This isn't a music story per se; it's a film story. But it involves a music magazine and members of the local music community. And the screening is at the R Bar, which has become a local music venue:
Above: Local filmmakers Brad Hodgson (from left), Jordan Kerfeld and Anthony Ladesich.
The worlds of music and film have long intersected and overlapped.
Recently, those worlds collided in Kansas City. Three local filmmakers with ties to the local music industry placed short films on a DVD that was shipped worldwide to about 20,000 VIP subscribers to the music magazine Paste.
“It was a pretty easy process, once we found out about the call for entries,” said Anthony Ladesich, an Emmy-winning filmmaker whose resume includes the outstanding documentary “Cowtown Ballroom: Sweet Jesus,” which he made with Joe Heyen. “I sent them a link to the video on YouTube and about a week and a half later, I got an e-mail saying I’d made the cut.”
He didn’t know it then, but so had two others from Kansas City: filmmaker Jordan Kerfeld and Brad Hodgson, a motion-graphics designer and member of the band In the Pines and what he calls the “multimedia/music collective” Biarchy (with former In the Pines drummer Mike Myers).
Kerfeld was a classmate of Hodgson’s in the UMKC film program and recently shot a video for Biarchy. He also worked on Hodgson’s winning entry. None of the three was aware initially that the others had applied.
“It was funny,” Kerfeld said, “We’d both found out our films had been accepted, and he told me he’d gotten in and I was like, ‘I did, too.’ ” They later learned that Ladesich also made the cut, giving Kansas City filmmakers three spots on the 12-track DVD, confirming something Ladesich said he already knew.
“There’s a lot of creative energy in this town,” said Ladesich, who is also a singer/songwriter formerly of the bands Pendergast and Sandoval. “I could move to L.A. or New York or Chicago, but I don’t want to. I want to stay in my foxhole and put my flag in the ground and keep creating from here.”
All three talked about their films, which will be shown at a screening Wednesday at the R Bar in the West Bottoms.
Ladesich: “My film is called ‘Such Subtle Beauty.’ It’s an artist profile of Brady Vest of Hammerpress. It’s part of a series of artist profiles that explores creative people and how and why they create the way they do.
“It also comes from my fascination with people who stake their claim on antiquated technology, like record collectors, which was the topic of another documentary of mine. Brady makes his living on handset lettering and hand-carved blocks. His work is very inspirational to me.
“What I try to do is find art in the mundane, in the textures and materials used in the artwork — not necessarily the art that’s created, but in the space, the tools and the materials.”
Hodgson: “My film is called ‘The Dependent Ones.’ It’s a weird, science-fiction film. I’m really interested in social structures and boundaries that we will and will not cross when pushed to a certain extent. That’s what the film is about. I like really weird visuals; my favorite film is ‘The City of Lost Children.’ I like weird visuals with a simple message.
“I shot it in our old house. My wife went out of town for a few days, and I kind of wrecked the house. No, she didn’t know. I filled the sink with dirt and smeared dirt all over the walls. It was awesome. I shot some scenes at UMKC, too.
“It ended up being about 16 minutes long, and it really didn’t work at all. So I took a break and revisited it and focused on what I was trying to accomplish initially. I ended up cutting it to eight minutes and felt like that made it a lot better.”
Kerfeld: “My film is called ‘Finger.’ … It turned into an experimental film where the entire story is told through a series of flashbacks instead of a traditional Hollywood narrative.
“It’s about a guy who loses his finger, which takes him to really specific, unexpected places or moments, like what your mind can do when someone close to you passes away.
“Through the use of flashbacks, the guy remembers times during his childhood where the finger played a role in something funny or interesting. There’s a finger-painting, and he can’t resist the urge to pick his nose. And as he grows up, things like tickling his first child.
“He lost the finger at the age of 23, and in the film his mind goes to all those places that formed his relationship with his own body.
“I usually work by the book, very traditional. This time it really came together organically. I shot off a treatment. No script or dialogue. So it’s very visual, very focused on imagery. It was fun. Kind of like doing cartwheels on thin ice.”
| Timothy Finn, The Star
wednesday
The short films “Such Subtle Beauty,” “The Dependent Ones” and “Finger” will be screened starting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the R Bar, 1617 Genessee.
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