The most intimate stories are often those closest to home.
Oklahoma’s homegrown short films return to the deadCenter Film Festival with Okie Shorts Mix Tape. Divided across two volumes, the first offers an intense glimpse into the heartland, summoning the state’s spirit, problems, and charm across eight pieces.
Josh Franks’s “Road Block” follows an overly-confident, gung-ho clothespin salesman (Jacob Hightower) and his reluctant associate (Brandon Jones) through a sales outing gone awry. While the story itself is brief, the acting tandem carries it fluidly. Hightower’s bumpkin mannerisms are balanced by Jones’s grounded performance, illustrating just how close our backroads are to the metro.
Lance McDaniel’s “Send Me Wings” tells of a fashion designer’s (Rachel Cannon) journey back to her hometown after inheriting a church. The film can feel a bit congested as it attempts to reconcile spirituality in a community neglected. However, the cinematography combined with Isaac Anton and Jen Dede Kelly’s performances as Jesse and his mother brings to life a southern grotesque that can frequently feel subdued or ignored in many films about faith.
Another of the Okie Shorts Mix Tape collection’s stand-out entries is also among the briefest. Zeb Gautreaux’s “The Story Within” profiles Denise Duong, an artist renowned for murals throughout Oklahoma City. In reflecting on her art, Doung reveals the diversity and complexity of the community that in turn, fuels her work. Her monologue provides the narration as well as a frame for the ideas she colorfully captures. Though the film works well as is, one can’t help but hope this leads to a more substantial documentary on Duong.
Jacob Ryan Snovel’s “1717 Primrose” is a fun short channeling the heart of Stranger Things and Monster House as a group of kids accidentally fly a drone through the window of a mysterious neighbor’s home. Leaning on convention doesn’t hinder the short’s entertainment, and the predictable conclusion is still an invigorating one.
The music video for “Revival” by the Imaginaries harkens back to the likes of Bonnie and Clyde (if they were Okies, of course). Director Reagan Elkins does well to integrate the song’s call for a life less devious, moving quickly from a shootout to riverbeds and backwoods weddings. The voice of the Imaginaries keeps the piece from ever meandering with their blues-rock charm and passionate lyricism.
Ella Janes’s “Code Red” is as gut-wrenching as it is hopeful, showing Oklahoma’s exceptional incarceration rates of women traumatizes more than just the inmates. Kiara (Chole Wyatt) is a detached middle school whose life is rattled when she has to go through her first period in the absence of her mother and to the ridicule of her classmates. The film doesn’t shy away from its difficult subject as Kiara awaits the release of her mother, and the climactic reunion between the two is nothing short of harrowing.
Brian Lawes’s “Lost Kings” concludes the collection with power. Desperate to find food for his brother, a young boy (Dash Melrose) breaks into a home moments before its family returns. Minimal dialogue and precise narrative allow the film’s didactic to breathe. The juxtaposition between poverty and relative wealth never escapes the frame, encapsulating the stark difference between living and just surviving.
