The Tonkawa Film Festival has wrapped its second annual festival and is set for next year on April 8 and 9, 2022. Submissions are already open and planning is underway for the third annual film festival.
James Oxford is the Tonkawa Film Festival Director and grew up in Tonkawa. He lives in New York now and works primarily in finance. It was his husband that pulled him into filmmaking. Oxford’s involvement in film is from the production side of things.
“I’m a very spreadsheet organized person. I do location scouting, budgets, making sure actors are paid, line production jobs and put that all together as a to do list,” said Oxford. “Our first film played at a film festival and my parents went with us. It was badly ran and mom said “we could do a better one”.”
In 2019, Oxford’s mother was president of the Tonkawa Chamber of Commerce and it was then that Oxford chose to focus on an event in his hometown.
“[I’ve] been to many film festivals, and there were things I loved and things I didn’t,” said Oxford. Oxford wondered what it would look like to have such an event in a small farming community.
Oxford approached the Tonkawa Chamber of Commerce and had a PowerPoint presentation to explain to group, many of whom had never been to a film festival, and some who never even heard of short films.
There were pros and cons to having the film festival in a town like Tonkawa. Oxford shared that some of the cons stemmed from Tonkawa’s location as a small town in Oklahoma and not a tourist destination. This necessitated making the film festival like an all-inclusive cruise for filmmakers and to make sure their time is occupied.
A big pro for the town was the presence of the Northern Oklahoma College (NOC) campus. The campus had the facilities to be able to screen films and Wilkin Hall is the perfect size for showing films.
Another advantage versus something like the Tribeca Film Festival, is that the festival is capable of taking over the entire town and becoming the main event.
“When you go to Tribeca Film Festival, you can walk over NYC and not know it is going on, but in a place like Tonkawa, you can take over the town for the weekend,” said Oxford. “Parades, banners and posters everywhere [in town]. And you can do it cheap.”
For Oxford, having a film festival ...
