BisonBison Film Festival announces 2018 juror panel and workshops

The 2018 BisonBison Film Festival: A Student Competition of Ponca City OK, is excited to welcome this year’s jurors.

The festival, also known as BBFF, will be held March 30-31 at the Poncan Theatre, 104 E. Grand Ave.

Students from the Mid-America Arts region, which includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri, have submitted films and are eligible for one of three $1,000 Awards of Excellence. To be eligible to submit a film, the student must be enrolled in an accredited two- or four-year college, university or technical school in the six states or recently graduated from such. The film submitted must have been made within the last two years, and be no longer than 40 minutes.

Chris “Oz” McIntosh is an award-winning filmmaker and 2016 BisonBison winner. After his short family/fantasy film “Movie Magic” won at BisonBison, the film went on to screen and win at many professional-level festivals across the country. Recent major projects include editing the upcoming sci-fi/comedy feature film “Soul Frackers,” as well as producing video for “JABEE: The Life and Times,” featuring Emmy-winning hip-hop artist Jabee.  McIntosh is currently penning a feature-length screenplay.  He instructs Young Performer Academy at The Actor Factory, where he also teaches filmmaking at summer film camps and has cut hundreds of demo scenes for actors. He holds a BA in Broadcast & Electronic Media from the University of Oklahoma.

Shane Konicki is a morning reporter for KWCH Channel 12 in Wichita, Kansas. Each morning he gets up bright and early to highlight fun, local events in the community with KWCH’s “Where’s Shane” segment. Shane is also the consumer product reporter for Channel 12 for its weekly “Does It Work” segment.  When Shane isn’t at work, he’s actively involved with his filmmaking team, Lemon Parade Films. LPF has won the Tallgrass Film Festival’s Down to the Wire competition twice in a row and had a spot as a Top 24 Semi-finalist in the Doritos: Crash the Superbowl competition with the entry “Bold Moves.” Most recently, Shane and his team have been working on their first feature film, “Start Up.” The action/comedy is currently in production and aiming for a Fall 2018 completion date. 

 Suzannah Levett Zody began her career in theater in 1983 at the Goodman Theater in Chicago as the season ticket manager, working on shows such as “Pump Boys and Dinettes,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” and “Fences” with James Earl Jones. During this time, she volunteered her time to new theater companies, helping them to produce their first shows in various spaces around the city. Suzannah spent 12 years in London as Commercial Manager for Galathea Systems, contracting and implementing marketing software at many of the most notable West End theaters, and Buckingham Palace. Currently, she is Executive Director at Brown County Playhouse Performing Arts Center in Nashville, Indiana, where she is head of programming, producing approximately 20 live show titles per year including plays, musicals, concerts and youth theater.

BisonBison Film Festival includes three free workshops on Saturday, March 31, which are held at the Phillips 66 Clubhouse, 1500 S. 4th St, Ponca City. These are open to the public as well.

Ryan Bellgardt will have a workshop on the film distribution system and how he was able to use it for his films. Ryan is the President/Creative Director of Boiling Point Media, a production company based in Oklahoma City. He’s an Emmy winning director with many local television, music video, and corporate video credits, and made his directorial debut in the full length feature film “Army of Frankensteins.”

The second workshop will be presented by Trish Avery, the SAG-AFTRA DFW Local Executive Director, and she represents more thanr 2,500 professionals in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. She will be discussing the pros and cons of film industry unions.

The third workshop is an open panel discussion with the three jurors, about the judging criteria, the critiques, and other topics.

BisonBison Film Festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit event started in 2013. Tickets and more information about the Festival can be found at www.BisonBisonFilmFestival.org or BisonBison Film Festival on Facebook.

The mission of the BisonBison Film Festival is to recognize and showcase the work of student filmmakers enrolled in academic programs in the Mid-America region, and is sponsored in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council and the Oklahoma Office of Film + Music.