Montana movies on the silver screen
Steve Shapero is easy to spot at the Pocketstone Cafe, sipping on a cup of coffee from beneath his signature brown felt cowboy hat. The Bigfork resident and film buff is the mastermind behind the upcoming Bigfork Independent Film Festival — a two-day event that will feature 20 films made by Montana filmmakers ranging from six-minute shorts to full-length features.
Shapero lights up as he recounts the history of the festival and how it began as an off-shoot from his original venture, a retrospective film fest.
In 2016, Shapero got involved with the local theater scene and discovered that Bigfork had projection equipment that wasn’t being used. He decided to bring a slew of classic Westerns to the local silver screen.
After word got out, Shapero was approached by a local filmmaker who asked if he could show films he had produced at the festival. Although the retro film fest was limited to classic movies, Shapero thought there might be a niche for Montana-made films, too.
The following year, he screened six films during a single night at the inaugural Bigfork Independent Film Festival.
“I thought, we could expand this,” Shapero said, so for year two, he solicited submissions from filmmakers across the state.
They received over 30 Montana-made films and will air the best 20 of them at the two-day festival on April 6-7.
“This is a chance for the filmmakers to come and show their work and talk about their films,” Shapero said. “and it’s a chance for the public to see something they’ve never seen.”
Movie-goers can purchase tickets for three-hour blocks or an all-access pass, which is good for the entire weekend. Block 0, which runs from noon to 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 6, will be offered for free to the public and include three films: a short, a feature and an animated film.
In addition to the 20 independently made films, Shapero said they’ll also be screening “The Ballad of Lefty Brown” on Friday and “Walking Out” on Saturday. These feature films have since come and gone from the theater so this is a rare opportunity to see them grace the big screen, he added.
Following each block, filmmakers will take the stand for a Q&A session, where they’ll discuss their movies and answer audience questions. Also making an appearance at the BIFF are Bill Butler, an Emmy award-winning cinematographer who was the director of photography on “Jaws,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and “Rocky II, III and IV”; along with Gerald R. Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of “Schindler’s List”, “Jurassic Park” and “Rain Man.”
Local filmmaker Mitch Underhill, who entered films in last year’s festival, said the BIFF is a great opportunity to show his work to a local audience.
“The biggest benefit for festivals is exposure and some of the larger festivals, producers attend looking for films to pick up. That’s not so much what this is for, not that it can’t happen here,” Underhill said. “I’ve been making short films for quite a while and other than putting it on YouTube and telling your friends to watch it, there wasn’t really an option to show it around here. So, having a festival geared toward local films … is nice because then people I know can come and see it, people I don’t know can come and see it.”
Shapero and a handful of industry professionals narrowed down the submissions to the final 20 with the goal of presenting the audience with films in a variety of genres such as dramas, documentaries and comedies.
“By buying tickets, they’re helping to support filmmaking in Montana — it’s a very difficult thing for these folks. This isn’t Los Angeles. There’s not a lot of services around to support them. They have to do it on their own mostly. We want to help them,” Shapero said. “If you’re in Montana making movies and you’re competing against the whole world, it’s very difficult. You can send your film to Sundance, but they get 14,000 entries a year. You would be one of those. So, [BIFF] gives a platform to these guys that are starting in the business. We have something like 12 film festivals in Montana — this is the only one that’s dedicated to just Montana filmmaking.”
Cash prizes will be awarded to the top films in each category, which will be selected in part by festival attendees and a panel of Hollywood experts.
Shapero said it costs about $6,000 to put on the festival and hopes to use any surplus as seed money toward next year’s event. He also hopes that BIFF will help promote Bigfork’s reputation as a center for the arts and encourage more folks to check out the picturesque lakeside community.
“We want to get them in the habit of coming down and doing something fun,” Shapero said. “These are the cream of the crop [but] if you see a film that you don’t like in the festival, wait six minutes and another one will come.”
Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.