Over 30 films coming to Tonkawa Film Festival this weekend

Tonkawa Film Festival Director James Oxford is looking forward to his fourth year in Kay County this weekend Friday April 14 and Saturday April 15 in Wilkin Hall at Northern Oklahoma College.

The festival will begin Friday night at 6 p.m.

The parade will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 15 with a costume contest, animals, floats, and cars. Those who wish to register can do so at Tonkawa Film Festival.com / parade.

The parade this year will be the festival’s biggest yet with film themed floats and costumes all vying for part of the $1000 in cash prizes donated by First National Bank of Oklahoma.

The parade will also include a special appearance by Lt Gov Matt Pinnell as well visiting filmmakers in horse drawn wagons. This year’s parade will be followed by the announcement of winners of the costume and float contests as well as games and food trucks.

Saturday afternoon in Wilkin Hall will see the final night of film selections beginning at 4:30PM. All film blocks will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers.

Saturday night will also include a booth displaying original props from the film “Twister” starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

This year’s 35 selected short films, include 7 international films and represent filmmaking across

6 genres (Drama, Comedy, Horror, Documentary, Animation and Music Videos).

The festival will culminate with an awards ceremony on Apr 15th where custom-made plaques will be presented to the winners of each genre as well best Oklahoma film, Native American film, Family film and Student film.

Also, a $500 cash prize given to one film selected as the Best of the Fest.

While this film festival is a labor of passion for Oxford and the Tonkawa Chamber of Commerce, it is also a continued mission for Oxford to bring an event of cultural importance and fun to the place he grew up.

The inaugural Tonkawa Film Festival was held just one week before the world-wide shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Battling through a life-changing global event in the subsequent years wasn’t a walk in the park either, but now with the festival planned for next weekend, April 14 and 15, Oxford is taking a slight pause to explain how- and why – this came to be.

Oxford, a Tonkawa native and graduate of Northern Oklahoma College in 1995, might have his home in New York City, but his heart (and a year of planning and brainstorming) keep him rooted in Kay County.

“My husband is a writer and actor,” said Oxford, “and my parents came with us to a film festival where one of his pictures was showing and… the festival wasn’t run great. So my mom offhandedly kind of says, ‘you know, we could just do this ourselves’, and that really stuck with me. And I got to thinking, you know, maybe she’s right.”

That idea stayed with Oxford, whose mother Margie Oxford was the Tonkawa Chamber of Commerce president, and the idea slowly developed into the Chamber-backed Tonkawa Film Festival.

“I flew to Oklahoma in 2019 and met with a lot of people, everyone was so helpful. I of course worked with Brad Matson who is the Director of NOC’s Digital Media Institute who was invaluable for us to have,” said Oxford.

“Of course, I didn’t want this to just be any other film festival. Most of these large festivals are held in, you know, ski resort cities or big areas, and we needed something to not only draw people in but to really sell the atmosphere of the area. When I grew up in Tonkawa, every event had a parade. Horses walking down the street, people throwing candy, all of that. So we wanted to include that aspect as well.”

“We had a fantastic turn out that first year, and I used a lot of my contacts in New York and Los Angeles to really get the word out about it,” Oxford recalled.

The Tonkawa Film Festival is one of few festivals that pay for lodging, Oxford noted, and the cooperation with the local tribe helped with that significantly.

Oxford said that since the festival has started, the organization has had to request less films. Now, they are submitted.

“People started hearing about us,” Oxford explained, “and instead of reaching out to film-makers looking to put their short films on the festival circuit and inviting them first, we’re having more and more submitted to us for approval, which is huge.”

The festival received national recognition within the first year for showing a film titled “Walking Out” which had been screened that year at Sundance and starred Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, star of programs such as “Friday Night Lights” and “Nashville”.

“We’ve had films here that went on to be shown at South By Southwest and Sundance, we’re very pleased with the caliber of art that we’ve been graciously given to screen here.”

The Tonkawa Film Festival is expanding in 2024, Oxford said, as it will have it’s own committee to develop future events.

“We are so gracious for everything that the Tonkawa Chamber of Commerce has helped us to these last few years, but it is unfair for them to have to devote so much time and resources to this. We are establishing our own organization that will help to lighten their load and allow us to branch out further. We are currently working with the Cherokee Nation Film Office to reach out to more indigenous film makers, among other things,” he said.

In recent years, Oklahoma has become a Hollywood hot-spot with films such as Martin Scorcese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” lensing in the Sooner State as well as TV productions like Disney 20th Studios’ “Reservation Dogs” and Paramount+’s Taylor Sheridan drama “Tulsa King” lead by Sylvester Stallone.

“That was a crazy coincidence,” said Oxford, “I had no idea what the climate was in Oklahoma when we started planning this and as we held the festival the state was really taking off as a film destination.”

“It’s just so much fun,” Oxford said about the event, “you’re not just coming to Tonkawa to watch a few hourlong movies and going home. You’re coming here and seeing all these different short films in so many different genres from so many nationalities and cultures, and when the lights go up there they are- the people that made the film- right there to engage with. It’s unlike anything else.

The selections for this year are available on the festival website tonkawafilmfestival.com.

Some of the films this year include the faith-based family film “Amelia’s Prayer” and the horror-thriller “A Little Dead” which were both shot in Oklahoma as well as international offerings such as the Austrian selection “MeTube - "Una Furtiva Lagrima", a music-themed odyssey and an Australian comedy called “No Witness” about two detectives trying to unconventionally solve a murder case.

Films from New Zealand, France, and the U.K. will also be shown as well as a number of films from across the U.S.

In total, 35 short films will be screened across the two-day festival.

“I have very large goals for this,” said Oxford, “I never want this to be something just stagnant that ‘stays still’. I want this to continue to grow and expand and be something that allows artists from Oklahoma’s own backyard as well as around the world to have an outlet to have their voices heard and also for this to be something that Tonkawa and Kay County can be proud of to get behind.”