Author Spotlight
Thomas Paulus
Whenever you envision film festivals, the typical scene is grand, red-carpet displays in Southern California. But if that seems too far away and too extravagant, don’t worry — instead of booking a flight all the way to LA, you can take a 20-minute drive downtown for the Kansas City Underground Film Festival (KCUFF).
From Oct. 15 through Oct. 31, the KCUFF has been holding screenings outdoors at the Film Row Screening area off of 18th and Wyandotte St. The set up was minimal but effective — a small projector sitting atop a plastic table that projected the movies onto the partially white painted exterior of a brick building.
I heard about this film-viewing experience in the most underground way possible — word of mouth. Once I found out about this place, I informed my friends, and we set out to become authentic partakers in Kansas City film culture.
Upon arrival, we all packed our cars with folding chairs and bulky blankets because of the cold weather. The festival was held outside to follow COVID-19 guidelines. While the air was frosty, the films left us too engaged to notice our shivering bodies.
The festival was originally going to be screened at the Westport Coffeehouse Theatre, but the Committee moved it to Film Row Area to follow COVID safety restrictions.
We were told to place our chairs at least six feet from other patrons and advised to wear a mask until the screening started.
Each film shown has its own stand-alone qualities, because the criteria for film submissions is non-existent. According to the Festival Committee, there’s no restriction on what the movie has to offer, which means the film can be any genre and have a run time anywhere from three minutes to three hours. This was apparent in my attendance, as the first film showed was four minutes and the next one was 88.
This unknown factor made me excited and anxious, as I literally didn’t know what came next. Each new film felt like opening up a random gift, but instead of it potentionally being a new electronic device or gift card, it was a movie with no censorship.
While it’s no Cannes or Tribeca, the KCUFF has screened some of the most unique and interesting films that I have ever seen. Here are two of the Festivals Films that stuck out to me the most, which you can watch on the KCUFF Facebook.
“Sela” was the first film shown when I arrived at the festival — and what a knock-out it was. Based on true events, this South-African non-fictional short film follows a poor family of three young children dealing with their mother’s alcoholism and spiraling mental health.
I’ve never really ventured outside the realm of English-speaking films, maybe a few Spanish or French, but never Afrikaans. It was a very new, yet exciting experience to be immersed in a language I have little knowledge of — with subtitles of course.
Shot in a very raw and single-shot way, the film captured the confusion and inability of the young children’s minds to help their mother. The dialogue of the characters could be simple at times, but that’s because the writers of this movie were no older than 15.
Learning about the writers’ young ages added another layer to the film’s already complex emotions. The film managed to shine a light on how the unnatural passage of parental responsibilities onto a child can change a whole family dynamic.
Throughout the film, the young children have to take their baby brother to school, pick up groceries and even make trips to the local bodega to buy beer for their mom, all things they should not have been doing at the age of nine.
After the credits rolled, it was as if a heavy cloud was cast onto my heart. However, it left me with a better understanding of how addiction’s ugly claws tear through families in a South African lens.
After “Sela,” there were a few very short films, which involved reciting poetry and storytelling through an almost impermeable wall of symbolism. But then another very impactful documentary came on — “What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?”
This 2018 film tells the emotional and true story of Mother Barbara Doss trying to seek justice for the unjust death of her son Dujuan Armstrong at the Santa Rita Jail.
The movie shows the harsh reality of California’s corrupt prisons and their mishandling of inmates, something that is mind-blowingly common yet barely heard of. Armstrong was arrested for burglary and put on one month in custody and then the rest on weekends at the jail so he could support his family. One week he arrived on a Friday to serve his sentence, but he didn’t return.
Throughout the movie, we watched his mother and family try to figure out what happened to him. They are told straight-up lies, like the idea that he overdosed — even though there was no tangible way for him to be under the influence, because of a later revealed toxicology report — from the Sheriff offices and they are sent on a while goose chase to get closure.
It was infuriating to see this mourning family get continually silenced and passed off by the Sheriffs. It took them 200 days of constant aggravation to get the usually easily accessible document — a death certificate, which clearly shows that the officers at the prison being responsible for his death.
The sad truth about this documentary was that this was not a one-time occurrence in California, it’s a widespread problem across America.
No matter your thoughts on current law-enforcement systems, this documentary is a must-watch. It shows the struggles families face due to systems that seem to be against them.
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