Spotlight on film

The arts, in the simplest of terms, encompass painting, literature, music, dance and film.

We have First Fridays, a storytelling festival, theater and dance productions and music nightly. Why does film get treated like a stepchild who rarely gets to go outside and play?

Last summer, five teams from Cape Girardeau made movies for the 48 Hour Film Project: St. Louis. "Fire Lily" has come to fruition with the makers of that movie already elbow deep in other projects. Turner Schrader Films is currently filming another feature, and Jeremy Ford has plans to film a horror flick in Southeast Missouri this summer.

No doubt the film industry here is alive and well; it's just underground. Perhaps it's because of the lengthy and reclusive process of postproduction, where the crew edits the footage together to form the story, add the sound and other elements.

Filming attracts attention. The cast and crew invade local businesses and appear on the side of a street. Postproduction takes the editors, director and maybe the producer and puts them in a room with soundboards and computers to finish the film.

The transition from filming to postproduction tends to be a "now you see 'em, now you don't" type of thing, making people wonder if the project was dropped or if they just missed the viewing.

Perhaps the dim spotlight stems from the lack of a central showing place. Everyone knows where to see visual art, where to find plays, where to hear music. The film kids mostly send their stuff to film festivals, hoping to find a distributor and never really get to show their product to the people who saw them filming a year ago; the people who know them as ad designers, bartenders and college students.

With today's Southeast Film Festival in the Rose Theatre, I have to hope it's only the start. The Mississippi Mud House debuted its Movies at the Mud House with a local short and feature film, and owners say they plan to continue to featuring mostly local film projects.

The prairie dog film industry in Cape Girardeau seems to be poking its head into the art world more.

We can only hope it stays in plain sight so we can enjoy it more often.