Noblesville artist and educator Geoff Davis is allowing a very intimate look at this life to be part of this year’s Heartland International Film Festival in form of the short film, “50 Little Birds.”
The Reporter was given an opportunity to both watch film and speak with the director. It has an honest tone that shows Davis as an introvert who struggles with anxiety while learning to find balance and peace. As he says in the opening moments of the film, “I was anxious and angry all the time. I’d lost sight of the fact that we’re all struggling. In order to feel ‘part of the world,’ I needed to get away from the world.”
Lindgren
Davis
While this is classified as a short documentary, Director Hannah Lindgren calls a “docu-narrative” and says it is not what you will experience from other documentaries.
“This is not a talking head interview with Geoff,” Lindgren told The Reporter.
A “talking head” is a broadcasting term for interview footage where only the head and shoulders are visible to the camera, as is common in interviews and documentaries.
“Geoff and I did about four hours of interviews, then we decided it would be better if we actually wrote a script,” Lindgren said. “The film itself feels almost like a visual poem or a docu-narrative concept. It is all his words and his story, so it is documentary, but we wrote the piece that he recorded, then we put the visuals with it.”
The film was shot at locations including his studio in Noblesville, Potter’s Bridge, Pendleton and on Sugar Creek.
The film festival “50 Little Birds” is a part of, Indy Shorts, is an offshoot of the Heartland Film Festival.
“Two years ago, they started having their shorts competition separately, in the summer, to allow themselves to screen more of them,” Lindgren said. “It is hard to find that time when you are screening so many feature-length films at the festival. This year, like a lot of organizations, they had to pivot figure out how to make it work. I was really excited that the program ’50 Little Birds’ is playing in – Indiana Spotlight 2 – it one that is playing at Tibbs Drive-In.”
Photo provided
You can watch “50 Little Birds” and other shorts at 9:25 p.m. on Friday, July 24 at Tibbs Drive-In, 480 S. Tibbs Ave., Indianapolis. You can order tickets online at this link.
You can arrange to see Indy Shorts online at this link.
You can also go to heartlandfilm.org to learn more about the festival as a whole and Indy Shorts in particular.
Editor’s Note: Hannah Lindgren is a producer and editor for Tilt23 Studios. This is her fifth documentary film. Tilt23 Studios is a Midwestern film content and digital ad firm creating cinematic storytelling to help its clients and the world around us all thrive. Learn more about Tilt23 at wearetilt23.com.