12th
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Honors Oklahoma Filmmaker Bradley Beesley
The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle has named documentary filmmaker Bradley Beesley the recipient of its first Tilghman Award. The organization’s 17 members will give the award annually to honor an individual who has made significant contributions to film and raised awareness of Oklahoma as the home of talented and productive filmmakers, actors and others in the film industry.
OFCC will present the award at The Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Sam Noble Theater Saturday, Nov. 17, at 5:30 p.m. immediately before the screening of “Vanaja.” Those attending the screening are invited to attend the presentation. The museum has screened Beesley’s films among the many independent and art films its program showcases.
“Since ‘Okie Noodling’ was released in 2001, Brad has created documentary films that received high critical praise and drawn attention to Oklahoma as a place that produces film talent,” OFCC President Kathryn Jenson White said. “Documentary is one of the hottest film genres, and Brad is a superb documentarian. His approach to documentary filmmaking is based on immersion and ongoing interaction with his subjects. He has said in many interviews he is not a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ type of filmmaker. He spent 15 years hanging with and filming the Lips for the film he’s probably best known for, ‘The Fearless Freaks: The Wondrously Improbable Story of The Flaming Lips,’ about Oklahoma’s most famous musical group.”
OFCC’s print and online critics have given Beesley this award for his excellent body of work, which includes several films and many music videos documenting Oklahoma’s musical treasures as well as its culture and quirks. In 2007, he followed “The Fearless Freaks,” which has aired on The Sundance Channel and been screened worldwide, with “UFOs at the Zoo: The Flaming Lips in Oklahoma City.” Together, the films document brilliantly not only the Lips’ Oklahoma roots but also the passion of its fans and the onstage excitement Wayne Coyne and his cult-status band engender.
Beesley has two film slated for release in 2008. “Okie Noodling II” and “Money the Hard Way,” a documentary about the annual rodeo behind the walls at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Beesley, based now in Austin, was born and raised in Norman and attended the University of Oklahoma School of Art in the early 1990s. He has made more than 20 music videos for the Flaming Lips in addition to his documentaries. His first documentary was “Hill Stomp Hollar,” an hour-long look at Fat Possum Records and Mississippi Hill Country blues. The picture won first runner-up at the 1999 SXSW film festival in Austin. Filmmaker Magazine named Beesley as one of its Top 25 Independent Filmmakers in 2002.
“The museum offered to host the presentation ceremony because Brad is among Oklahoma’s most talented and commercially viable documentary filmmakers,” said Brian Hearn, film curator at The Oklahoma City Museum of Art. “Brad has developed quite a following in Oklahoma and even though the subjects of his films are diverse, all of our screenings have drawn large, enthusiastic crowds.”
A 2006 documentary titled “Summercamp!,” co-directed with Sarah Price, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Beesley has also directed “The Creek Runs Red,” which examines the ecological impact of the once-booming mining industry in northeastern Oklahoma’s Tar Creek region; the film is scheduled to air in November as part of PBS’s award-winning series, Independent Lens. His 13-part documentary series for A&E called “Rollergirls” aired in 2006.
For more information about Beesley’s work, go to bradleybeesley.com, imdb.com, thecreekrunsred.com and aetv.com/rollergirls.
The Tilghman Award is named for William Matthew “Bill” Tilghman (1854-1924), the subject of the 1999 film, “You Know My Name,” starring Sam Elliott. Tilghman was the first individual to make a film in what is now Oklahoma. Tilghman served as a deputy U.S. marshal and police chief in Oklahoma City, among other law-related positions. He also served as a state senator. In 1908, he made “A Bank Robbery,” starring real-life bank robber Al Jennings re-creating one of his crimes. This was the first of several movies Tilghman set in Oklahoma. In 1915, this lawman-turned-filmmaker made “Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws,” again starring actual bad guys and the good guys who chased them. He is known for his attempts to de-glamorize the outlaw villain and for striving to prove there are no outlaw heroes.
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
November 6, 2007
395 W. Lindsey, Room 2536Norman, OK 73019405.820.3438
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Kathryn Jenson White
405.820.3438