Everything is fine!

Tulsa Overground Film & Music Festival returns, bigger than ever

On March 24-27, the Tulsa Overground Film & Music Festival returns for a rousing four nights of movies, music, DJs, food trucks, and experimental oddities. In the past, Overground was a scrappy, DIY affair featuring a subversive all-genres “punk rock mix-tape” of short films along with a rowdy roster of local bands. This year, after taking 2015 off, the festival has been greatly expanded by its founders, filmmakers Todd Lincoln (“The Apparition”) and Jeremy Lamberton (“Biker Fox”), with portions of the event taking place at Fly Loft, Circle Cinema, The Vanguard, and Soundpony.

The festival will for the first time show feature-length films, including Sterlin Harjo’s acclaimed “Mekko,” true crime docudrama “Booger Red,” and body horror film “Antibirth” (a midnight favorite of January’s Sundance Film Festival). 

100+ short films spanning the genre spectrum (animation, documentary, narrative, experimental) will play over the long weekend. Thirty bands will perform between Soundpony and The Vanguard, including headliners BRONCHO, Johnny Polygon and Sports. A Virtual Reality room will offer festivalgoers the chance to experience the latest in VR technology, while a video art gallery entitled “Mirror Phase” will survey video art as a medium from the 70s to the present. The festival will also pay tribute to Tulsa’s classic public access comedy show, “Mazeppa,” with special guest Jim Millaway, aka Sherman Oaks (see Day Drinking on page 30). 

But the biggest jewel of this year’s Overground is the two-night exhibition of legendary actor, writer, director and human curiosity
Crispin Hellion Glover’s “Big Slide Show” in tandem with showings of his transgressive outsider-art films, “What is it?” and “It is fine! Everything is fine.” 

Glover has toured with these films for years, and carries the only 35mm prints in existence with him. Tulsans won’t have an opportunity to see these anywhere else, unless they follow him around like The Grateful Dead (which is less unusual than you would think). 

Glover will present the slide shows and films in reverse chronology, with the second installments on Thursday, March 24, and the first installments on Friday, March 25. Again, less weird than you’d think. If you’re curious about the counterintuitive scheduling, you can ask Glover about it at each night’s post-film Q&A.

For event listings and tickets visit www.tulsaoverground.com.

Five Questions with Todd Lincoln, Tulsa Overground co-founder

The Tulsa Voice: You said this year you’ve received and will be screening more local submissions than ever. Tell me more about that.

Todd Lincoln: We made submissions free this year, so that probably helped. We’re showing as many as we can while still maintaining the overall feel and quality that we’re known for. This year’s lineup may be the most entertaining, most thought-provoking and most crazy that we’ve ever screened. And for the first time, we also have a special Tulsa Student Short Films Program. 

TTV: The logistics of this fest are daunting for a two-man crew. What kind of support system do you have?

TL: We’re working around the clock on very little sleep. But this year we’re thrilled and very appreciative to have the help and support of the Guthrie Green staff who have taken over some of the technical/organizational/marketing responsibilities. It’s been huge for us. We couldn’t have pulled this festival off without their efforts. Jeremy and I are extremely specific and detailed. There’s definitely a secret sauce element to this festival… but we’re learning to delegate and let go in certain areas. We’ve also had many people reach out offering to help out. Volunteers are essential to the success of a festival. This festival has grown to the point where if we keep doing it as a two-man crew… it will be the death of us. 

TTV: Is there anything you couldn’t pull off this year?

TL: There are some awesome filmmakers and bands that couldn’t make it to this Tulsa Overground, but they’re all excited about coming to the next one. We’re heading into unexpected, uncharted territories with the festival.

TTV: Is March going to be your annual date from now on, since it’s a great spring complement to the fall’s Tulsa American Film Festival?

TL: We like these March dates. There’s been a huge response. We’ll see how it all goes and then decide when we want to do Tulsa Overground next. Hopefully in the near future, we’ll live in a Tulsa where big festivals / events are happening every weekend. That kind of friendly competition will make each festival better and transform Tulsa into a true destination city.

TTV: Any ideas for next year already?

TL: So many ideas. We always closely study what works and doesn’t work about each year’s festival… and then adjust things accordingly. We have a clear vision for Tulsa Overground and how we want it to organically grow and evolve. 

A preview of Overground’s feature film showcase

Mekko

An ex-prisoner on a quest takes up with Tulsa’s homeless population

Friday, March 25, 9:30 p.m. | Fly Loft, 117 N. Boston Ave.

A late but welcome entry to the feature selection at Overground is writer/director Sterlin Harjo’s latest film (and, for my money, his best), “Mekko.”

Venerable actor and former stuntman Rod Rondeaux portrays the stoic Mekko. Paroled after a 19-year stint in prison, Mekko returns to his hometown only to find it effectively abandoned, the water poisoned by the local lead mine. Without any stakes to pick up, he heads to Tulsa to find his sister. 

Instead he falls in with the local homeless community and crosses paths with a psychopathic transient (Zahn McClarnon, most recently seen in “Fargo” season two) who might be a demon incarnate.

Harjo establishes a great vérité immediacy and paints a tangible atmosphere. It’s a character study of a man’s life, and a thriller about how he puts it to good use for those around him. The idea of family has always penetrated Harjo’s work. But, in “Mekko,” he makes the argument that we are all our brothers’ (and sisters’) keepers.

Antibirth

The stoned adventures of two couch-bound female anti-heroes

Saturday, March 26, 9:30 p.m. | Fly Loft, 117 N. Boston Ave.

Sporting a great cast including Natasha Lyonne, Chloë Sevigny, Meg Tilly, and Mark Webber, “Antibirth” follows the stoned adventures of two couch-bound best friends who live in a small-town hell largely populated by addicted ex-Marines. When Lou (Lyonne) begins suffering from drug-fueled delusions, the gears of her fracturing sanity start to make her believe she’s possessed by a malevolent, supernatural force.

“Antibirth” makes its Tulsa debut at Overground on Saturday, March 26. The positive buzz from its recent midnight Sundance premiere and the experimental pedigree of writer/director Danny Perez make this one of the festival’s more enticing prospects. 

Perez started out in music videos and video art, and toured as a projectionist for neo-psychedelic musician Panda Bear. With “Antibirth,” Perez has assembled a strong female cast, and seems intent on imbuing the film with an equilateral emphasis on his characters, and an innovative cinematic experimentalism that hews close to his art film roots.

“I knew I wanted to write something for kind of an anti-hero and subvert female traditional archetypes,” Perez told Deadline. “And I knew I wanted to play around with dualities and create these zones that but up against each other. It’s a little schizophrenic.”

Perez will attend the Overground screening and participate in a Q&A after. 

Booger Red

Authenticity of documentary meets immediacy of narrative

Sunday, March 27, 9:30 p.m. | Fly Loft, 117 N. Boston Ave. 

2015 indie docudrama “Booger Red” tells the true story of how seven people from small-town Mineola, Texas, were wrongly convicted of child sex trafficking. 

In 2004, Mineola’s local paper, the Mineola Monitor, published a story about The Retreat, a reputed swingers club that had gone previously unnoticed in the God-fearing, old fashioned community. The story sparked a backlash that shut down the club. Several months later, two foster parents, Margie and John Cantrell, went to the police with horrific stories of molestation and sexual abuse at the seedy and infamous establishment, told to them by their new foster children.

Two competing investigations, eventually falling under the microscope of the national media, saw different conclusions in the circumstantial evidence. Despite that, the accused were convicted with record speed, including the titular Booger Red, who earned a life sentence.

The film’s story—originally reported by long-time Texas Monthly journalist, Michael Hall—inspired filmmaker Berndt Mader (“Winnebago Man”) to make a movie with the authenticity of a documentary (using real people from the events) combined with the immediacy of a narrative feature.

With a look towards Iranian auteur Abbas Kairostami’s 1990 film, “Close Up,” Mader says of his film, “[“Close Up”] takes real litigants in a trial situation and has them re-enact the crime…[I thought] that technique of blending fiction and reality might be interesting to do within the Texas justice system.” 

Starring Onur Tukel (“Summer of Blood”), Deborah Abbott (“The Leftovers”), and Alex Karpovsky (Ray from “Girls”), the film looks to be a not-nearly-as-lighthearted version of Richard Linklater’s “Bernie,” another small-town true crime story based on a Texas Monthly article.