Mulvane to host second Doc Sunback Film Festival

If Nancy Farber-Mottola has her way, you’re going to know how good Kansas filmmakers and their films are.

They are the primary focus of the Doc Sunback Film Festival, which returns for the second year to downtown Mulvane this weekend.

“We’re a Kansas film festival in the sense that we promote Kansas films first,” said Farber-Mottola, event director for the festival, which started Thursday and continues through Sunday.

The festival has grown in its second year, with more than 500 feature and short films submitted from around the world and 156 films selected to be screened. Out of those, 14 are Kansas films.

The program is curated into film “blocks” with themes such as “Beware of the Dark,” “Creativity Today,” “A Futuristic Touch” and “Courageous Kids.”

A special block titled “Kansas Sampler” features all Kansas films and proves that filmmaking is perfectly possible here.

“We believe that you don’t have to leave Kansas in order to communicate your vision or your story,” Farber-Mottola said. “A lot of people will tell you that if you want to be a good filmmaker, you have to leave Kansas, but I don’t believe that to be true.”

She said hers – and the festival’s – goal is to provide a platform for Kansas films.

“They are worthy of being seen,” Farber-Mottola said. “I want them in front of an audience. I don’t care if that audience has five people or 500.”

The festival’s top prize will go to a Kansas film that will win $500.

While the majority of the festival’s program is short films, one feature-length Kansas film that will be shown is “Redux,” directed by Bret Jones, about a Wichita State University college student who investigates the murder of her friend. The film was made by the WSU theater department.

Other Kansas films to be shown include “Town Teams: Bigger Than Baseball” (written and directed by Mark Honer), a documentary about the rise of baseball in small-town America; “WIFI at Rock Bottom” (directed by Lester Rowe), an interview with a young Winfield meth addict; and “Out Here in Kansas,” a thoughtful debate on homosexuality.

But films from across the country also will be shown, as well as from China, Italy, Turkey and Switzerland, among other countries, with a mixture of narratives and documentaries.

Films for kids also will be shown, with free admission at 112 W. Main in Mulvane from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

The event also features an art crawl spotlighting local artists to be held Friday and Saturday afternoon in downtown Mulvane.

The festival honors its namesake, Doc Sunback, who Farber-Mottola said “was a man who was a very original character. He lived here from the late 1880s to 1961. He just played a big role in the community.”

They wanted the film festival to reflect that and the town’s sensibility – with a twist.

“We’re Kansans,” Farber-Mottola said. “We don’t do a lot of talking about how great we are, so I want to do the talking. And I’m going to tell you how great these Kansas films are.”

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 1:45 PM with the headline "Mulvane to host second Doc Sunback Film Festival."