Film making

This course coversthebasicsofnarrative fictionfilmmaking.Graduatesofthe course willhave aworking comprehensionofpreproduction,production,andpostproduction filmpractices.Thisincludesscreenwriting, professionaldigitalcameraoperation, lighting,sound recording,directing ac tors, editing,andmastering.Eachgraduate leaves theprogramwiththe experienceofworking with asmallcrew to producetwo narrative fictionshor tfilmseachsemester.

Eveningclassesstarting September2022

Classesareoncea week fortwo andahalf hourseachsession.

Forages16+

Non-refundable registration feeof$25

Class feeof$200perstudent https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

JANE’S COMET

Director: Peter Groynom

Genre: Narrative MN/13 min

Starting in 1997, Jane’s life changes every time a mysterious comet enters the solar system.

Contact Traces

Director: Kevin Obsatz

Genre: Narrative MN/8 min

Science fiction or everyday reality? An intimate, wordless portrait of a couple riding out the pandemic in a small cabin in the woods – filmed entirely from outside the cabin with long lenses.

Static Space

Director: John Klein and Kate Black-Spence

Genre: Narrative IL/28 min

When Jamie’s quiet rural life is disrupted by a signal from Noa’s one-woman space shuttle, they find a powerful connection. Can it be sustained even though they’re worlds apart?

Lloyd Kennedy Professional Sasquatch Photographer

Director: Rodney Johnson

Genre: Narrative MN/9 min

Lloyd Kennedy is frustrated, failing, going in circles… literally. He needs to adapt and to work smarter if he is ever going to become the world’s first professional Sasquatch photographer. It would be a good start if he could find a Sasquatch.

Lost Beyond The Stars

Director: Kayla Arend (in attendance!)

Genre: Narrative WY/9 min

Lorena wakes up on a strange planet. She discovers that she is the captain of a Mars exploration troop.

Neurogenesis

Director: Josh Cisewski (in attendance!)

Genre: Narrative MN/8 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

Twin brothers conduct a series of electrochemical experiments in an attempt to transfer skills by linking minds.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27TH SHORT BLOCK – CREATIVE THERAPY

(Imaginative Remedies) 50min | 6:30 PM | Zinema 2 | Followed by Q&A session

DYS/FUNCTION

Director: Kendra Shoemaker (in attendance!)

Genre: Documentary

Duluth, MN/12 min

In this film I wanted to show how I go about my daily life with ADHD and to help educate others, as it is still a widely misunderstood condition.

Stitch

Director: PaChia Vang (in attendance!)

Genre: Experimental MN/4 min

A Hmong American woman finds healing and solace in sewing Paj Ntaub while persevering through traumatic events during the COVID pandemic.

LOVE STORY?

Director: Crystal Coreen

Genre: Dance OH/4 min

A dysfunctional relationship with America depicted through movement, song, and spoken work.

SPINNING PLATES & RAZZLE DAZZLE

Director: Jeremy Nelson (in attendance!)

Genre: Documentary

TX/MN/13 min

This documentary follows a musical conversation between producer and artist, chronicling the stages of fully realizing a song from demo to produced and recorded over the course of a day.

Devour

Director: Kate Raney

Genre: Animation OH/3 min

Consumption considered, the din of dining. Using reference videos from my front yard, I created animations and collaged them with cyanotypes of garden material and audio field recordings from travels near and far.

HEHE’E

PATTY PERSHAYLA & THE MAYHAPS – SLO MO

Director: Hwa-Jeen Na (in attendance!)

Genre: Music Video MI/5 min

Official music video for Patty PerShayla & The Mayhaps’ song SLO MO off their new album “Cheap Diction.”

Director: Keoloha Ferreira (in attendance!) Genre: Dance | MN/8 min

Dance film directed and performed by Kealoha Ferreira for Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival. He‘e is an octopus; a line that supports the mast; it is the process of melting, flowing, spreading; an avalanche; a softening. What is the sickness you wish to cast away?

The Little Log House

Director: Sean A Skinner

Genre: Documentary/Recon MN/8 min

Hastings, Minnesota 1987…Steve was helping a neighbor tear down a home. During the demo process, Steve discovered logs under the siding of the home that dated back to the 1850s. Instead of continuing to demolish the structure, Steve saved the cabin and moved it to his farm.

AWAKENING

Director: Julie Koehnen (in attendance!)

Genre: Narrative MN/14 min

When a young social elite at the turn of the 19th century explores life as a modern woman, she risks losing the man she loves and a certain future.

SADIE BREAKS THE SILENCE

Director: Tom Brandau

Genre: Narrative MN/13 min

When the director is drunk and a producer demands results, the gutsy scenario writer on a 1920s movie shoot is determined to start and finish the film, even when she’s faced with pushback from her cast and crew.

Indelible

Director: Shane Rock Nelson (in attendance!)

Genre: Narrative MN/9 min

The spirits of a cranky 97-year-old man are lifted when he plays the piano for memory care patients. His music eases their angst and elicits indelible memories, momentarily freeing them from the trap of dementia.

Digestif

Director: Eve Van Dyke

Genre: Narrative CA/8 min

Five friends come together for their yearly ritual they call the Digestif.

Always Tomorrow

Director: Martin King

Genre: Narrative Thunder Bay – Sister City/9 min

Brad does not know if he wants to leave his family and friends behind for his dream of being a sailor.

French Riviera

Director: Samantha Erkkila

Genre: Documentary Duluth, MN/9 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

For many, deer hunting in Minnesota is a tradition passed down to mostly the men in the family. But this deer shack in Aitkin County tells a much different story.

Kicking The Clouds

Director: Sky Hopinka

Genre: Experimental WA/15 min

This film is a reflection on descendants and ancestors, guided by a 50-year-old audio recording of my grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother.

Dad Tax

Director: Ida Lasic

Genre: Animation CA/3 min

An experimental tribute film to the artist’s relationship between her father and how they contradict yet blend together.

HOW DO WE HAVE THIS MEAL?

Director: Dairys Escoto De León

Genre: Stop Motion CA/4 min

An encounter between two cultures, the joys and hardships, and sharing a meal.

Six Feet Over

Director: Joe Tufte

Genre: Narrative OH/9 min

Alex is tasked with cleaning up his late father’s house the day before the funeral, and deals with how to present himself come time for him to attend.

I Wish You Happy Moon Festival

Director: Xiaolu Wang

Genre: Documentary MN/3 min

One overseas phone call, but one phrase was lost to the receiver of the call.

The Death Of My Father

Director: Lex Kimbrough

Genre: Narrative NC/18 min

An eerie yet touching story of a son’s unyielding love for his immobile father.

Ghostly Form

Family Recipe

Director: Kamari Bright

Genre: Documentary 5 min

A girl’s baking lesson from her grandfather teaches her acceptance as she learns the similarities between ingredients and people.

Director: Seokyoung Yang Genre: Experimental | CA/9 min

BAAHAR (OUTSIDE)

Director: Prakshi Malik (in attendance!)

Genre: Narrative MN/13 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

Disaster brews when Seher gets accepted to a boarding school-a dream come trueon the evening of a big family dinner.

After experiencing the prolonged illness and eventual loss of my father, I went through a mental and physical breakdown. In particular, I suffered from an eating disorder. I sometimes binge eat and other days, I barely eat. I think fasting is the only way to get closer to my father and punish myself by suffering from guilt. While attempting to manifest his presence through his absence, how do I use the cinema to express something unseeable and immaterial?

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 SHORT BLOCK – RESILIENT VULNERABILITY

(Exploratory Edits) 62min | 4:00 PM | Zinema 1

PARKED

Director: Yoon Hei Cho

Genre: Animation CA/4 min

An incident of an inconvenient attack at a parking lot. Panic attacks sometimes strike at an unsuspected moment.

RESILIENCY IS INHERITED

Director: Sequoia Hauck (in attendance!)

Genre: Experimental MN/5 min

MNI SOTA MAKOCE IS THE ANCESTRAL LAND OF THE DAKOTA PEOPLES. THIS LAND LOOKS VERY DIFFERENT NOW THAN IT ONCE DID.

Pottero

Director: Lindsey Martin

Genre: Animation OH/10 min

Pottero uses a reflexive framework. It’s a folktale within a folktale featuring my family monster, a violent beast who suffers from a disturbing anatomical abnormality.

MARY ANNE & FRANK

Director: Jingjing Tin

Genre: Narrative NY/10 min

A reclusive senior citizen seeks a release from reality as she struggles to say goodbye to a loved one.

WATER

Director: Lily Berg (in attendance!)

Genre: Animation MN/3 min

Arianna jumps off a bridge and is saved by the Water Lady, who gives her a choice between life and death.

Oliver Sees Indigo

Men Who Talk

Director: Cristin Stephens

Genre: Documentary TX/13 min

“Men Who Talk” sits with the stories of Brazilian men who grapple with new understandings of race that validate their experiences and traumas.

Director: Ryan Clancy (in attendance!) Genre: Experimental | MI/14 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

An attempt to regain attachment following a period of heroin addiction, near-death experiences, and oxytocin deficiency. The camera shifts between moments of fragile devotion as it searches for a higher power in threads of shared suffering. Oliver, is heaven only for the high?

SATURDAY, APRIL 30TH SHORT BLOCK – FOR THE FAMILY

55min | 10:30 AM | Zinema 1

The Gift

Director: Rachel Garrick

Genre: Animation

Thunder Bay – Sister City/4 min

A lesson in compassion and generosity results in a lifelong gift. Set in a small Northwestern Ontario town, a father takes an opportunity to pass on important teachings to his daughter.

Bellysaurus

Director: Philip Watts

Genre: Animation Australia/8 min

A tiny dinosaur dreams she is a scary big dinosaur. When danger strikes, she learns it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Literally.

Cat And Bird

Director: Franka Sachse

Genre: Animation

Germany/7 min

A white bird living in a black world encounters a black cat living in a white world. The moment they meet, their backgrounds literally collide. An animated short film for the whole family.

Skin Like Mine

Director: Tiffany Burgess and Stanley Aughtry

Genre: Animation GA/8 min

“Skin Like Mine” describes young Brittany’s courageous journey from self-doubt to self-love and acceptance.

She Dreams At Sunrise

Director: Camrus Johnson

Genre: Animation

UK/10 min

Gerry lives a monotonous, daily routine led by her optimistic great-nephew and caretaker. Although he tries to make her smile, she’s rarely in the mood. Gerry’s already found her new source of joy, but she can’t access it while awake.

Something About The Stars

Transaster

Director: Dana Pellebon (In attendance!)

Genre: Narrative Youth WI/14 min

Rayna and Nora are teammates on a high school volleyball team, but will Rayna’s intolerance over Nora’s friendship with Cole, who is trans, cost them a championship?

Director: Hannah Goodrich Genre: Animation | MN/3 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

“Something About the Stars” is a short, animated, poetic documentary that depicts my memory of looking at the stars in the Cook Islands. Through silhouette stop-motion, this film explores the juxtaposition of the reality of memory versus the perception of memory.

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 SHORT BLOCK – TIME, PLACES AND SPACES

80min

Diary

Director: Gillian Waldo

Genre: Experimental WI/15 min

“Diary” is an essay film that uses personal reflections and landscapes of the city to document the larger forces acting on Baltimore during the summer of 2020.

A Valley Without Trees

Director: Janelle Vanderkelen

Genre: Experimental WI/6 min

In “A Valley Without Trees,” the lowly onion that burrows into the soil and spends most of its life underground is cast as an interpreter or potential sensory prosthetic that offers a different way of understanding (and perhaps communicating with) the land, planet, and cosmos in which it grows.

Other Tidal Effects

Director: Sofia Theodore-Pierce (in attendance!)

Genre: Experimental WI/7 min

Catamenial seizures, tidal correspondences, a sonic EEG, and a lullaby in partial translation. Highlighting the seams with the darts. An exploration of epileptic rhythms and sensations through moving image practice.

Milwaukee Night And Day

Director: Dick Blau

Genre: Experimental WI/18 min

The distillation of 10 years of looking at one square block in the very middle of an American city. A film made from stills that challenges them to move. Beauty, pathos, and turmoil, all in the course of a Joycean day.

Thy Name Is Suffering

Director: Dan Black (in attendance!)

Genre: Experimental WI/13 min

Encounters at the edges of imperialism. An experimental documentary concerning mega-corp Foxconn’s Wisconsin Deal.

Looking Backward

Director: Ben Balcom (in attendance!)

Genre: Experimental WI/10 min

Filmed on the former grounds of Black Mountain College, Looking Backward is a brief elegy to the legacy of a utopian college and other impossible projects.

The Reversal

Director: Jen Boles Genre: Documentary | IL/11 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

The Reversal animates a collection of thousands of glass-plate negatives with an original sound composition to evoke the reverse-engineering of the Chicago River and the invisible and haunted histories of our capital-driven infrastructure and landscapes.

THURSDAY, APRIL 28TH SHORT BLOCK – TRUTH TO POWER

The Boy Who The Bullet Followed

Director: Russell Nichols

Genre: Animation CA/2 min

Based on the poem, “The Boy Who the Bullet Followed” by Russell Nichols, this animated short tells the tale of a boy who could use a friend and finds in the street a stray bullet in need.

Once Forgotten

Director: Obed Lamy

Genre: Documentary AK/23 min

In summer 1856, the state of Arkansas and lynch mob executed three enslaved individuals: Anthony, Aaron, and Randall. They were accused of killing a white slave owner. Just one side of their story has been told by the white family over successive generations. An oral account of the events preserved in the Black community helps bring out the truth and honor their memories.

Salt River Nibi Walk

Director: Jenny Zander (in attendance!)

Genre: Documentary MN/18 min

On a reservation in Montana where tribal members are outnumbered four to five, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal community fight to protect their people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Protecting Our People

Director: Brooke Swaney

Genre: Documentary MT/21 min

The distillation of 10 years of looking at one square block in the very middle of an American city. A film made from stills that challenges them to move. Beauty, pathos, and turmoil, all in the course of a Joycean day.

Golden Jubilee

Director: Suneil Sanzgiri

Genre: Experimental NY/18 min

While navigating a virtual rendering of an ancestral home in Goa, 16mm direct animation, digital renderings, and surveillance technologies form a poem-reflection on colonialism’s legacy on a family and land.

Rockford To Duluth

Director: Nicholas Stange (in attendance!)

Genre: Documentary IL/17 min

“Rockford to Duluth” is an extension of the “We Demand” series, which takes a raw and intimate look at the May 30th Alliance’s fight to address issues of police brutality and systemic racism in Rockford, Illinois. The goal of “Rockford to Duluth” is to show the parallels that exist between the Duluth Branch of the NAACP and May 30th Alliance in their goal to eliminate racial discrimination so marginalized communites can achieve true political, educational, social and economic equality.

And Again

Director: Joseph Schlapsi

Genre: Horror

Thunder Bay – Sister City/2 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

A single guy wakes to the sound of his front door closing.

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 SHORT BLOCK – HORROR

58 min | 7:00 PM | Zinema 2 | Followed by Q&A session

Displacement

Director: Wesley Johnson (in attendance!)

Genre: Horror 11 min

After the sudden and surprising loss of her parents, Aurora fights to keep her grasp on reality under the care of her disgruntled uncle.

Light On The Way Back

Director: Anthony Shirk

Genre: Horror OH/6 min

In the middle of the night, a woman is awakened from a deep sleep by a mysterious flashlight that directs her on a dark journey toward clues that reveal glimpses into the night’s events.

Hereafter

Director: Robbie Barnes

Genre: Horror OH/1 min

When a woman jogging at night notices a man stalking her, she flees for her life through a cemetery.

BITTEN, A TRAGEDY

Director: Monika Estrella Negra

Genre: Horror MN/19 min

“Bitten, a Tragedy” follows Lydia, a Black queer woman living in Philadelphia. At a Philly rave, ancestral warfare wreaks havoc on the bloodline of an unfortunate party goer, connecting Lydia to a world of blood, ritual, secrets and vengeance.

Tooth Fairy

Director: Payton Alexa McCarty-Simas (in attendance!)

Genre: Horror NY/3 min

A lonely college student contending with a recent breakup receives a gift from a secret admirer with an ASMR YouTube channel –– only to find her hypnotic online attention more visceral than what she’d been hoping for.

Reunion

Director: MR Fitzgerald (in attendance!)

Genre: Horror MN/17 min

During a viral outbreak that alters humans into something sinister, a father and daughter risk everything to bring their family back together after an infected loved one is taken by their own kind.

They Return

Director: Carlos Omar De Leon

Genre: Horror MN/7 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

When a young woman wakes up from a nightmare, she must confide in her husband and tell him about her tragic past.

SUNDAY, MAY 1

Short

BLOCK – EXCUSE ME, WHAT?

(Comedy block) 51min | 12:00 PM | Zinema 2 | Followed by Q&A session

Favorite Daughter

Director: Dana Reilly | Genre: Documentary | NY/18 min

“Favorite Daughter” is a story of an intergenerational odd couple sheltering-in-place in a lower Manhattan apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Loser

Director: Vanessa M Powers | Genre: Narrative | MN/13 min

A comedy of errors that follows a young woman through a day that goes from bad to worse. A series of misadventures leads her to the conclusion that perhaps being a “loser” isn’t so bad.

A Day In The Park

Director: Sebastian Schnabel

Genre: Narrative | MN/2 min

A group of friends come together for a barbecue in the park. Happiness all around until Kenneth stops smiling.

FUNCTIONS, UNLIMITED

Director: Cameron Crum Crumley

Genre: Narrative | IL/11 min

We follow two interconnected groups as they’re affected by a mysterious social media influencer: a man in need of confidence, a woman who just wants to see her friend — strangeness abounds!

Detective Drews

Director: Penny Pauletich

Genre: Musical | MN/7 min https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

Detective Drews learns to overcome her fears in an unusual way at her very first crime scene.

SUNDAY, MAY 1 WDSE SHORTS BLOCK

1 hr 8min | 3:00 PM | Zinema 1 | Followed by Q&A session

The WDSE•WRPT block of programming aims to showcase the diverse genres of stories told on public media. From the arts to history and storytelling to culture and identity and beyond…public media is a window to the world. It’s not easy to stage an opera in the middle of northern Minnesota. But this is the Iron Range. Where the people are stubborn. And the music of the Old World

10 min – Minnesota Historia: Duluth’s Doomed Winter Olympics

The idea of Minnesota hosting the Winter Olympics seems pretty far-fetched today. But back in 1932, Duluth had everything it needed: plenty of snow, sheets of ice and more than a couple of hills. This is the story of an Olympics that never happened in a city that never stopped dreaming.

still runs deep in their veins. Watch as a legendary concert pianist teams up with an Ojibwe language teacher, a skateboarding accordionist and talent imported from every corner of the Earth to pull off the impossible. Because big dreams happen in small towns too.

8 min – Native Report: Two Spirit Identity

We explore life for those who identify as Two-Spirit in modern times. Traditionally, Native American two-spirit people were male, female, and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people (IHS). Today, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Native people throughout North America are reviving the two-spirit role and its traditions (IHS). Do they feel they’re being accepted by their communities, and were others who identify like them accepted historically?

14 min – Supper Club

Co-owners Paul David Marturano and Rob Russo of the Iron Range Supper Club Valentini’s Supper Club reflect on their contrasting immigrant heritage from Italy and Vietnam, and the roles that their mothers have played in their culinary careers.

APRIL 27, 2022

NORTH BY NORTH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

Special Screenings

SUNDAY, MAY 1 HOME ON EARTH

Directed by Jacob White | Genre: Documentary | Ely/25min | 12:00 PM | Teatro | Followed by performance

When the Coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, Ely’s Reflections Dance Company adapted their summer show into an outdoor dance film. Witness their creative process and love of community and place in this hybrid documentary / dance film.

FRIDAY, APRIL 29

UMD STUDENT SHOWCASE

4:00-5:30 PM | Teatro | Followed by Q&A https://zeitgeistarts.com/zinema2/north-by-north-film-festival/nxn-films/

A collection of University of Minnesota-Duluth student films. Free to the public.

Support the arts!

Zeitgeist's North by North International Film Festival and Film School champion community-based independent filmmaking and film-going audiences from the Iron Range to the Twin Ports region and the greater midwest. There are financial barriers, cultural barriers, and geographic barriers to filmmaking and we’re trying to break some of those down.

If you want to see more local stories being made into films and help create access to film education and exhibition for our local artist, please donate to our film programs at: https://www.givemn.org/organization/Zeitgeist-1.