Last Updated on June 8, 2024, 10:45 AM | Published: June 8, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY — Saturday is here, and that means the undisputed biggest day of deadCenter, with the most screenings, the most events, and definitely the most people filling every theater.
For the next two days, filmmakers, tastemakers, critics, reviewers, and above all, cinema fanatics will continue to descend upon OKC to catch as many films, panels, and events as possible.
This year’s festivities are loaded with a host of thematically exciting (and sometimes creatively bonkers) shorts and features, with filmmakers from across the nation and the world all lending their talents to the lineup.
The Saturday schedule is loaded from the outset, with the most anticipated non-screening event of the whole fest kicking off a mammoth day of movies, meetups, panels, and more, with the Oscar-qualifying shorts categories taking center stage.
Catch these happenings on Day 3 of deadCenter Film Festival 2024, and check out our featured selection for the day at the end:
deadCenter Film Festival 2024 Awards – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – 11:00 AM (Passholders Only)
At the dead center mark of deadCenter 2024 – with two festival days behind us and two full days left to go – they’ll be announcing the winners of the festival’s many coveted awards this morning at 11:00.
What’s great about the decision to hold the ceremony and announce the awards at the halfway point is that it gives audiences and festivalgoers ample opportunity to catch the winning films, with nearly everything on the schedule running at least once more between today and tomorrow.
Free Press will have a full rundown of winners once they’re announced, so check back right here to find out who strikes deadCenter gold.
Living Out Loud Shorts – Harkins Bricktown Auditorium 11 – 3:00 PM
OKC has some of the most incredible and unmissable Pride parades and events in the country, but the Pride programming each year at deadCenter stands as one of the state’s best annual celebrations of 2SLGBTQIA+ life each June.
This year’s lineup comprises everything from animation, documentary, live-action drama, and even very short-form experimental works.
The screening will be moderated by deadCenter’s Head of Pride Programming, and “You People” writer/director, Laron Chapman, so be sure to stick around after the lights come up to hear the thoughts, stories, and lives behind this remarkable collection.
‘This is a Film About The Black Keys’ – Scissortail Park Great Lawn – 8:30 PM
Though Scissortail Park hosts only one screening, the outdoor Saturday night event remains one of the festival’s most loved traditions, offering city residents a fully free opportunity to get in on the film festival fun with the whole family.
This year, the “On the Lawn” feature walks the line between the film and music worlds as deadCenter presents “This is a Film About The Black Keys,” taking an inside look at the humble beginnings and eventual superstardom of one of rock’s biggest modern acts.
Portals Shorts – Harkins Bricktown Auditorium 13 – 9:00 PM
Each year, deadCenter programmers find creative ways to group short films, forgoing the usual, simplistic “live-action” and “animated” tags that don’t leave any room for thematic consistency and instead building the shorts blocks according to theme and overall feel.
That means that at many of the short program screenings, you’re likely to get an intermingled mix of live-action and animated shorts all vaguely aimed at the same sensibilities, providing a perfect chance to see films together in both of the festival’s Academy Award-qualifying categories.
This year, the programmers got particularly wild with their shorts designations, and many of the weirdest, wildest, most creative narrative selections found a home in “Portal Shorts.”
These are all mind-bending, reality-defying films covering the realms of sci-fi, surrealist fantasy, and technological fable, with these small films asking the biggest questions about the nature of life and how our hearts and minds remain connected to the earth, even as we grow farther from it.
“Return to Hairy Hill” is the animated anchor here, offering a heartfelt look at a girl attempting to hold her family together as they each morph into animals and take to the woods one by one.
But perhaps most anticipated in this lineup is “Mary Margaret Road-Grader,” a post-apocalyptic, all-Indigenous, “Mad Max”- style, high-octane freakout from Native Oklahoman artist and young living legend Steven Paul Judd.
FREE PRESS FEATURED PICK: Okie Shorts, featuring “October Daisies” – First Americans Museum – 2:00 PM
Even with its ever-expanding, international interest and Oscar-qualifying status, deadCenter still shines a dedicated light on Oklahoma’s own homegrown filmmakers and cinema community, and there’s never a better showcase for those talents than the yearly Okie Shorts block.
Among this year’s Oklahoman shorts is “October Daisies,” a tragicomedy exploring friendship, boredom, depression, and the dangers of dissociation from emotion.
“It’s about two apathetic young adults that are required by their shared therapist to complete a list of activities in order to feel emotion again,” writer/director Adam Ragsdale told Free Press on deadCenter’s opening night. “So on the surface, it’s about platonic friendship and relatability through that. But on the deeper level, it’s just about how any emotion is better than no emotion.”
The opportunity to screen and feature at deadCenter is a long-awaited first for Ragsdale and his team.
“We’ve been so passionate about film for a long time, but we’ve never been to deadCenter,” he said. “I originally started out wanting to act, and then I got into music and I really wanted to score, but the opportunities just weren’t opening up. So I decided I’m just going to write something and create my own opportunity. And I pulled together a team of people that were also just as passionate about film and we made it happen.”
For more information about the 2024 deadCenter Film Festival, including the full lineup and schedule, visit deadcenterfilm.org.
Check back each day for our can’t-miss selections and our daily Free Press Featured Pick!
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.
