Best of the Big Sky – Apr. 28th

The Bozeman Doc Series has once again teamed up with the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival to present a special event at the Emerson Center in Bozeman. On Thursday, April 28th, The Best of the Big Sky will present a selection of the very best short films screened at the recent edition of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, and will feature a reception before the screenings and a party after. The reception will begin at 6pm in the Emerson lobby, and films will begin at 7pm.

The reception will include free appetizers and gourmet cupcakes from Luxe, beer and wine at a cash bar, music, and a silent auction fundraiser for the Bozeman Doc Series in the Emerson lobby before and briefly after the films. The silent auction will feature items from Bozeman Doc Series sponsors such The Saffron Table, Bozeman Spirits, The Lark, The Emerson Grill, Movie Lovers, and more. To top off the evening, Plonk will be hosting an after-party for ticket holders.

The largest cinema event in Montana and the premiere venue for non-fiction film in the American West, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival has steadily risen in prestige over its thirteen years, and now presents an impressive collection of quality films from all corners of the globe.

The Best of the Big Sky lineup will include seven short films ranging from the hilarious to the sublime, from Scotland to Tibet to Missoula, Montana, each focusing on fascinating people and creating a window into a world we rarely see. Scroll down to see trailers and read more about each film.

Pickle
Amy Nicholson, 2015, USA, 15 minutes

A couple recounts the various animals they have adopted as pets over the course of their marriage, including a paraplegic possum and a fish that couldn’t swim. Pickle explores the human capacity to care for all creatures throughout their sometimes greatly protracted lives until their occasionally sudden and unfortunate deaths.

 

Mining, Poems, or Odes

Callum Rice, 2015, 11 minutes

Robert, an ex-shipyard welder from Scotland, reflects on how his life experience’s have influenced his new found compulsion to write. His retrospective poetry reveals a man who is trying to achieve a state of contentment through words and philosophy.

 

Operation Allie
Manny Marquez, 2015, 8 minutes

Anthony Marquez, a former Marine and military dog handler, has returned from Afghanistan.
He lost 17 friends in the war, and has been suffering from the effects of PTSD. When he finds out that the dog that he went through the war with, Allie, is being retired from the Marine Corp, he sets out to adopt her.

 

The House is Innocent

Nicholas Coles, 2015, 12 minutes

Who knowingly purchases the former residence of a notorious serial killer? Meet Tom and Barbara, proud new owners of the most infamous house in Sacramento, CA. As the middle-aged couple renovate the crumbling house, they realize its going to take a whole lot more than paint to change the community’s minds about their new home.

 

Sandorkraut

Ann Husaini, Emily Lobsenz, 2015, 12 minutes

Sandorkraut is an intimate portrait of Sandor Katz, America’s foremost fermentation revivalist. A native New Yorker, Sandor abandoned a life in politics in the early ‘90’s after a health crisis. He relocated to an off-the-grid queer community in rural Tennessee, where his love of gardening and an overabundant cabbage harvest led him to make his first batch of sauerkraut. An intense personal obsession withfermented foods was born.

 

Vultures of Tibet
Russell O. Bush, 2013, 21 minutes

Sky Burial, a private ritual where the bodies of Tibetan dead are offered to wild griffon vultures, becomes a tourist attraction in Chinese modernized Tibet. This intimate window illuminates an ideological conflict often hidden to the outside world confronting the potential for oppression in the act of observation.

 

Woodfire
Lane Brown, Tom Attwater, Matt Freeman, 2015, 8 minutes

Woodfire follows Missoula ceramics artist; Casey Zablocki, through the extensive process of firing a traditional anagama wood fired kiln. The film focuses on the hard work and tireless efforts that are required to create a unique form of ceramic art.

 

The event will be an extension of the regular Bozeman Doc Series season, and season pass and 7-pass punch card holders can use their passes to attend the event.

Tickets are available at the door or before the event at Cactus Records and Movie Lovers. Tickets are also available online here.

If your company would be interested in becoming a sponsor of the event, contributing to the silent auction, or being involved in any way, please contact Jason Burlage at (406) 570-8045 or jason@devolutionfilms.org.