Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase 2

Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase 2

Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase 2 is a special presentation featuring select short films from the 2019 Film Streams: Filmmakers Showcase. For a second year, Nebraska Public Media collaborated with Omaha’s Film Streams to offer statewide exposure to award-winning local independent films made by Heartland filmmakers.

Films include a suspense thriller “Sugar”; “Everything is Going to be Fine,” a compassionate film about a filmmaker's Grandmother dealing with dementia; “Just Me,” a mother’s struggle to raise a newborn in poverty; along with an animated story and a light comedy. We will attend a premiere showing at the Dundee Theater in Omaha and include personal interviews with filmmakers. Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase 2 is the second episode of this special event that features the art of filmmaking in Nebraska and the Heartland.

This program is supported in part by the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

Featured Films:

SUGAR

Shawn Gourley & Lauren Abell – Omaha, NE

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE

Brandon Oest – Coralville, IA

JUST ME

Darcy Lueking Bahensky – Holdrege, NE

MATING DANCE

Mitchell Lyon – Aurora, NE

OLD FUR NEW TEETH

Hannah Marie Stevens – Bennington, NE

Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase

The documentary Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase presents locally crafted short films and explores a revitalized Omaha theater.

Local, independent filmmakers are creating art for the big screen at Omaha’s new Dundee Peggy Payne Theater, named after the mother of Academy Award-winning director Alexander Payne. It’s the second venue for Film Streams, an Omaha nonprofit promoting film as an art form.

The Dundee Theater opened in Omaha in 1925 during the silent movie era and later served as a venue for popular Hollywood fare, including its historic 118-week run of “The Sound of Music” in the mid-1960s. It’s the city’s longest surviving single-screen neighborhood cinema.

Film Streams is engaging new audiences with local filmmaking in the restored theater – curating a competitive local showcase to find the best independent films produced in the Nebraska/Iowa region and bring attention to them.

Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase tells the story of the contest, blending five short films, dramatic clips, and filmmaker interviews with a private look at the renovation process that turned a shuttered building into a high-tech urban community theater.

“Omaha World-Herald” visual journalist Brendan Sullivan had two films in the contest. Both appear in the documentary.

The first, “Seeing with Sound,” profiles 13-year-old Russian immigrant Dmitri “Dima” Shaposhnikov, who is thriving in Omaha and excels at the piano despite being completely blind. Sullivan’s second film, “Secret Ingredient: A Pinch of Love,” is about the closing of a restaurant and gallery after owner Rob Gilmer lost his husband René Orduña to cancer.

Holdrege, Neb., talent Darcy Lueking Bahensky’s film “Now or Forever,” tells the story of a young, expectant bride who wrestles with her own expectations on the day of her wedding.

Hannah Stephens of Bennington, Neb., is director/visual artist for the film “To Kill a Stoat,” an animated feature about dark Irish folklore. Stephens explained the film was a way to exercise her skills as an animator and share her family’s culture.

The fifth film in Final Cut: Filmmakers Showcase is “Kap,” written, directed, and produced by David Weiss of Omaha. The film offers a child’s perspective on modern-day slavery in Haiti. “I want to raise awareness and compel others to help these children, who have so few advocates,” said Weiss.