Photo by Robb Long

Randal Dietrich says the Moving Pictures Film Festival is looking for participants of all experience levels who ‘really take the time to delve into the story.’

By Ashley Goetz

“This is a very Minnesotan story,” says Randal Dietrich, coordinator of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation Project. “This festival isn’t just about winning awards. It’s about saving memories.”

Dietrich is talking about the Moving Pictures Film Festival, the largest piece of the Greatest Generation Project. This year it will focus on “The Boom of the 1950s.”

The Minnesota Historical Society began the project in August of 2005, marking the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II. The goal of the project, Dietrich says, “is to help society collect the stories of this generation” through written stories, oral histories, photographs, objects, letters, and documentaries. The Moving Pictures festival and competition, now in its third year, has helped give Minnesotans a reason to compile all of these elements together on film.

The Greatest Generation came of age during World War II, growing up in the 1920s and ’30s. “They served overseas, on the home front, on farms, in fields and factories,” says Dietrich. “They fueled the boom of the 1950s and these films document their experiences, their stories.”  

America in the ’50s was recovering from the war. Consumerism, oppression, and the cold war were on the horizon. The decade saw an expanding movement in literature ranging from science fiction to the beats. Families sprawled into suburbs and gathered around TVs. They grew up on jazz and witnessed the birth of rock ’n’ roll. Alongside the rising counterculture comes a generation of individuals that finally had the stability to start families, a generation that would always know war. These are the perspectives that will stretch across the films in the Moving Pictures film festival.

‘People are full of stories’

Moving Pictures is open to all ages and abilities. “We’re not looking for someone that can create the very best quality film,” says Dietrich. “But for someone that really takes the time to delve into the story.”

Anyone with access to a video camera can participate. The Minnesota Historical Society offers all contestants access to archival photos and film footage, as well as advice from professional filmmakers in town.

“People are full of stories,” says Melody Gilbert, a local documentary filmmaker and the creator of Frozen Feet Films. “Over the last couple years, I’ve offered to help beginning filmmakers with whatever they need.” Gilbert has advised nearly 10 filmmakers on everything from technical questions to interviewing techniques. “These people are passionate,” says Gilbert. “My goal is to take them to the next level.

“The thing I love about the Moving Pictures festival is its focus on preserving history,” she says. “It’s a great way to tell stories that might otherwise die.”

Gilbert is on the board of directors for IFP MN, which offers free workshops for filmmakers interested in the festival and is one of its biggest supporters. “In fact, all five of last year’s winning filmmakers were IFP members,” says Paul Clark, membership director of IFP MN.

Gilbert will also debut her 60-minute documentary, FRITZ: The Walter Mondale Story, to kick off the festival. “He is one of Minnesota’s favorite sons,” she says. “The film encompasses the full story of his life in Minnesota, in the White House, and his views on public service.”

In the film, Mondale says a public servant has to follow his heart, to “Sense the joy of public service, getting things done, making a difference. Try to feel the problems of handicapped children, hungry kids, people that are hobbled by disease and emotional problems. See if together we can’t find a way of giving them, in their time, a little more decent life.”

The film will be narrated by Walter Mondale’s daughter, Eleanor, and will include interviews with nearly 30 people, including Jimmy Carter, Larry Jacobs, and former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson.

Jan Selby, project manager for Darn Good Documentaries, is collaborating with Gilbert on Fritz. “Video is one of the most multisensory mediums available to capture these stories,” she says. “When you can see the people speaking in their own words, it captures something that doesn’t come through in writing or reading.”

100 documentaries so far

Amanda Becker, a 2005 Vancouver film school graduate, interned with Gilbert last summer. “She encouraged me to make a short for the 2007 festival, and it was such a great experience,” Becker says. “There is so much support and excitement in the community and at the Historical Society.”

Becker is participating again this year, creating a film on former Minnesota First Lady Jane Freeman. “I’m always interested in strong women that are involved in politics,” she says. “Jane has an inside perspective on what was a hopeful time in the ’50s, and I think that is happening again now, people are looking for hope.”

Becker says she was drawn back to Moving Pictures because of the experience. “It is so amazing to show your film in a sold-out theater at the festival,” she says. “Last year it was just packed with people; they couldn’t even fit everyone in. People just crave these films, they get sucked in. It’s like a great story that you’ve never heard before, and it’s real.”

“The thing that separates Moving Pictures from other festivals,” Dietrich says, “is that every submitted film becomes part of our ongoing collection at the History Center.” Library patrons can also find collections of each year’s submissions at the Hennepin County and St. Paul public libraries. “They can check out films just like they would a book,” he says.

Nearly 100 documentaries total were submitted in the past two years. In 2007, Aleshia Mueller’s film entry, Lady of the Woods went on from Moving Pictures to the Cannes film festival in France. The ten winning films have aired as Twin Cities Public Television specials and can be seen for free on Comcast.

“This festival is not the end of the Minnesota’s Greatest Generation project,” Dietrich says. “This is all opening up to something larger at the Minnesota Historical Center.” A 6,000-square-foot exhibit called Minnesota’s Greatest Generation will open on Memorial Day, May 23, 2009. “The exhibit will take visitors through the traces of World War II and into the lives and experiences of the generation after the war.” The voices of the exhibit, like the voices of the films in Moving Pictures, will be uniquely Minnesotan.

“To understand what is so precious about this project can only be seen the day of the festival,” says Gilbert. Many of the filmmakers come with the individuals whose stories are being documented. “That person is the star for the day. People want to shake their hand,” says Gilbert. “We are giving them validation for what they did in life.”

Ashley Goetz is an intern with Minnesota Good Age.

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