award Runner Up (Feature): FISH OUT OF WATER

FISH OUT OF WATER tackles the seven Bible verses used to condemn homosexuality and justify marriage discrimination. This feature documentary uses humor and original animation to make a traditionally complex and controversial topic accessible to those who don’t like talking about religion and sexuality.

Audience Award Runner Up (Feature): FOR MY FATHER

Tarek is a young Palestinian who through unfortunate circumstances agreed to be a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv, in order to clear his father’s reputation. When the bomb malfunctions, Tarek is forced to spend the weekend in Tel Aviv where he happens into a small neighborhood and connects with Keren, a young woman cut off from her Orthodox roots. Tarek must decide if he is to go through with his assignment.

Audience Award Runner Up (Feature): HOUSE OF NUMBERS

What is HIV? What is AIDS? What is being done to cure it? These questions sent filmmaker Brent Leung on a worldwide journey, from the highest echelons of the medical research establishment to the slums of South Africa, where death and disease are the order of the day, where he observes that although AIDS has been front-page news for over 27 years, it is barely understood.

Visit their websites for future screening information and to support our alumni filmmakers! Click here to see a full lineup of films from the 2009 Tallgrass Film Festival.

NOVEMBER’S TALLGRASS 3rd THURSDAY SCREENING: NOLLYWOOD BABYLON

WAMPA and the WSU Office of International Education present November’s Tallgrass 3rd Thursday screening of NOLLYWOOD BABYLON , next Thursday, November 19th at 7 PM in the CAC Theater at WSU’s Rhatigan Student Center. Co-Director, Samir Mallal, will be in attendance to introduce the film and participate in a Q & A after the film. Tickets are $9 general admission, $7 for seniors and free for WSU students and high school students with I.D.

Directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, the movie was nominated for Sundance Film Festival’s 2009 Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary. The film delves first-hand into Nigeria’s explosive homegrown movie industry, the third largest film industry in the world, where Jesus and voodoo vie for screen time. Unfazed by low production values and shoe-string budgets, enterprising filmmakers created a brash, inventive and wildly popular form of cinema that has Nigerians Nollywood-obsessed.— Museum of Modern Art catalog

The screening is one of three film events taking place in celebration of International Education Week, Nov. 16-20 at WSU. Two 2008 Tallgrass Film Festival favorites will also be shown in conjunction with International Education Week and are both FREE and open to the public:

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN: 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 16 at the CAC Theater. Directed by Fatih Akin, this 2007 film hails from Germany, Turkey and Italy and is the winner of twenty-one international film awards, including Best Screenplay at Cannes International Film Festival.

CAPTAIN ABU RAED: 2 p.m. matinee screening, Tuesday Nov. 17 at the CAC Theater. Directed by Amin Matalqa, “Captain Abu Raed” was Jordan’s submission to 2009 Academy Awards. It is the winner of fifteen international awards including World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.

“Nollywood Babylon,” directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, a 2009 Canadian production filmed in Nigeria, was nominated for Sundance Film Festival’s 2009 Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary. The film delves first-hand into Nigeria’s explosive homegrown movie industry, Nollywood, where Jesus and voodoo vie for screen time.

Nollywood, which just began in 1992, is now the third largest film industry in the world, “an unstoppable economic and cultural force that has taken the continent by storm and is now bursting beyond the borders of Africa. Nollywood cinema was born of the street markets of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest metropolis. Unfazed by low production values and shoe-string budgets, enterprising filmmakers created a brash, inventive and wildly popular form of cinema that has Nigerians Nollywood-obsessed. In these films, voodoo and magic infuse urban stories, reflecting the kinetic collision of traditional mysticism and modern culture that Nigerians experience every day. Propelled by a booming ’70s soundtrack of African underground music, the film drops viewers into the chaos of the Idumota market. Here, among the bustling stalls, films are sold and unlikely stars are born.” —Museum of Modern Art catalog

This Tallgrass Third Thursday screening is co-sponsored by the WSU Office of International Education.

Two 2008 Tallgrass Film Festival favorites will also be shown in conjunction with International Education Week and are both FREE and open to the public:

“The Edge of Heaven,” 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 16 at the CAC Theater. Directed by Fatih Akin, this 2007 film hails from Germany, Turkey and Italy and is the winner of twenty-one international film awards, including Best Screenplay at Cannes International Film Festival.
“A beautiful, unexpectedly enrapturing story about a world in transition and both the closeness and unbridgeable divide between generations and cultures. —Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times.

”Captain Abu Raed,” 2 p.m. matinee screening, Tuesday Nov. 17 at the CAC Theater. Directed by Amin Matalqa, “Captain Abu Raed” was Jordan’s submission to 2009 Academy Awards. It is the winner of fifteen international awards including World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.
“Such a subtle yet global view of human struggle—the whole world viewed through the prism of a single poor neighborhood—is a mark of extraordinary promise from this remarkable new filmmaker.—F.X. Feeny, The Village Voice

The films are part of a weeklong celebration of international education on the Wichita State campus and around the country. International Education Week was founded in 2000 by the Clinton Administration to celebrate and promote International Education and Exchange and multi-culturalism.

Tallgrass Third Thursday special screenings are a program of Wichita Association of the Motion Picture Arts which also produces Tallgrass Film Festival. For more information about the festival, visit tallgrassfilmfest.com or contact Teri Mott at teri@tallgrassfilm.com or (614) 506-9307.