Minnesota filmmakers at the festival

Dan Luke, a professional filmmaker, admits that he carried most of the water in putting the film together. He assembled the scenes and then showed them to Diego for his comments, as he does for his other film clients. Even so, he thinks his son has earned his "director" credit. "I've worked with many directors who have done less than Diego," he says. —Matthew Smith

Diego's Trip to Guatemala will screen as part of the "Minnesota-Made Short Documentaries" program Sunday at 7:45 p.m. at St. Anthony Main Theaters.

DISCONNECTED
Melody Gilbert

The concept has an instant appeal: What would happen if college students who have grown up with computers were suddenly forced to live without them?

That's the subject of a new feature-length documentary from eight students at Carleton College, three of whom volunteered to live like electronic cavemen for several weeks: no email, no Facebook, no word processing or internet research for their schoolwork.

Their project was led by Melody Gilbert, a local filmmaker who was teaching a class in documentary production at Carleton, where the idea germinated. The film was fraught with cinematic challenges. For example, how do you capture "people sitting around not using their computers?" Gilbert says. Or, "How do you show boredom?" Because students use their computers at all hours, filming would require a huge time commitment.

The three volunteers were each assigned a videography crew to shadow them, and a camera to record a video diary when their classmates weren't around. For three to five weeks the students suffered through computer deprivation, learning new ways to accomplish daily tasks.

"One of my favorite parts of the film was when they learned how to use typewriters," Gilbert says. "Priceless."

The three students had very different responses to the challenge, Gilbert says. For one of them, Mitchell Lundin, a senior psychology major who gave up text messaging as well, the experience was more annoying than he expected, especially in trying to communicate with friends and professors who always answered promptly by email but now wouldn't return his phone calls. Any free time he might have had away from his computer was eaten up by having to write school papers in longhand and then typing them.

The filming was only the beginning of their assignment. Afterward, students had to transcribe and log the 73 hours of footage, edit the tapes, and assemble rough cuts, among other tasks.

"They were incredibly, incredibly dedicated," Gilbert says.

"It's definitely a good life experience to step back and try to live differently," Lundin says of his experiment. "But there's no way in hell I'm doing that again." —Matthew Smith

Disconnected screens Sunday, April 27, at 5 p.m. at St. Anthony Main.

FINDING FLIGHT and SECRETS OF THE SYMMETRICAL GENTLEMEN
Jesse Roesler

The entire paradigm for filmmaking is changing, says Minneapolis filmmaker Jesse Roesler. "It's looking more toward festival and online distribution. Getting into theaters is becoming less and less feasible."

That might be why people like Roesler, director of two films screening at MSPIFF, often rely on contests and festivals for exposure and success.

One of his films, Finding Flight, spans three generations of a family from Cherry Grove, Minnesota, through the common link of an airplane. In the late 1920s, Bernard H. Pietenpol built his own airplane with parts from a hardware store. Pietenpol didn't have formal training in engineering and never consulted a book—he simply found his own way.

Now his grandson has taken up the project of re-creating the "common man's airplane," as he calls it. When Roesler got in touch with him, he realized he was in luck.

"He said, 'I've always hoped somebody would make some sort of historical document of this,'" Roesler says.

So Roesler and his girlfriend, writer Jen Larson, got to work, using original footage of the senior Pietenpol and in-depth interviews with his relatives today. The resulting film recently earned an honorable mention at the Minnesota Historical Society's 2007 film contest, and he hopes to market it to a niche audience in the aviation community.

Roesler's second submission, Secrets of the Symmetrical Gentlemen, couldn't be any more different from Finding Flight.

Roesler and Larson teamed up with Mojo Solo, Roesler's creative agency, to write, shoot, and edit Secrets in two days, as a part of the 48-Hour Fall Film Shootout. This year, the national competition required participants to create a short comedy/action adventure film that featured a member of the Hatuchama, a secret society of people with supernatural powers.

Roesler says the specifications were just as crazy as the process. "We spent the first night writing after we received the requirements at 7 p.m. on Friday. I took one power nap on Saturday morning, from 5:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. It was madness," he said.

Roesler said he isn't sure that he would do it again but said he was "really happy" with the end result.

"I was thinking the whole time, 'I wish we had more time to develop these characters,'" he said. "You do it fast and on a budget. It's the hardest genre you can get." —Amy Lieberman

Finding Flight screens as part of the "Minnesota-Made Short Documentaries" program Sunday at 7:45 p.m. at St. Anthony Main Theaters. Secrets of the Symmetrical Gentlemen is part of the "Minnesota-Made Shorts" program, screening Tuesday, April 29, at 7 p.m., also at St. Anthony Main.