Indie film shot in Flathead heads to film festivals

An independent film produced and directed by a 2005 Flathead High School graduate and shot in Kalispell is completed and will have its premiere showing at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, before heading overseas to the Tiger Awards Competition at the International Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

“I cast a lot of local people and would love to let others know about this film,” Britni West e-mailed the Hungry Horse News.

“Tired Moonlight” is described as “a love letter to rural America” with a “weird and wild story” that includes four-year-old starlet RainLeigh Vick.

The film tells the story of Dawn, a local woman who lives in the woods with three poodles, as she is confronted by a lost love in a glorified pit-stop town.

“Every town has a post office, lovers, guns, switchblades and beer,” West says in her synopsis of the film. “You just have to know where to look and when to look the other way.”

Shot in Super 16 mm format by cinematographer Adam Ginsberg, landscapes in the 78-minute film include “dinners of fried chicken and the roar of V-8 engines on Saturday nights.”

A filmmaker based in Minneapolis and New York City, West served as set director for the award-winning film “Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter,” was the assistant director for “7 Chinese Brothers,” and directed a series of short films.

In 2012, she produced the indie film “Marvin Seth and Stanley” with her boyfriend Stephen Gurewitz, who wrote, directed and acted in the film. The film received a rave review from Richard Brody of The New Yorker. “Tired Moonlight” marks West’s feature film directorial debut.

Returning to the Flathead in 2012 to shoot the film in her former hometown of Kalispell, West posted a want ad seeking “men, woman and children to act in a film for three weeks in August.” She added, “Pay is nothing, except for perhaps an occasional free meal and the satisfaction of a job well done. Also, we need to someone to provide the occasional free meal.”

Auditions were held in the Teakettle Community Room on Nucleus Avenue in Columbia Falls. West said she wanted to tap into local talent in the North Valley because that’s where she’d be shooting much of the movie.

Most of the Jerome Grant Foundation’s Emerging Filmmaker Grant she had recently received went toward purchasing, developing and editing the film. But it was a shoestring budget, West said — she stayed at her parents’ home while she worked on the film.

An independent film produced and directed by a 2005 Flathead High School graduate and shot in Kalispell is completed and will have its premiere showing at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, before heading overseas to the Tiger Awards Competition at the International Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

“I cast a lot of local people and would love to let others know about this film,” Britni West e-mailed the Hungry Horse News.

“Tired Moonlight” is described as “a love letter to rural America” with a “weird and wild story” that includes four-year-old starlet RainLeigh Vick.

The film tells the story of Dawn, a local woman who lives in the woods with three poodles, as she is confronted by a lost love in a glorified pit-stop town.

“Every town has a post office, lovers, guns, switchblades and beer,” West says in her synopsis of the film. “You just have to know where to look and when to look the other way.”

Shot in Super 16 mm format by cinematographer Adam Ginsberg, landscapes in the 78-minute film include “dinners of fried chicken and the roar of V-8 engines on Saturday nights.”

A filmmaker based in Minneapolis and New York City, West served as set director for the award-winning film “Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter,” was the assistant director for “7 Chinese Brothers,” and directed a series of short films.

In 2012, she produced the indie film “Marvin Seth and Stanley” with her boyfriend Stephen Gurewitz, who wrote, directed and acted in the film. The film received a rave review from Richard Brody of The New Yorker. “Tired Moonlight” marks West’s feature film directorial debut.

Returning to the Flathead in 2012 to shoot the film in her former hometown of Kalispell, West posted a want ad seeking “men, woman and children to act in a film for three weeks in August.” She added, “Pay is nothing, except for perhaps an occasional free meal and the satisfaction of a job well done. Also, we need to someone to provide the occasional free meal.”

Auditions were held in the Teakettle Community Room on Nucleus Avenue in Columbia Falls. West said she wanted to tap into local talent in the North Valley because that’s where she’d be shooting much of the movie.

Most of the Jerome Grant Foundation’s Emerging Filmmaker Grant she had recently received went toward purchasing, developing and editing the film. But it was a shoestring budget, West said — she stayed at her parents’ home while she worked on the film.