What is the Tallgrass Film Festival?

• Four-day, richly diverse independent film festival, open to the public
• Screens approximately 50 shorts and features each year
• Scheduled for Oct. 23-26, 2008 at the Warren Old Town Theatres and other downtown venues in Wichita
• Largest film festival in Kansas
• Special events where fans can interact with writers, directors, actors and other filmmakers, such as these:

Who Attends the Tallgrass Film Festival?

• Educated, working adults 18-54 with a broad range of interests
• High school and college students
• Supporters of the arts, culture and the Wichita community
• 6,000+ area citizens attended in 2007
• Including volunteers and out-of-town visitors, the total attendance to date (since 2003) is 20,000+, with approximately 200 filmmakers and guests coming in for the festival from all over the world.

Tallgrass Grows in Kansas

Founded in 2003 by the late Timothy Gruver, the Tallgrass Film Festival is a program of the non-profit 501(c)3 organization Wichita Association For the Motion Picture Arts, which is dedicated to entertaining, educating and enlightening audiences in America’s Heartland by showcasing the very best of independent cinema, including foreign, documentary, short, GLBT, retrospective and premiering films. The Tallgrass Film Festival showcases the city’s venues, cultural attractions and artistic communities, with an emphasis on the burgeoning local filmmaking community.

Located in the South Central portion of Kansas, Wichita, is known as the “Air Capital of the World”. It is the largest city in the state in terms of both land area and population, with an estimated populace of more than half a million people in the greater metropolitan area. Known as a breeding ground of entrepreneurs, Wichita is home to corporations including Pizza Hut, Koch Industries, Cessna and Coleman. Wichita is also home to a large artist community, a growing filmmaking community, and generous patrons of the arts. A growing Midwestern city that truly represents the spirit and hospitality of America’s Heartland, Wichita was ranked ninth on the list of the 10 best big cities to live in the United States by CNN/Money and Money Magazine in July of 2006.

Over 100 Visiting Independent Filmmakers have attended the Tallgrass Film Festival, from US cities including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Boston & Nashville, as well as international locales including Israel, Canada and Norway.. With a growing reputation in the industry as a “Filmmaker’s Festival”, Wichita audiences eagerly await the chance to learn from, network and befriend the Independent Filmmakers who pour in to the city each year, excited to screen their films in the unique venue that is the “center of North America.”

Selected by our local programming committee, Official Selections have included Audience Award winners The Big Bad Swim and 39 Pounds of Love; as well as the 2006 Independent Spirit Award winner Conventioneers, the 2007 Independent Spirit Award nominee Trials of Darryl Hunt as well as Bomb The System, Manhattan, Kansas, Dreamland, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, Fat Girls, Iraq in Fragments, The Last Picture Show, The Buddy Holly Story and the popular High School Shorts Program and Timothy Gruver Spotlight on Kansas Filmmakers.