DUNCAN Okla_ The award-winning Trail Dance Film Festival is ready to take over Duncan this Friday and Saturday for a seventh consecutive year.
It's the only film festival in southwest Oklahoma where people can enjoy nearly 100 films from around the world. Each year, actors, producers, and directors fill the Simmons Center and the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center to showcase their films.
The festival consistently features stories told by Oklahomans or filmmakers from a foreign land. Whatever the next big film may be, it just might be viewable in Duncan this weekend.
At the Simmons Center Tuesday, Trail Dance Film Festival tickets and a booklet containing the schedule of the movies expected to play this weekend covered table tops. On the floor lay large movie poster boards for the upcoming film festival.
For founder Anthony Foreman, it's an exciting time.
"We're all kind of on the edge of our seats right now just waiting for things to fall together," Foreman said. "You can spend all the time preparing for something, but you just never know."
He has a good reason to be a bit nervous. Anthony said since the film festival started, about 3,000 people have showed each year.
"It's really neat to see how the audience reacts to these films," Foreman said. "You see the filmmakers' eyes light up. It's awesome for them, because they get the opportunity to see how the audience is going to react and how people are going to view their film."
But Anthony's father Ed Foreman said while viewing never-before-seen films can be fun, filmmakers realize it is still a competition.
"They want to win," Ed said. "More importantly than that, they want to win recognition from their peers and from the public. That's why they make the film. They want you to watch it. They want you to enjoy it."
Ed said they are happy to be continuing on with one of the goals with why the film festival was originally created.
"The festival was created to invite young filmmakers, high school filmmakers and/or collegiate filmmakers to come and join in the party and to learn from the professionals. It was created to introduce the emergent film industry in Oklahoma to a much wider film industry across the nation."
"One of the reasons I wanted to start this was my interest in filmmaking and how much I love movies," Andrew said. "Movies take you out of the environment you're in and put you somewhere special."
Although the festival will highlight several producers and stars, one of those getting special honor this weekend is America's first female rock and roll singer Wanda Jackson. She is in one of the films showing this weekend, and Jan Stratton will present her with the Blazing the Trail Award for her lifetime commitment to music in film and broadcast media.
For a complete list of films and more information about the Trail Dance Festival, click here.
