Connection grows between WAPS, Frozen River Film Festival

Connection grows between WAPS, Frozen River Film Festival

The 15th annual Frozen River Film Festival begins Wednesday, Feb. 5 in several locations around Winona including Winona Senior High School. 

The high school auditorium will host film sets on Wednesday and Thursday night, one of several ways the district’s connection to the festival has grown over the years. 

Two film sets will be shown each night. Ticket information can be found here, and a complete schedule can be seen here.

The 6 p.m. Wednesday film set includes “The Boxers of Brule,” which depicts a young Lakota woman starting a girls boxing team after the suicide of her friend, and “Rise: Voice of a New Generation,” which tells the story of a school in Idaho that puts students in charge of their own learning. 

The 8:30 p.m. Wednesday set includes three films. “Riplist” is a 67-minute documentary about a celebrity death pool among Minnesota friends. It will be preceeded by two shorter films, “My Paintbrush Bites,” a 16-minute look at the relationship between a recluse man and a dying racehorse, and Jagrlama, a 3-minute short about a boy in Little Tibet who falls in love with ice hockey.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, “hillbilly” challenges the viewer’s perception of Appalachia and hopes to open a dialogue between urban and rural America. 

At 8:30 p.m. Thursday, there will be a Moving Mountains Set featuring nine films, ranging from documentaries on African-American ski clubs to female ice climbers in Bolivia and a climbing gym in Memphis to a 29-minute film about a homeless man in Baltimore who became a world-class symphony musician (on the tuba!) 

The WAPS connection doesn’t end on Thursday night. Six of the nine films in the Local Set scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Somsen Auditorium on the Winona State University campus were made by former or current WAPS students, including alumni filmmakers Ethan Larsen, Dante DeGrazia and Caleb Hammel. Several current students are involved in the Students of Shakespeare for Young Filmmakers program as well. 

All K-12 students receive free admission to the films, workshops and presentations. Student ID can be used to pick up a student pass. 

The student pass features artwork by Jaytta Sherman, an 11th-grader at Winona Area Learning Center. Sherman was one of the winners of a contest held by the Frozen River Film Festival to feature local art on the passes. Sherman's design features a person sitting in the Winona 7 movie theater and watching a film.

There is also a Kidz Kino film set scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at the Winona 7 movie theater. All Winona area students are admitted free of charge. 

For more information on the Frozen River Film Festival, visit frff.org.