Organizers and programmers for Oklahoma City’s longstanding deadCenter Film Festival gathered on stage at Rodeo Cinema in the Stockyards Wednesday night to offer the first look at 2024’s installment of the event and to discuss the thoughts and themes behind selected films.
Lead by deadCenter’s Director of Programming, Sunrise Tippeconnie, the evening saw the unveiling of much of dC2024’s lineup by a panel of deadCenter programmers including:
- Kevin Ely – Senior Features Programmer
- Camila Chaves Rojas – Shorts Programmer
- Paris Burris – Shorts Programmer
- Laron Chapman – Head of Pride Programming
- Julia Witcher – Assistant Programmer
The 24th annual deadCenter Film Festival is set for June 6th through 9th this year, taking over the city’s Downtown theaters from Harkins in Bricktown to OKCMOA, and even reincorporating popular past venues like Rodeo that had been dropped during the event’s paring down in recent years.
The panel unveiled more than 100 short films and features, speaking at length about just a few, but diving more deeply into the thoughts and approaches behind the selection process and the themes and trends that audiences can expect this year.
Diversity in selection
One of the core principles of deadCenter film selection has long been diversity and inclusion in terms of filmmaking voices and identities, with particular attention paid each year to Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ filmmaking.
But Chapman was quick to point out that, while there is a responsibility felt to platform and showcase those cultures, it’s always in service of providing the widest, most complete picture of the moviemaking world.
“We are trying to bring diversity to the festival, but not just diversity in terms of racial makeup,” he said. “It’s diversity in terms of the kinds of perspectives you’re going to be hearing, from the kind of voices you’re going to be hearing, from the kinds of genres that we’re going to be showcasing. And I think that that’s a really important part of it.”
Rojas agreed, adding that those principles are not only for the sake of audiences hoping to see diversity reflected on screen, but also for the filmmakers themselves to experience the full, multifaceted range of perspectives and interests in Oklahoma.
“The outcome is to have these resources for our filmmakers and to introduce them to our Oklahoman audiences,” she told the crowd. “And then maybe they’ll want to come back and film something because we showed them such a good time.”
Themes and trends
Anyone who’s ever seen a deadCenter schedule knows how playfully named and creatively sequenced their programming blocks – especially the short film showcases – can be, and the programmers say that’s all by design to help audiences get a sense of what’s in store.
“Sometimes a festival will have a block that will just be ‘Shorts,’” said Tippeconnie. “So giving it a sense of personality does take a lot of effort.”
Groupings like Okie Shorts, Family Fest, and Comedy Shorts are self-explanatory, but the programmers get more creative in blocks such as Love, Sex, & Death Shorts and the more sensuality-focused, mature programming block Sugar & Spice Shorts.
“’Sugar and Spice’ is catchy, but also it just encapsulates the idea,” Burris said.
For this group, those kinds of recurring ideas popped up all across the festival’s selections, leading to a breakdown of many of the overarching themes and trends that they say audiences can expect to explore in this year’s movies.
“Adulting” was one of the biggest recurring themes, the group said, with a wide range of films focused on struggling into adulthood and worldliness, such as short “ILY,BYE” and features like “Smoking Tigers” and “Hey Viktor!,” the irreverent new comedy from Indigenous former child actor Cody Lightning.
Another consistent theme among the festival’s selections is what the programmers called the “backgrounding of identity politics,” with films spotlighting characters and figures from across diverse cultural, racial, and sexual identities without those identities becoming the story focus.
Opening Night feature – and Oklahoma Film selection – “Hailey’s Game” falls into that category, with its romantic, supernatural, back-from-the-dead plot centered on a queer relationship without the characters’ sexualities ever becoming the focal point.
Oscar-qualifying shorts categories
Of course, deadCenter’s biggest worldwide draw is its status as an Academy Awards-qualifying festival in the Live Action Short and Animated Short categories since 2021, and this year’s lineup in those areas is stacked.
Films like disorder-recovery comedy “Guts” and “The Talent” – starring “House of the Dragon” breakout Emma D’Arcy – are bound to be making Oscar runs, as are some selections from closer to home.
OKC-based filmmaker Kaitlyn Shelby’s short “House in the Clouds” will screen as a deadCenter selection, officially placing it in Oscar contention for 2025.
“One really cool thing here is that this year, we’re starting to see that Oklahoma filmmakers are competing on this national and international level,” Tippeconnie said. “There’s a trend to the programming this year where the Oklahoma work is not just subjugated to the Oklahoma block. It’s sort of spreading out across the festival in a way that I think means something about where we are.”
The 24th annual deadCenter Film Festival will kick off June 6th and run through June 9th in theaters and venues across Downtown OKC.
For passes, information, and the upcoming complete lineup and schedule, visit deadcenterfilm.org.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
