In Its 20th Year, Kansas City’s Fringe Festival Opens with Its Fourth Film Weekend

Pink Walls Image courtesy IFCKC

“Film didn’t always have its own weekend,” says Timothy Harvey, film coordinator for Kansas City Fringe Festival, which opens this weekend at the Stray Cat Film Center, 1662 Broadway, and runs through Sunday, July 14.

For the fourth year, the Stray Cat Film Center, “an independent film-loving venue,” is hosting the film weekend to kick off the festival, which begins its live performances, workshops and visual arts displays on Thursday, July 19, at 12 venues, and runs through July 28.

With Audrey Crabtree, who took over as Fringe executive director in 2022, Harvey, an archivist with Independent Filmmakers Coalition in Kansas City (IFCKC) and a filmmaker himself, sees the importance of the film weekend component of Fringe. “There were always challenges of fitting in with a live performance festival,” he says, but after the pandemic year of online-only performances, giving films a special slot seemed more feasible.

“Now, film is not competing with live performance.”

At the downtown theater housed in a modest storefront down the street from the Kauffman Center, Friday night’s crowd was treated to an evening of independent and local shorts and features, starting with “Mis-en-Scene.” The collection of shorts was produced by the IFCKC to celebrate its 30 years of storytelling.

Steven Holland’s Loose Park-shot “Baby Rose,” a charming tale in which a rose wanders like a newborn in its surroundings, was followed by Jacob C. Aldrich’s friendship tale of two young men on diverging paths, “How to Rob a Diner.”  The most intriguing film of the collection was Joel Brown’s poignant “Guppy.” Acted with no dialogue and only gestures, a father and son’s regular fishing trip becomes an allegory for growing up and taking the reins, or the fishing line, from the previous generation. Brown dedicated the film to his father and grandfather.

Mala Ades gave us the love story of two bicycle wheels, “Chromeo and Cassette,” while Jake Jackson took the world of imaginary friends into the short, but effective, “Bedtime Story.”

“Bleach Boy,” by Johnathan Young and Asyiah Montes, was a standout for telling a too-familiar story of school abuse, racism and its impact on students’ identities and mental health. The final film of the collection was Dylan Warrington’s poetry-driven “Pink Walls,” in which identity and belonging are resolved with one line at the family dinner table.

Filmmaker Steven Shade’s Moonlight Mist Stories, closed the first night. “The Poet in the Attic” featured a young man trying to right a wrong by writing his way out of perilous proximity to a dead lover, dragging an axe to chilling effect. Following was “The Customer,” which has also been screened by the Kansas City Underground Film Fest, but the familiarity only breeds weird tenderness as an alien and his head are reunited. Shade’s finale was the arachnid horror short, “The Man Who Has Eight.”

Saturday’s offerings, what Harvey describes as “IFC after-dark,” feature shorts that range from family friendly to PG. Dennis Dey’s “The Discipleship Video Series” is an extension of a previous Fringe work that expounds on the teachings of Matthew. Dey’s film series will be “the first faith-based film series in KC Fringe history,” and promises to be illuminating.

The much-anticipated “140 Characters” is Drew G. Smith’s sneak preview comprised of what is being referred to as director’s “test footage.” And with the promise of never looking at a Beanie Baby “the same way.”

At the appropriate dinner hour of 6 p.m. tonight is the Wayward Visuals-produced “Blood.” The Transylvanian tale of transgression is followed by a second helping of “Moonlight Mist Stories,” switching to an earlier viewing time of 7:30 p.m.

No stranger to Fringers of a certain comic slant is Forest Kinsey, who, with Sadie Teel, romps in the KCCAT-presented “Weirdos Comedy Hour.” The show is an outgrowth of the work done to alleviate anxiety through comedy, which is the best therapy for a country that’s turned its anxiousness for its future into anticipation for the apocalypse.

Saturday night ends with a late showing of another batch of “Mis-en-Scene,” featuring eight more shorts, including another Steven Holland title, “Batman Goes to Therapy.”

Sunday offers a last chance to check out Fringe Films’ “The Discipleship Video Series” and the “Weirdos Comedy Hour.” And, then, Fringers have three days to rest before experiencing a festival that is strong, says Harvey, in its “breadth and depth.” Of the 283 live performances, Crabtree promises, there is something for everyone. The festival has been offering the eclectic, exciting and ephemeral long enough for a new generation to engage and be engaged.

“People are constantly amazed we’re here,” says Harvey. “And we’ve been here for [almost] 20 years.”

For more information on festival shows, venues and schedules, visit kcfringe.org.